2020 - What is going on?

2020 - What is going on?

So, it's been a while since I wrote anything on here. Mainly because I just can't find the time to sit and write anything, but also because progress at our end is steady but slow.

Like everyone else in the world right now we are stuck in limbo, staying at home and waiting for some form of normality to resume... Although there are things I can't wait to do (see family and friends, go shopping, days out, lunch out etc.) I'm not actually sure I want things to return to "normal". I've seen small businesses diversify and reach out to those who are vulnerable or in need. Local suppliers selling in the village, and doing driveway drop offs. Local pubs and restaurants delivering, and of course discovering new small businesses to support.

Most of these things seem small to most, but when you live in a village with no Uber, just eat or Deliveroo you can feel quite cut off at the best of times, but during this time even more so. So for now, whilst the builder’s merchants aren't delivering, and we have no roof tiles to get started with the main roof, we are working on what we can, using local businesses to achieve other things - such as concreting for the patio at the back, and putting in a path down the side of the house for the scaffolding to stand firmly on. We are also finalising parts of the house designs that we perhaps weren’t 100% settled on (some window changes upstairs, and the layout of the stairs in the hallway). So we are chipping away.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to write down a brief update on what has happened in the last year (Year!!?) since last update…

April/May - The garage was up to ceiling height, and progress was being made on the gable wall. This time last April Steve had managed to get 2 out of the 5 steels lifted up onto the garage roof.

May/June/July – Steels were in place, and the gable walls were finished, and the roof trusses were in place.

August/September – Guttering, and drainage work done. Then roof work started. Got it prepped with Felt and battens, and dormer window was clad with render board.

September/October – Tiles went on and finished, and the Velux windows installed at the back.

Then as winter hit, this is Steve’s busiest time at work, so no work was done over winter (apart from the odd bit of insulation here and there) But for the most part the roof was made watertight.

Once his winter gritting season slowed down and the frost disappeared, he started to plan and organise his garage, ready for 2020’s work to begin!

Feb/March - We bought an electric roller garage door for the back (2^nd hand eBay bargain!), and now the garage is pretty much water tight, apart from needing the ridge tiles putting on (but I won’t let Steve climb up on his own during a global pandemic) then it needs the front garage door measuring up and ordering (no point in wasting this money just yet – he’s rigged up something like fort Knox in the meantime).

March/April - Since lockdown started he has dug out and concreted both side paths, around 60tonnes of soil from the garden by hand, and concreted the patio. He has built a patio wall as the garden is slightly higher than the patio level – this was hard work! He has also put in the cabling for the patio electrics, and lighting in the summerhouse.

We’ve put in drainage along the back for foul and water waste, and generally pottered around doing bits in the garden.

Steve and I are both classed as keyworkers, so we continue to work a relatively ‘normal’ work week, so no extra work has been able to progress, sadly. We have been home-schooling the kids where possible, and thankfully school remains open for children who have both parents as keyworkers – which has been fantastic for us from a work perspective, but understandably quite worrying at the same time. It has left me torn at times, and not wanting to leave our little bubble.

I think this brings up pretty much up to date – oh and I’ve managed to get through the entire blog post without mentioning the ‘C-word’… and whilst that has put a bit of a dampener on progress, we are doing what we can and remaining positive!

Stay at home,

Love from the Fox Family x

2019 - The year of the roof?

2019 - The year of the roof?

...Well, I'm a pretty optimistic person to be fair. But hopefully we'll have a garage roof this year at the very least. This is the first post I've done in almost a year, and loads has happened. Steve has built around the entire house all ceiling height now, all lintels are in above the windows and doors, and we've made some tweaks to the downstairs plans. (I've also designed each room to within an inch of its life in my head).

Rather than bore you with all the pictures from the last year, I'll share some of where we are now.

The garage joists are in for our bedroom up above it, and he's finally able to start building up the gable walls either side. We also have the steels for the garage roof, too. 

There is a door from the playroom into the garage, and now the joists are in it all feels so big! I'm hoping he might get the garage roof done over the Easter holidays - he's got 2 weeks off, so it'd be perfect.

The gables are being built up now, and we have a nice little join between the new gable wall where it meets the old roof. So it's going to look a bit odd for a while until the new roof is on. But hey ho!

We've also now got lights in the garage which will help him on an evening when tidying up (they are waterproof - which is good as we still don't have a proper roof/cover over the garage.)

