I'm still here and buried under a mountain of half-written posts! Once we moved in life got sooooooo busy, what with a half-finished not-quite-ready new home, new school, new location, new routines etc. etc. So in the grand scheme of priorities blogging took the hit!
I also realised that I just needed to give myself a little bit of break and spend my very rare moments of spare time having a bit of a relax before I really did break.
It was still full on with the build Sept-October, with the addition of living in the middle of it all. November started easing off and we said goodbye to Andrew and Paul as they went to start a new project. There was a paperwork frenzy in December and we finally got signed off the last week before everyone broke for the Festive season. Christmas delightfully came and went along with birthday season in our home.
So, batteries somewhat recharged I'm ready to get this whole experience recorded before I forget it all...
22 Jan 2015
9 Oct 2014
Choosing paint
It was really important to us that the materials we use "inside the envelope" are as healthy and environmentally friendly as possible. This is always a difficult choice as there is always a axis with these things and everyone will take a different position as to what they feel is 'green'. The paints are marketed variously as eco, natural, green, and organic each implying a different viewpoint and ethos and the trick is discovering what that means, what you think is important and which direction you are going to go in...!
About 10yrs ago we first used an eco paint which was made from milk proteins. We bought powdered pigment and mixed the colours ourselves. We were very proud of ourselves but we had to admit that the paint coverage was patchy and not terribly stable as it yellowed over a couple of years.
I wanted to choose paints with low toxicity, and environmentally friendly production methods. I also wanted a paint product that could stand up to the rigours of family life. I spent a number of weeks thoroughly researching the UK market in eco-friendly paints.
All the products within the 'eco' end of the market vary hugely regarding-
the pigments they use
the binders used such as milk, veg based (e.g. soya), clay, or mineral derived
the VOCs (volatile organic chemicals)
the production methods
the additives
It's a bit of a nightmare to suddenly have to become an expert in all these things just to choose paint. I looked on the internet and the results are pretty poor as there really aren't many reviews out there regarding paint! Low VOC is the most obvious starting point, the big brands are now obliged by law to bring the VOC levels down but they still don't compare to a lot of the eco-brands I looked at which are virtually no VOC. It seems that in the past 10 years the eco paints have all become better at coverage and less patchy. As each company has a different ethos it's easy to end up going around in circles as they all tell you what is great about their paints and what green credentials they can offer.
After chatting to retailers, and pretty much everyone else I could find, as well as browsing a number of forums (hooray for Mumsnet) I realised that for most people colour choice is normally the biggest factor in choosing a brand of paint. Intially it appears that everyone has the same colours, but it's only when you decide that you want to use a specific colour, such as dark blue, that you realise that each company will only have one or two shades and actually you do have an opinion about which you prefer- it's all in the detail. You also find out really quickly that everyone has about 50 shades of white (did you see what I did there?). How on earth does one go about selecting the correct white?!? Generally you get what you pay for as the more expensive paints use greater amounts of pigments which makes their colours more complex.
After taking lots of advice and thoroughly interrogating the colour charts we decided to use Little Greene Paint. I felt that Little Greene was a great match for us as they have been one of the leaders for developing paint with excellent environmental credentials in the UK. Their paints have been awarded the European Environmental standard and Child Safety accreditation which I find very reassuring. I was also really interested in their "intelligent finish" paints which are designed to be washable and stand up to more wear and tear as well as being matt and beautiful- perfect for my home which is filled with small people who couldn't care less about the paint. Little Greene is not in the budget end of the marketplace but I feel it is worth the extra as you get fantastic paint quality, with excellent coverage and a really, really, really good colour range (they use loads of pigment and the colours have masses of depth). Decision made - tick! Next, to choose some colours...
I thought you might be interested in the Paint companies which were also considered, we didn't choose them but they may work for you -
Earthborne - lovely clay paint
Auro - milk based paint
Farrow and Ball, Fired Earth, Pots of Paint, Nutshell Paints, Ecos
About 10yrs ago we first used an eco paint which was made from milk proteins. We bought powdered pigment and mixed the colours ourselves. We were very proud of ourselves but we had to admit that the paint coverage was patchy and not terribly stable as it yellowed over a couple of years.
