Windows and High Winds!

Another couple of weeks has passed with such changeable weather - but on the whole we have been lucky. I think Paul has been wet through, nearly blown away and frozen solid all at once!

We have had an exciting two weeks as the windows have been fitted! Here is the first one to arrive. Its quite difficult to see in the photos as they are grey but once the scaffold comes down next week we'll get a much better view inside and out and we'll be able to open the doors. The funniest thing is the dogs have been used to running through the open space and suddenly they can't get anywhere!

 

We have all the first fix electrics in now and thought I'd give you a peek at our dining lights! They will be above the dining table, evenly spaced of course! They are Tom Dixon Beat Lights. I think they will look very cool - they have a gold/copper hammered finish on the inside and are hi gloss white on the outside.

All the velux windows are in and are producing a lovely light into the hallway..

One of the things I've noticed here is the beautiful sky - I'm not sure why as we did have sky at our last house!!! All my photographs seem to show amazing colour and cloud formation. Followed by fabulous sunsets

Across the Midlands on Thursday we had gale force winds up to 60 mile per hour! Paul decided it may be an idea to place a tarpaulin across the gable end to prevent any accidents :-/

The gable end window has been damaged and we are waiting to hear when this will go in? It's frustrating but it happens; this is where weeks can be lost and the build is set behind schedule...


The next stage in progress is the plaster boarding of the internal walls. It's finally looking like we have actual rooms and it's all coming together. I can finally visualise where furniture will be now. Lots of lovely roof angles and spaces..

The front door: We are having a painted front door to match the colour of the windows, I found this one (left) on a fabulous web site called Urban Front but they are in excess of £6000! Our good friends Richard and Dinah have a contact and we have had a similar one made 80% cheaper! (It doesn't have any side windows yet and so we'll have to build this in) I'm now looking for big chunky handles and a long door handle like the pic..

 
We had a real giggle last weekend at the local village quiz. We've made some nice friends here and have joined the choir (!!) and we are off to lots of organised do's over the next few weeks.

We invited our friends Melanie & David over and ended up coming last!! Obviously this was a tactical manoeuvre NOT!!! It was a bit of a surprise to find I'd been mentioned in the local newsletter ;-@. I like that we were excused for being in a tent - would we have done any better if we were in a caravan LOL! We have to make sure we do much better next year....

And so I'll sign off again and hope to blog about more exciting progress soon. One of the most commonly asked questions now is "when will you be in?" or "will you be in for Christmas?" The decision to not try and be in for Christmas was the best one we've made! The pressure just for a couple of days was too much and we now feel much happier working at an achievable pace with a plan to finish or at least be in by the end of January ... 

Ciao for now...Wendi xx 

What a week...

Phew, what a few weeks! ....

We've been working non stop this last week; Richard has been doing crazy ammounts of driving all over the country and getting up at stupid o'clock! 
I've been working with the electricians doing first fix - that was so much tougher than I'd imagined. Knowing where your furniture is going to be so you can work out the lamps, positioning beds for bedside sockets and lights switches and the whole time conforming to building regs.

I've had to map out the ceilings for spot lights working out where the light would work as task lighting or mood lighting, putting sockets and switches in the right places, thinking which way a door is opening... Phew!! 
We have ended up with 45 double plug sockets! Not counted the light switches yet! - now to choose what covers? Brushed stainless? White? Oh well more research....!

So apart from electricians on site we closed the road for the big sewer connection! 
The contractors came out on Tuesday and we managed  to bring the village to a halt whilst a skip was being removed from another street! But that was nothing compared with Wednesday..
 the contractor cut through a main electric cable in the road and cut off all the residents!! He actually blew a hole in his digger bucket and frankly is lucky to be alive.
Western Power responded very quickly and all was restored in an hour and a half. Only one irate neighbour  which all things considered wasn't bad!!





We've had a bit of a find - we have a secret room! sounds nuts I know and fairly hard to explain: The plans (see photo below) show ground floor connecting to the garage via the utility room and the upstairs plan only goes as far as the lounge therefore the utility room was either going to be vaulted or a floor put in thus making us a very nice dressing room! I must say I'm delighted!! Finally I have a place for all those shoes.. :-)

 

Our roof has progressed rapidly and we are thrilled with how it looks. Dreadnoughts rep (the company who make the clay tiles) came out and wants to photograph and put us in their advertising!

As you can see we've had some gorgeous but bitterly cold days 

 

And so finally and most excitingly (I know thats not a word!!)we've moved into the textile studio!!

We collected our furniture from our "temporary" storage at HB Group (friends Richard and Dinah's contract furniture company www.hbgroup.co.uk) 

We had earmarked a few key pieces last December when we moved out of our previous house; namely our bed, a wardrobe, a couple of desks, a few chairs - enough to set up a little home from home!

It is however taking a while to get everything connected - we have a fully function loo LUXURY!!! A functioning washing machine and dishwasher DOUBLE LUXURY!!! but as yet no working taps or shower.. we had to run the gauntlet this morning and shower in the caravan then run back up!!

I must say Sunday morning lie in; in a proper bed was fabulous!

I even managed to make a simple chicken roast dinner amongst the chaos in my new mini oven/rotisserie!! LOL! 

Hugo and Richard wrestling with "those" wardrobes!!

room with a view...

So much has happened will have to try and blog more frequently as its flying by now... did I say the stairs came today???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back as soon as I can muster the strength!

Wendi

xxx

Really Fast Progress...

Finally I'm able to do some more blogging - it's incredible where time flies off to? I honestly thought I would have so much time on my hands over this last few months but in fact its been the opposite! 

I guess when we are always 'counting down' to one event or another it possibly makes everything go faster? I don't know..!

