future simple passive

If you look at the floorplan for the Upstairs, to the rear of our open plan area we have a series of smaller spaces which are all about utility - the bootroom, the pantry, WC.  I decided to use a more robust flooring material than the Dinesen Douglas which covered the main living areas.  To keep the palate of materials tight, slate tiles seemed like the obvious choice.

As always the aim was to get the best I could for a minimal budget.  Mandarin stone do a rectangular grey riven slate tile for £22/m2 which is amazing value. Luckily the month I needed to order, it was Stone of the Month and so I got an additional 25% discount!!!

The slate is 600 x 100, which wasn't quite the look I wanted so we cut the slates in half and continued with more herringbone... poor Stewart (see Bathroom installation for more herringbone tiling). 






As usual, contrary to most peoples mistake I have ended up with loads of extra tiles again, which I'm struggling to find a use for!  

The treads are open at the top to allow light down into the hallway below.

The LED strip lighting was fitted into shelves with a small projection, it is very beautiful and gentle washes the treads with light.

The gorgeous layers of ply end-grain

The Dinesen boards were glued together and cut to size. Being an exact fit, the snugness meant there was a bit of banging and shoving to get them in.  We had some plaster casualties along the way. 




The rhythm of site changed a little during this period as Andrew and Paul stayed in Somerset to produce the large joinery in their workshop and then transported it to site a couple of weeks later.

My Command Centre, a huge piece of joinery.

Office shelving

Downstairs there was less joinery.  There were only a few things that 'needed' doing, the budgets wouldn't allow for 'wish list' items to be done at this stage...

Both bathrooms needed a simple ply box made to allow installation of the sink and toilet.

There is one joinery wall downstairs, the wardrobe in the master bedroom partitions off the en-suite.

 
No slacking please!

The cowls, the cowls, the cowls!  What a palaver.  This became the black hole of time and energy for the project.  We worked on this part of the build for months!!!  Had we known then what we know now, work on this should have begun months earlier - the beauty of hindsight!






Dimitri's favourite part of the original design were the metal window cowls. Early on in the design process we reviewed the designs with and without them and they gave the building such character. Not only do they look fantastic but they play a functional role in solar shading during the summer months when the sun is high.  It is critically important to prevent overheating in our highly insulated and airtight home. 

Without the cowls - an early design

Easy, we all thought, we'll make them from inexpensive Galvanised Steel sheet, fix them to the walls and then slate on top.  We were SO wrong!

As soon as the metal manufacturers were drafted in to consult on designs the issues became all too clear.  Galvanising is done normally by hot dipping steel in a zinc bath.  The zinc coating then protects the steel from rust, and even if the zinc coating is scratched then the remaining zinc will still prevent rusting.

The design of the cowls meant that sheets of metal would be the most straightforward thing to use, and cost effective.  However sheet metal is the worst material to hot-dip.  It has a high surface area to mass ratio and the heat related expansion during hot-dips results in warps, twists and buckles.  Oh no!

Steel is very heavy, so aluminium was also considered as it is 1/3 of the density.  But aluminium is more expensive.  Believe me when I say this has not been easy and it wasn't inexpensive at all.  

It took weeks and weeks to get through all the decisions and get the final drawing package produced as all the windows had to be surveyed on site, checked, and checked again.  Then when we finally had the package we sent them out for prices and it took at least another month before we were finally in a position to be able to place the order.  The fabricators also had their own drawings to produce which then had to be checked by Team Luxton.  A complete headache for everyone.





I was promised a 3 week fabrication time and unfortunately 4 weeks later the company had still not obtained the raw sheet metal.  It would be another few weeks before we took delivery and then it was found that a couple of items were incorrect and so we had to wait for these to be collected and then re-fabricated...are you starting to feel the pain yet?  Drivers were ill, people were on holiday, workshops were busy, etc., etc.

Cowl parts waiting to be installed

This created a real traffic jam

- without the cowls the slates couldn't go on
- the scaffolding couldn't be taken down until the slates were on
- all rainwater goods, hoppers and downpipes couldn't be fixed until the slates were on
- the parapet cover couldn't be installed until the slating was completed

It also almost left us homeless as we had given notice to our old home to move out in the last weeks of August, but with scaffolding surrounding the house we wouldn't be able to get the removals firm to enter the building!  In the end Andrew and I made a strategic decision to adjust the scaffolding and focus attention internally so that we could move in regardless, they would move outside at a later date when we knew everything needed would be on site.  Enough with the delays!