I wanted to choose paints with low toxicity, and environmentally friendly production methods. I also wanted a paint product that could stand up to the rigours of family life. I spent a number of weeks thoroughly researching the UK market in eco-friendly paints.
All the products within the 'eco' end of the market vary hugely regarding-
the pigments they use
the binders used such as milk, veg based (e.g. soya), clay, or mineral derived
the VOCs (volatile organic chemicals)
the production methods
the additives
It's a bit of a nightmare to suddenly have to become an expert in all these things just to choose paint. I looked on the internet and the results are pretty poor as there really aren't many reviews out there regarding paint! Low VOC is the most obvious starting point, the big brands are now obliged by law to bring the VOC levels down but they still don't compare to a lot of the eco-brands I looked at which are virtually no VOC. It seems that in the past 10 years the eco paints have all become better at coverage and less patchy. As each company has a different ethos it's easy to end up going around in circles as they all tell you what is great about their paints and what green credentials they can offer.
After chatting to retailers, and pretty much everyone else I could find, as well as browsing a number of forums (hooray for Mumsnet) I realised that for most people colour choice is normally the biggest factor in choosing a brand of paint. Intially it appears that everyone has the same colours, but it's only when you decide that you want to use a specific colour, such as dark blue, that you realise that each company will only have one or two shades and actually you do have an opinion about which you prefer- it's all in the detail. You also find out really quickly that everyone has about 50 shades of white (did you see what I did there?). How on earth does one go about selecting the correct white?!? Generally you get what you pay for as the more expensive paints use greater amounts of pigments which makes their colours more complex.
 |
| © Mark Scott Photography |
After taking lots of advice and thoroughly interrogating the colour charts we decided to use Little Greene Paint. I felt that Little Greene was a great match for us as they have been one of the leaders for developing paint with excellent environmental credentials in the UK. Their paints have been awarded the European Environmental standard and Child Safety accreditation which I find very reassuring. I was also really interested in their "intelligent finish" paints which are designed to be washable and stand up to more wear and tear as well as being matt and beautiful- perfect for my home which is filled with small people who couldn't care less about the paint. Little Greene is not in the budget end of the marketplace but I feel it is worth the extra as you get fantastic paint quality, with excellent coverage and a really, really, really good colour range (they use loads of pigment and the colours have masses of depth). Decision made - tick! Next, to choose some colours...
I thought you might be interested in the Paint companies which were also considered, we didn't choose them but they may work for you -
Earthborne - lovely clay paint
Auro - milk based paint
Farrow and Ball, Fired Earth, Pots of Paint, Nutshell Paints, Ecos
6 Oct 2014
Bathroom tiles - Sourcing
Early in the bathroom design process I had moaned about how cleaning the grout on bathroom tiles has to one of the most miserable domestic jobs, second only to cleaning the oven. I looked for ages for an alternative to a tiled wall.
Charlie and I discussed a morrocan style of lime plaster called Tadelakt. Very elegant and calm looking. You can go on courses to learn how to do it yourself.
But in the end I conceded to a tiled wall. In the tidal wave of choices this was just an easier path to take. In order to minimise grout cleaning one should choose the very popular large format tiles. But if I'm being really honest, and please don't get offended, I've seen too much of them in the last few years and I'm never one to do the easy thing. So I hit pinterest to see what tiling alternative there were out there.
I have a deep love of geometric pattern (Sam my kitchen designer even says i am obsessed with straight lines- I like to think that is fascinated is a better term...). Hexagons were a major contender, but not necessarily a cost-effective choice (have you seen the prices!).
I decided that a small rectangular tile (the ubiquitous metro) laid in a herringbone bond was what I wanted. It met design criteria 1 & 2 (see here) as it used low cost materials creatively. It also allowed me to express my love of parquet flooring in another way. I busily set about researching plain white tiles and grey grout (to minimise staining and cleaning).
