Pictures from February 2012

This will be a first.... this is Heidi updating the blog!!  Aha!  I hope I get this right....

Here are some pictures of the house, taken during our last family trip back to Aberdeen in February 2012.  It was a fun photo session as I was finally able to capture the whole house using my new wide angle lens :)

View of the house from the private lane

View from the instersection of the main road and private lane

View from the main road - loving all the glazing!!

Lounge - flooring insulation down, ready for underfloor heating pipes

Master bedroom suite, minus partition walls - ready for screed!

Part of back side of house... kitchen, utility room, and then garage

Looking forward to our next trip back when we'll finish the underfloor heating pipe installation and have both floors ready for screed!  Very exciting!!!!

Floor insulation progressing

The first weekend of March I managed to get a weekend of work done on the ground floor insulation and DPM with flights paid by work since I was doing my offshore survival refresher on the Monday.

Mum & I got busy laying the insulation in the utility room wing and DPM in the lounge, study, and utility. The utility room was a royal pain due to all the ducts and pipe work that comes into this area. All these things slow the process up considerably.

DPM down in the lounge...

...study...

..and utility room

After getting that work done we started with the insulation in the hall area, laying away from the front door. Laying full sheets is easy, its all the cutting and fiddling that is slow and tedious. After my course on Monday I spent a few more hours working on the fiddly stuff. The way I looked at it is that its a few hours less that I have to do in future!

Insulation going down in the hall

 At the end of last week we had the track inspection completed for the water connection so I am now just waiting on a call to make an appointment to make the connection to the mains. Need water on site to allow filling and testing of the UFH loops

We are back as a familiy again in 2 weeks time. That will be a big push to get the remaining work for the UFH completed so we can get on and get the screed down.

UFH installation progressing

Things progressing slowly at the moment since we have moved inside with the work scope. This is due to our UFH contractor (us!) not being availble to get back on site on a regaular basis and getting the UFH system installed is on the critical path. We were back for a long week during the kids winter break and managed to get all the UFH loops installed on the first floor and all the materials that were laying around the house moved into the garage - where they are now laying around!

Heidi and I worked hard while mum & dad looked after the boys for a few days - although visually not much seemed to have changed despite al lot of effort. This allowed us to make good progress although all the tidying up and small fiddly jobs always take more time than you think. I also started to don my ventilation and plumbers caps with some hardware being installed under the steps in the storage room ahead of us screeding. Again a fiddly job with lots of pipe and ducts running in a fairly small area

Heidi also had a meeting with a landscaping company about progressing the landscaping works, in particular the fencing around the site since we have nothing there anymore. We also met with the building contractor to discuss outstanding point so that we can get that contract closed out. It was fairly small list since we have kept on top of small snagging items as we have gone along.

I am back for a weekend in just over a weeks time and hope to get cracking with more ground floor insulation, DPM & UFH pipe laying operations planned. We are then back as a familiy again the week of Easter for a big push to get us to screeding readiness

External works complete

Well after approx 11 months of hard work we have now reached a big milestone with all external works now being complete. Over the last couple of weeks the sewage tank has gone in and the last of the drainage has been hooked up.

Sewage tank waiting to go in....

 

...and in a big hole

The garage also has its concrete floor now so we can start storing stuff out there and free up the space inside the house to get the floor insulation down

Garage floor poured

The top soil has been spread and hard core placed in the drive so the final levels around the house can now be seen and the whole site now looks a whole lot tidier. With the heras fencing now gone as well we are finally able to see what the house and plot look like together without anything diverting the eye.

The future lawn area

South west corner

Hardcore on drive and footpath area

Seen from the woods

Landscaping and lots of internal works are the order of the day for 2012 - this means lots of work for myself since I am the plumbing and ventilation contractor but I'm looking forward to it. Heidi is looking after the landscaping aspect and will be speaking with various companies when we are back in a couple of weeks time.

A new year and back to work

After the festive break its back to work again. The ground work folks are back to finish of the last remaining work scope. The week just past has seen the drainage finished off, hard laid around the areas that will be paved, and the garage floor poured.

Filling in outside the lounge

Back fill behind the garage

Hard core outside the kitchen

Stove flue installed

A couple more weeks work should see the ground works finished and then the focus will turn to the landscaping and the internals. Next visit back for us is Februray as a whole family.

Merry Xmas

There has been a flourish of work in the last 10 days so one final report for 2011.

The larch work is now fully completed on both the hosue and garage so there is lots more varishing to be done when the weather co operates with us again

Garage door finished

Larch detail on corner window

The pend glass roof has also now been installed so externally the house and garage are complete externally

Glass roof to pend installed

Close up of glass pend roof

The ground works guys have also been back installing the rain water harvesting tank, filter and getting on with installing the remaining drainage.

Top of rain water tank and filter

Drainage outside study

Drainage at back of garage

Work has now stopped for the year and will commence again on January 9th (weather permitting). There are 2 to 3 weeks ground works remaining so the focus for 2012 will be getting on with the internal works.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to everyone

Garage exterior complete

Another work weekend finished and things continue to progress well. This weekend was cold with a sprinkling of snow on the ground when we arrived on Saturday morning which made things look very atmospheric.

View of the south face

Close up of dining room & bathroom

The garage exterior is now all but finished with only the top coat of harling to go onto the gable end closest to the house. The garage doors are in and the colour matches very well with the larch cladding.

Garage doors

The whole work weekend was spent laying DPM and cliptrack on the first floor in preparation of screeding the upper floor. I had a full work crew with me with my parents and Heidi's dad helping out so many thanks to them for all their efforts. It all takes a lot longer than on expects doing all this fiddly work. We managed to break the back of the job and only have a small section of DPM & cliptrack to go on the first floor before we can get the pipe down. Current plan is to get this done in February and screeded then as well.

DPM & cliptrack laid

In the meantime we will be waiting for the last of the ground works to be completed. Don't think this will happen until January and then we have to hope the weather co operates with us. Need to get this done so we can get water onto site for filling the UFH loops.