Cool after-school viewing better than TV!

We decided to leave the metal work raw and undressed, including the weld marks.  I love the honesty and character - very Wabi-Sabi!

Our scaffolding costs went through the roof as it had to be hired for another 6 months being no use in the meantime.  Had we known the extent of the delays it would have been cheaper to take the scaffolding down and re-erect at a later date.  

Once the metal work was mounted around the windows we had planned to get a welder to come and weld the separate pieces together.  Another new trade about which I know nothing.  My builder, Andrew, and my Structural Engineer, Charles, both expressed concerns about the wisdom of welding so close to our beautiful and expensive triple glazed windows.  These are powder coated aluminium and we don't want their coating to run off nor the glass to melt.  Another week or two of investigation and we solved the issue by only welding the outer edges.  





God bless my ever patient slaters, P.L. Allard, they had originally been organised for March, then delayed to May, then told that they would be able to start mid-August and finally got on site in September!







What can I say? Condensed like this it seems like a small hiccup but it ground everyone down and had negative consequences for the relationships and morale of everyone involved.  We got there in the end though! 

We are the "Kitchen of the Week" in Houzz this week, so click through to see lots of lovely pictures of our kitchen. Sam and Nicky from Sustainable Kitchens came along with their photographer Brett to do a photoshoot of the kitchen and got these amazing shots. There are loads more on their website Sustainable Kitchens- Contemporary Eco Kitchen so do have a look.





The kitchen is simply stunning and more than I could have hoped for.  All credit goes to Sam, Charlie and their team at Sustainable Kitchens. There is a delicious daily pleasure from using this beautiful hand-crafted kitchen.  Everything has solidity and weight and will last a lifetime.  I always show visitors the beautiful dovetailed joints within the kitchen drawers (I'm not sure they are always as enthused as I am!)  The whole design process was an absolute pleasure and no detail was too small, we worked and re-worked the design until we got a design that made me tingle with excitement.  They are good, good people at Sustainable Kitchens with good hearts and a thoughtful and considered approach to business. Thank you.

With 2nd fix now fully underway we had moved from the 'fabric' part of the build into the decorative part of the build and I was now in charge of subcontracting.  

I approached four different tilers for a quotation.  The prices varied by quite a considerable degree and in the end I choose Stewart who is SWC Flooring.  He came in with a competitive price, had provided two good references for me to speak to and could start within the timeframe allocated (not a lot, as schedules were out the window and Andrew never gave me much notice!) and seemed a friendly and helpful bloke.

It was herringbone pattern all the way, and Stewart reported dreaming about herringbone whilst on our job!




First was the bathroom tiles (for more info see Bathroom tiles - sourcing).  Stuart was brilliant about drawing up a template first so that we could check the position of the tiles around the corners and when they met edges, this gave us a cleaner final look.  In the main bathroom we have a window above the bath which lets in loads of light but needed consideration for water protection.  Tiling around the corners would spoil the look and make it too fussy so we decided to tile up to the edge and then line the window walls with metal sheet instead.  







I also decided that I didn't want the tiles to go up to the ceiling - water was never going to get up there.  I preferred the more restrained and simple look of just keeping in line with top of the window- all these tiny details!

Simpson's Ten Hinged Bath Screen

Once the tiles were in place our plumbers, Cotswold Green Energy could install all the Crosswater brassware - beautiful!  

Simple lines - Crosswater Central Shower valve

Crosswater's Central Shower Kit

I've got plenty of extra tiles left over - perhaps too many, but one at least came in handy when the drill cracked the tile during the installation of the shower screen.

For more info about the bathroom fittings we chose see Bathroom love.

The painters/decorators arrived.  






We had chosen Little Greene paints - see my earlier post Choosing Paint.  So all paint colours mentioned below are from their range.









  


  

I was so excited to see the colours go on - they were absolutely beautiful.


A 'Juniper Ash' colour block in the sitting room on a elegantly soft and warm 'Tusk' wall wash.

A bit of head-scratching but Charlie figured it out calmly and with a smile, always up for a challenge with my experimental kitchen design!  The wires you can see in the wall are the for the LED lights which have been recessed into the Dinesen Douglas shelf which wraps around the kitchen.  The moveable island was finished in the workshop and wrapped in the wobble-sanded steel.  It was kept out of the way and delivered the day we moved in. It is so beautiful.  I'll share finished photos soon.