Time to build

Our neighbours did not baulk at our expansive plans for dominating the neighbourhood with an extra 10 cm of insulation and so, despite a brief e-mail exchange with the council over whether our pile qualifies as a “heritage asset”, we got an early Christmas present in the form of approval for the plans and for the building regulations.

And despite radio silence from Neville over Christmas, he told us in early January that he’s ready to go and could the building start on Monday January 16th.  So, it’s all systems go.

I did some preparatory work over Christmas, using Google Docs to draw up floor layouts.  And Islay and I headed to Ridgeons to pick bathroom suites (we’re getting a remote controlled shower, how cool is that?)  So we’re in good shape I think.  We wondered around the house on Saturday with printout and pen in hand debating the location of power sockets and noting down things we wanted changing.

We’ve, as is inevitable with these things, increased the scope already.  We’ve specified LED downlighters on the top floor (with our low ceilings, removing pendant lights is a good idea for the sake of my forehead).  

Overall, I think we’ve been pleased to have appointed Seb the architect, but he made one minor mistake right at the end that has slightly coloured my opinion.  On the final draft of the drawings a small note appeared indicating that beneath the Tri-Iso we needed to ensure we had foil-backed plasterboard (as a vapour control barrier).  Our aging plasterboard is not foil-backed, it’s barely even plasterboard, so this means more work and increased costs.   Not a big oversight, but irksome.

There will surely be a few more creeps in scope before this is out, and I can expect the house to throw up at least one surprise as the various trades start poking around in its innards.

Anyway.  We know we’ve got a couple of months of dust and disruption ahead, but this is very exciting.  It’s taken the best part of a year, but we’re going to start putting together our home.