However on my sister-in-law's recommendation (she had picked up some amazing bargains) we went to visit the Fired Earth Factory Shop in Adderbury the next time we were in Oxfordshire. Behind the main shop they have a large storeroom area full of discounted products; tiles, brassware, sanitaryware, furniture etc. Some of it is seconds, some ex-display and some used on photo shoots.
Amazingly we hit the jackpot! There was a pile of boxes containing light grey rectangular tiles from their new Forecast range. Lovely glazed tiles from Spain which look handmade. It turned out that these were seconds as the colour tint didn't quite match. They were perfect - a lovely grey colour which would work with the concrete floor and really textured and handmade looking so would offer texture and softness as a counterpoint to the clean lines in the rest of the bathroom. Off I went to agree a price (less than half the retail price!) and reserved loads of boxes of the tiles. The plan was then to go home and work out exactly how many tiles would be needed and then purchase the correct amount. We had also put a reserve on a couple of Geberit Monolith cisterns they had in the warehouse, but needed to check for components. The following week we confirmed how many boxes we wanted to buy and I arranged a date for collection a couple of weeks later.
When the day arrived, there was utter heartache when it appeared that they had inadvertantly sold my tiles to someone else (my advice now is to always get those tiles in your car as soon as possible). I would now have to go back to square one as the budget did not stretch to full price Fired Earth tiles, and that was so hard when I had already imagined how fab those tiles would have looked. However after a couple of days nursing my heartache and convincing myself that the Gods had decided to show me that nothing should be that easy and I needed to work harder and be more creative...The very amazing Paul from F.E. called me to apologise and assure me that as it was their error, I would still be able to purchase the volume of tiles I needed at the price we had agreed. HOORAY, HOORAY, HOORAY! Just another little emotional rollercoaster but with a happy ending. Is it all going to be like this?
Charlie and I discussed a morrocan style of lime plaster called Tadelakt. Very elegant and calm looking. You can go on courses to learn how to do it yourself.
 |
| Tadelakt lime plaster ©MikeWye.co.uk |
But in the end I conceded to a tiled wall. In the tidal wave of choices this was just an easier path to take. In order to minimise grout cleaning one should choose the very popular large format tiles. But if I'm being really honest, and please don't get offended, I've seen too much of them in the last few years and I'm never one to do the easy thing. So I hit pinterest to see what tiling alternative there were out there.
I have a deep love of geometric pattern (Sam my kitchen designer even says i am obsessed with straight lines- I like to think that is fascinated is a better term...). Hexagons were a major contender, but not necessarily a cost-effective choice (have you seen the prices!).
I decided that a small rectangular tile (the ubiquitous metro) laid in a herringbone bond was what I wanted. It met design criteria 1 & 2 (see here) as it used low cost materials creatively. It also allowed me to express my love of parquet flooring in another way. I busily set about researching plain white tiles and grey grout (to minimise staining and cleaning).
However on my sister-in-law's recommendation (she had picked up some amazing bargains) we went to visit the Fired Earth Factory Shop in Adderbury the next time we were in Oxfordshire. Behind the main shop they have a large storeroom area full of discounted products; tiles, brassware, sanitaryware, furniture etc. Some of it is seconds, some ex-display and some used on photo shoots.
Amazingly we hit the jackpot! There was a pile of boxes containing light grey rectangular tiles from their new Forecast range. Lovely glazed tiles from Spain which look handmade. It turned out that these were seconds as the colour tint didn't quite match. They were perfect - a lovely grey colour which would work with the concrete floor and really textured and handmade looking so would offer texture and softness as a counterpoint to the clean lines in the rest of the bathroom. Off I went to agree a price (less than half the retail price!) and reserved loads of boxes of the tiles. The plan was then to go home and work out exactly how many tiles would be needed and then purchase the correct amount. We had also put a reserve on a couple of Geberit Monolith cisterns they had in the warehouse, but needed to check for components. The following week we confirmed how many boxes we wanted to buy and I arranged a date for collection a couple of weeks later.
 |
| Fired Earth Forecast Cromarty tiles |
When the day arrived, there was utter heartache when it appeared that they had inadvertantly sold my tiles to someone else (my advice now is to always get those tiles in your car as soon as possible). I would now have to go back to square one as the budget did not stretch to full price Fired Earth tiles, and that was so hard when I had already imagined how fab those tiles would have looked. However after a couple of days nursing my heartache and convincing myself that the Gods had decided to show me that nothing should be that easy and I needed to work harder and be more creative...The very amazing Paul from F.E. called me to apologise and assure me that as it was their error, I would still be able to purchase the volume of tiles I needed at the price we had agreed. HOORAY, HOORAY, HOORAY! Just another little emotional rollercoaster but with a happy ending. Is it all going to be like this?