Anyway - our house was "delivered" and the team started to erect on Monday 30th September; its now 38 days later and the roof tiles are going on! Amazing progress.

In this time we have had the electricity & the water connected, a feat in itself.

The studio has taken shape and I must say I am totally thrilled with it - its going to be an amazing space to work in. We are finishing the flooring this weekend and still have quite a way to go but at least its warm and weather proof. As you can see it took 4 guys to carry the bifold doors into position!!!

The house "kit" went up extremely fast initially with 2 guys on site: Rich and Kyle and joined later by Mick, Greg & Pete. They've done a fantastic job and we are extremely pleased with the product.

The funniest thing was a hidden room we didn't know about - sounds mad doesn't it? But the utility room is a connecting room to the garage and there's no bedrooms above that side of the house and nothing on the drawings so we discovered a space above the utility which has now been promoted to a walk-in wardrobe!!

Here's the first floor finished with a promise of good weather for the next day..

Second floor master bedroom walls go in - you can just see the size and shape of our bedroom window; it's enormous!!!

A double rainbow for luck?

The only hard hat on site is used to store nails and screws!!!

The Roof panels are on..

Oh and did I mention the mud??? This is what site has been looking like with all the rain we've had! Its been awful for Richard who has to go to work in a suit and shiny shoes and for the dogs who are permanently licking their paws :-(

The rear elevation with waterproof membrane and battening ready for tiles

 

We do have some very nosey

"neigh" bours...sorry couldn't resist!! These are the two horses from the paddock at the back of the garden

Now we have tiles on the roof - I am so chuffed as its looking fabulous and as I mentioned only 38 days ago we were looking at foundations

Roof close up! And the beautiful valley tiles - I couldn't resist the patterns here!

And so with the progress rate I will endeavour to come back soon with all the latest photos, keep looking and visit us if you can

Wendi x

I'm back!

Hi there

Apologies for my longer than promised absence. We have had an extremely busy month and have real progress here;

The house has arrived via 4 arctic lorry loads and we have a team of erectors on site. Due to the nature of the construction of the building itself its flying up at great speed. It should be complete in about 2 weeks time and will then be ready for windows and first fix.

Managing the budget has been the biggest challenge as the mortgage is designed to be released at stages according to the value of each build stage; we were given less than was promised at an earlier stage and this totally made life difficult. 
Unless one has a considerable pot of money to dip into its nearly impossible! We have cashed things in and are now trying to sell Richards car just to increase the cash flow. 
Being able to purchase things when there's a deal on is important, as we have with our bathrooms - although we aren't really anywhere near ready for them we wanted to take advantage of the sale and extra discounts offered to us; this has saved us at least half the original cost in the long run but we shouldn't really have bought them yet!! 

Anyway photos below show the first corner going in and the following days as the entire structure takes form, rooms that were just in 'plan' have now become real sizes and I can finally begin to see how furniture will fit into these spaces! I am quite challenged on the 3D front and am not able it seems to visualise space!! 

The funniest thing this week was discovering a hidden room - The guys were putting up the utility room area with these enormous panels and we couldn't understand why there seemed to be a vaulted ceiling in there? (first vaulted utility room I'd ever seen!!) so after much debate we've realised that we can have a dressing room from our master bedroom - Bonus!! It wasn't anywhere on the original plans  and seems it was just a void space?

We are meanwhile still in our caravan on site; It hasn't been too bad on the whole due to the weather as its been such a fantastic summer but I'm fast losing patience as the damp's setting in and it was really cold last night. We had the heating on all night!!  I have asked all my close friends to tell us the minute we start smelling of mushrooms!!!!

Anyway I'll be back regularly now as progress is so fast....

See you soon

Wendi x

p.s we also have a page on facebook - check out Maple barn

Apologies..

apologies as I wont be blogging here for a while - I will be back in about a month and all will be explained..

Wx

An Exciting Day!

Today I am really excited!! So excited in fact that I hardly slept last night and have the monster of all headaches! It feels a little like Christmas morning for me as The Studio is about to arrive any minute! Heres a photo of the base ready!

We've had a very productive couple of weeks and have the block and beam floor down now - it's almost finished, just a few cut blocks to be done but Paul is away and Richard works such long hours that with the time constraints he can't do much in the way of "noisy" work but he laid the blocks and found plenty to do over the Bank Holiday weekend.

note my car parked in the garage for the first time!

We are currently having to juggle financially as the mortgage company decided to give us less money for the stage two release - this in itself is so frustrating when we've budgeted really carefully. It means we cannot order things like bricks and tiles (not exactly luxury items but really important) so this will no doubt put our schedule behind! We have to keep going back to the drawing board and decide what is a priority now - we do need to fit out the studio so that we can actually live in it whilst we build the house but unfortunately there's simply not enough money - bugger!! 
So we will be in the caravan for a tad longer; I blow hot and cold about this - its OK most of the time, I have all the cooking facilities I need and have in fact cooked some lovely meals, the bed is pretty uncomfortable and I do dream of being reunited with my own bed and then there's the shower, well, here lies the real problem, its a dribble not exactly luxurious so I would like most of all a hot, powerful shower!! We are moving the caravan next weekend to the driveway and I will lose 50% of my living space overnight! The dogs currently live and sleep in the awning and will have to come into the caravan which isn't ideal and will be very smelly!!

Preparation before it goes in the indigo vat

I'm not doing much on the textile front - I was supposed to be going to Edwina MacKinnon's house today to meet with all the ladies from my textile group, we were having an indigo day! Im sorry i'll miss this but really need to be on site! I'll have a go on my own as I bought an indigo starter kit - for those of you who don't have a clue what im talking about heres a couple of pics:

                          The result after pole wrapping

                  

And so i'll be back tomorrow with photos of my studio, well half of it as it takes 2 days! see you soon....

Wx