ollibees

Sleep-building

• By Julia Pankratova
• 2013, 29 September
• 1 Comment

CAUTION : Julia is now a lady of leisure who has taken over the project management of the house build….

I have heard of sleep-walking but never caught anyone in the act… I have vivid dreams and do sometimes wake up grumpy in the middle of the night having dreamt up an unpleasant scenario… I’ve hardly ever dreamt about work even though it consumed 50% of my waking hours…

Over the past two weeks since having taken over the full project management of the house build  – all I dream about is THE house build! I put rafters in, I insulate the roof, I do site inspections… Last night I woke up in the middle of inspecting a flat roof that our chippies had been working on this Saturday… I could not figure out how the chippies had managed to put in the Velux window that was not due for delivery until Monday…. I sat confused on the bed in the dark staring at the Velux until it dawned on me that it was the middle of the night and that we were staying at someone else’s house and that it would be best if I went back to sleep! 🙂

Lots happened in the past few weeks. The weekend of 7th-8th September Malc & I spend building the remainder of the main pitched roof, which was just before we left for IBC in Amsterdam for 10 days. Last weekend we removed the last of the old REDLAND concrete tiles from the old front extension where our temporary bedroom currently is. Since then the roof of the extension and the main pitched roof of the house have been joined together and most of the roofs are now insulated with a double layer of 150mm EcoTherm insulation.

We have now got two pairs of very capable hands of David and Tim the Chippies, on recommendation of Jason the Brickie. Last weekend they knocked up the second dormer roof for us and this weekend David and Tim started working on the flat roofs of the rear extension as well as the pitched side extension roof. Next weekend all roofs should be complete structurally, including the new front porch, which we are yet to build out of bricks and mortar this week with Jason and Bluey the Brickies.

Last week was a week of lots or research and high spending. Roofing timbers for the flat roof came only third cost-wise after the Kloeber front door and five more Velux windows, followed by more roof insulation and chimney flue liners. The main expense however was the Canadian Glendyne slate which we ordered 3,050 tiles of after months of research, cogitation and deliberation (Stephen Fry springs to mind…).  All reasoning behind the decision can be found in the previous Grander Design post.

The 3,050 quantity is 1,050 slates less than the original estimate made by a roofing merchant company. However:

1. Roofing merchants are allegedly notorious for overestimating
2. Returning un-used slates costs a 20% restocking fee
3. Any additional slate purchase is on a three-day leadtime with no minimum quantity restrictions

No brainer really…

The company we bought the slates from, as was recommended by a good friend Antonia, is a small roofing merchant in Four Marks who were the best of the bunch on price as well as customer service, including two site visits at no cost. We felt we had to reward Ralph the salesman for his efforts. All that remains to source is roofing lead and copper nails subject to the best price we can get from the numerous roofing merchants. Ralph so far looks like our top candidate on these too.

Top priority from now on is to find a good AND available roofer to slate the 180 square meters of our pitched roofs (that excludes the seven Velux openings and 6 sq.m reserved for recessed solar thermal panels). So far this is proving to be a challenge. With the winter on its way most roofers are all booked up, including Perkey the Roofer who (with his gang) could apparently slate our roof in 3 weeks, but who is now booked up until November. Perkey & his son Jamie are allegedly THE best roofers in the whole of Winchester and should we be fortunate enough and one of their other appointments gets postponed and we get booked in instead – we should consider ourselves born lucky… We are keeping out fingers cross and in the meantime I have three other appointments booked for other roofers to come in to quote us this Monday…

I must admit, we had been exceedingly lucky with the weather. Whilst staying for 10 days in Amsterdam, the UK was drenched with downpours and thankfully we did not see the poor sight the site represented… As soon as we got back home – the weather improved quite a bit and hopefully we will have another few dry warm weeks to look forward to…. Just every now and again we still come across a cupboard or a corner somewhere that had got soaked whilst we were away… Having the pitched roof now fully insulated and near-waterproof is making a big difference.

Having said that, the cold water tap temperature has dropped dramatically over the past few weeks. Our cold showers are getting colder, making us long for the hot water we voluntarily “gave up” two months ago. As a temporary measure to battle with near-zero temperatures we are considering the use of a hot water bottle: fill a hot water bottle with freshly boiled water from the kettle.. hug the water bottle… step into the shower cubicle…

Thankfully, Andy the Plumber has just finished designing our fairly simple yet complicated heating system involving a thermal heat store that would get fed by two solar thermal panels, a multi-fuel stove with a back boiler and a gas boiler as a back-up. I will write more on this in another post. All I will say here is that we will be ordering all the bits and pieces in the coming week and hopefully in two-weeks time I will be sitting in the warmth writing our next blog post, gazing at the fire flames in the stove having just had a nice hot shower… For now however the only source of heat on the whole of the site is in the temporary kitchen where Malc wired in our electric oven… We now look forward to every roast dinner… not so much for food as for warmth… 🙂

Next top tasks and challenges are:

• Make final decision on the multi-fuel back boiler stove and order
• Order remaining three bi-fold doors and multiple windows and glass panels
• Decide on the fascias and soffits material, choose, order==> this one is a toughie as it could be PVCU (my least favourite choice), wood (nice, natural but impractical) or aluminium (durable, lasting, contemporary but most likely very expensive.. 🙁 )
• Finish all brick work and concentrate on making the place habitable….

On my last day at Sony, which was the last day of IBC, many of my friends and colleagues came up to say good-bye and comment on our endeavour, saying they always wanted to do something similar but always found an excuse not to. It made me think………. and then think a bit more…….. and a bit more…… If you are out there still thinking whether to do it or not – come over for a cup of tea! Malc and I will give you all the courage in the world to do it! 😉 It’s hard work and very challenging and trying, yet fun and very rewarding at the same time… I worked 8hr days five days a week and got paid, yet got not nearly as much satisfaction as I do now working 10hr days seven days a week. And when it gets to me, my better half passes to me his pair of rosy sunglasses and reminds me that “it will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right – it’s not the end”… 😉