The diary of a self-builder – Summer 2017

Week Twenty: Moving outside…

Work inside the house has almost finished with rooms completed (except for us finishing the painting!), the kitchens and bathrooms are complete and working beautifully, and all the extras in the house, such as the dMEV fans in the kitchen and bathrooms, are commissioned and working to energy plan requirements.

The scaffolding around the house is being taken down piece by piece behind the renderers, as they finish off a wall section and complete the white banding around the windows.

So Ian, our builder, is working outside now, putting silicone around the windows and doors, stripping off the plastic window coverings and washing down the soffits and UPVC windows as he goes.  It’s so nice to see out of the windows now – we have a garden to look at, trees are not just blurry shapes and light is streaming through the house!

Ian’s team are starting to level off the ground around the back of the house as well, using a JCB and dumper trucks to move soil around.  It’s a big task as the ground conditions are not ideal for moving soil, but we need the gardens level.

Week Twenty-One: Rendering is done…

The rendering of the house is now finished, so we laid out the front pathway to the drive with our builders, changing direction and length many times!

Lorries full of hardcore arrived, ready to lay on the driveway and paths around the house – it was great to see everyone working together to level the surfaces and inch by inch the driveway and paths took shape, and we could walk around the house without wading through mud!

< Eighteen & Nineteen Week Twenty-Two & Twenty-Three >