16 Sept 2014
On Technology
Dimitri writes. This is not an article about the technology that will become part of the house. There is remarkably little of that in the sense of gadgetry and gizmos; of course, the materials involved are all technology of one sort or another, as are things like windows, doors, lighting and heating, but it's all fairly conventional stuff. The only thing in that department that stands out is the MVHR unit which ventilates the house while retaining the house's heat.
We decided not to go for the clichéd self build tech such as
intelligent lighting and sound systems. We don't want to have to resort to an instruction manual to turn on a light, and technology changes so fast that anything built-in is bound to become obsolete within a few years. We could have introduced a spider's web of cabling all converging on a server room where we keep our media, but what will our media server be in ten years? A phone? The web?
Rather than bang on about what we're not using, I'll get on to the primary purpose of this article - describing the technology that has helped in the process of the build.
During the early days of the build, we quickly discovered that email was not working for sharing documents. This is, I think, because it's not possible to tell someone where a document is - just that you sent it to them a few days/weeks ago, which leads to that person searching through their emails, which may or may not be well filed. You can't be sure who has received a document; furthermore, it's no good clogging up people's inboxes with documents rather than messages. One more thing: as my family will confirm, I have a thing about large files being sent over email. It is a bad idea. Email was not designed for it, it's inefficient, it slows down email servers and clogs up client program's such as Outlook and Apple Mail while they download the files whether the user is interested in the file or not, and it's generally a bad way of sharing a document over the internet, when that is the primary purpose of websites, which brings me on to...
Dropbox (other file sharing systems are available!). With this system, you install Dropbox on your computer and it creates a folder which it automatically synchronises to the web. You can invite others to have access to that folder, and once they accept and install the program on their own machine, they will see the same folder on their computer. Any changes made to any files within the folder on either machine will be synchronised to the other machine automatically. Dropbox apps also exist for mobile devices. So, when CLD create a new folder and within it place a new plan for the ground floor, Tara, myself and Andrew immediately have access to the file as if it was saved on our machines. When I talked Andrew through Dropbox over the phone for the first time, I swear I heard him dribbling with delight. It has a couple of other useful features, in that you can view old versions of the files if you need to, and you can share files or folders for viewing only, which has proved useful with our structural warranty provider, and would have been useful with our building society if their IT policies weren't so old fashioned and draconian.
We tinkered with a web based project management tool called Trello. This was designed for software development using Agile methodology, but since proved useful in all sorts of spheres. It allows you to list a bunch of things to do, and with each one you can specify how long you expect it to take, who is responsible for it, and any other notes or documents. We didn't persist with it, primarily because we couldn't expect Andrew or CLD to use it. It's something we may have used had we been fully project managing the build ourselves.
Video calling has proved moderately useful, but we've not used it quite as much as we could have. This is mostly due to contractors not being familiar with the tool, and often not bothering to check things with us before they go ahead and just do it the way that suits them(!). Photo messaging has been used a lot more. It was certainly useful getting broadband on site early on as we've been able to access dropbox/emails/websites in situ.
 |
| A version of the kids' bedroom, modelled in Sketchup |
Towards the end of the build, I was trying to work out how we could fit the kids' furniture into their room, when I remembered being amazed seeing how easily Charlie 4 (Charlie from Sustainable Kitchens) changed the height in the design of our kitchen extractor housing. The software he used was Sketchup. After installing and watching a couple of the tutorials, and ignoring Tara's heckles of "just cut out some pieces of paper", I quickly modelled their room and proudly showed Tara the different ways in which it could be arranged. We were both converted, and we've since used it to design the office and the boot room, and would certainly and done more with it if we'd tried earlier.
28 Aug 2014
Sneaky Peak
We are preparing to leave our current home and shed all the superfluous stuff we have accumulated over the last 3.5yrs. I love the feeling of relief and lightness I get when I drop off huge bags to the charity shop or recycling. We have no choice as our new house is smaller than our current one. We've also had to shed a lot of furniture as it won't fit/isn't needed. But I am not sad about this, in fact I'm really looking forward to having fewer things and keeping on top of it all, more space often just means more dumping and clutter...
At the same time work is non-stop at the house as we try to get as much done before we move in. We are moving before it is ready or finished, a couple more weeks would have made things a lot easier for the work schedule. But needs must. We promised we would leave our current house by the end of the summer and the children are starting at their new school. Enough already.
As I really can't prioritise the blog at this critical time, I thought I'd share a few photos to preview everything that I will detail soon. It has been very exciting to finally get to this moment... I can't believe that we are actually going to be living there.
At the same time work is non-stop at the house as we try to get as much done before we move in. We are moving before it is ready or finished, a couple more weeks would have made things a lot easier for the work schedule. But needs must. We promised we would leave our current house by the end of the summer and the children are starting at their new school. Enough already.
As I really can't prioritise the blog at this critical time, I thought I'd share a few photos to preview everything that I will detail soon. It has been very exciting to finally get to this moment... I can't believe that we are actually going to be living there.
23 Aug 2014
Kitchen progression
The chaps at Sustainable Kitchens have been busy and I popped into their workshop to get some previews!
This beautiful Dinesen box is going to house my extractor fan. It looks amazing!
The carcass is constructed from birch ply and is rock solid. Even without the fronts it looks fantastic.
I can't tell you how beautiful these drawers are. They are dovetail jointed at the corners and they feel like they will last forever.
I got to open the box and have a first look at my sink, Kohler Vault Offset Double. It was chosen over the internet as I couldn't find anywhere locally to look at it in person, but I'm not disappointed. This was one of the first things I chose for the kitchen, and you know what i'm like about sinks and taps! The decision for the countertop material was one of the last choices. I was very nervous about having a sink and countertop in the same material, I was worried that the sink would lose it's impact. Also I prefer inset sinks to under-mounting and I worried about how the edge would look. Below I was looking at how the a wobble-sanded stainless steel finish would look. This way of finishing the steel has many advantages as it shows less smearing and fingerprints and also allows you to sand out any scratches yourself relatively easily.
This beautiful Dinesen box is going to house my extractor fan. It looks amazing!
The carcass is constructed from birch ply and is rock solid. Even without the fronts it looks fantastic.
I can't tell you how beautiful these drawers are. They are dovetail jointed at the corners and they feel like they will last forever.
I got to open the box and have a first look at my sink, Kohler Vault Offset Double. It was chosen over the internet as I couldn't find anywhere locally to look at it in person, but I'm not disappointed. This was one of the first things I chose for the kitchen, and you know what i'm like about sinks and taps! The decision for the countertop material was one of the last choices. I was very nervous about having a sink and countertop in the same material, I was worried that the sink would lose it's impact. Also I prefer inset sinks to under-mounting and I worried about how the edge would look. Below I was looking at how the a wobble-sanded stainless steel finish would look. This way of finishing the steel has many advantages as it shows less smearing and fingerprints and also allows you to sand out any scratches yourself relatively easily.
And finally my moveable island. WOW!
21 Aug 2014
So, so, behind with updates
Hello, I am still here! I am so sorry for the lack of updates. I thought that my deadline of the build finishing sometime during the Summer Holidays was really clever. After all, instead of the normal Xmas deadline with the focus all leading towards one day, this time there were 6 whole weeks. However the sheer craziness of the 2nd fix, with so many decisions to be made and items to be ordered, coinciding with school holidays and trying to find time to enjoy with my three children has been HECTIC! I'm exhausted, mentally and physically. There is NO spare time, and I don't have time to write about it all now. But I will and soon - before I forget it all!
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