I've since started a new job. I'm now working full time which has taken some adjustment, but we are finally in the swing of it all now and I fully appreciate our weekends together now. Most of this time is spent trying to perfect the art of carrying a cup of tea up the scaffolding haha. The dog also enjoys spending time up there too!

Picking up the progress

I have been so quiet on here, this is the first post I've done in 2018, but we've had so much going on, and the focus on the house had totally shifted during the cold weather. Steve has been doing a lot of overtime at work, and we've been busy with friends and family over the christmas period, so instagram and this blog has taken a backseat.

But, we have hired a company to design the roof, and do the calculations for us. This is pretty exciting. Steve now knows what kind of roof design we are going for, and what size beams we need (and probably lots of other things I don't fully understand. Who knew you had to calculate snow load for a roof?) 

We are doing purlins, rather than trusses. It turns out we need 3 steel beams for the two sections of roof (garage and main house are seperate, with a gable between them) The beams cut across at the front, under the windows, on the top, and across at the back below the velux windows. The same for the garage section, too. It all sounds very expensive to me.

Although we will not have a finished house by the end of this year, it should look something like, at least from the outside. We are hoping to have the roof on this summer, and on our way to moving into the new upstairs space. Which will then free up space downstairs to begin the knocking down of walls, and generally making a mess!

Once we have the roof on, I expect the inside to take somewhere between 2-3 years to fully complete. This is because we will run out of money after paying for the roof, and so each room will be a save up and complete one by one kind of job. We don't want to get into debt doing this house, and we plan to stay here for the next 6-8 years, so hopefully we'll have some time to enjoy it once it's finished (and before we get the itch to start renovating again!).

Our priorities for the upstairs are the girls bedrooms and a bathroom. Our current bathroom is obviously downstairs, but will have a supporting wall built in front of it as part of the new roof structure. Fun times! We have knocked the wall down between the toilet and the bathroom, making it into one big space which is nice as it gives us an idea of how big the utility room will be eventually.

We made such a mess!

It looks a bit better now though (we have a floor in and the tiling is finished, too)

We have also knocked out the old internal porch, as the front door wouldn't open properly. This is to make way for the kitchen work which is next on our hitlist...There is a strange porch off the side of the kitchen, which we use as our main door. This leads to a plastic roofed-utility...both the kitchen porch and utility room need to be knocked down for the garage build to progress. The only issue is, that the majority of our worktop space and cupboards are inside this porch, so we needed to add more in, which meant the large larder units had to go so we have some worktop space.

This is only temporary, and luckily we know someone who fits kitchens, and he was ripping this one out.

We also welcomed a new little addition a couple of months ago. Dexter the Labradoodle. We've been wanting a dog for such a long time, and kept waiting until the 'perfect time'. Then we realised there is no such thing really, and took the plunge. He is such a lovely, chilled out little puppy. He is settling in well so far, and the girls are so in love with him! In hindsight, I'm glad we got him now whilst we have dark brown carpets ;-)

Almost up to roof height. And Location is key!

It's true. We almost have full height walls. But of course, nothing is simple for us Foxes. Nope. We can't build up much higher, due to the rather fetching fascia surrounding the guttering, and then we'd need to leave the new wall at a funny angle, which then couldn't be covered properly with a cavity closer. Plus we don't want to rock the boat too much over winter - we can do this later on when the new roof is ready to go on.

The roof is being designed by a local structural engineer. We were trying to weigh up the pro's and con's of a traditional roof over trusses. Apart from the obvious, being cost. We have also had a thought, about perhaps putting in 3 big steels in. One right at the top of the roof, and two lower down under where the dormer windows will sit. A traditional roof will then be built to suit. We think this might be the winner, as it gives us the most useable space upstairs, and apart from the costly steels, the price will be more modest.

   

We want lots of floor space upstairs, given we are moving half of the current house up there. It's a strange conundrum to be in, as our previous house had good upstairs space, but lacked downstairs space. Hopefully the bungalow when it's done, will have both.

 

Down the side of the dining room/kitchen into the back garden.

Steve is hoping to have all the front house walls up to window height by the end of next weekend when the clocks go back.

Just bits of the porch and the wall leading to what will be the garage to finish off.

Sunday 22nd Oct

I took the girls out today, so Steve could crack on, as evenings are drawing in and he's finding it harder to get stuff done on an evening. His plan was to finish the front walls, and the porch, but he made a start on the garage instead. It's quite exciting now you can see walls either side of the garage, even if it's only a little corner!

I think I've mentioned in a previous entry, about our main doubts about buying this project. One was how lovely the old house was, and how very little needed doing to it. But when it comes to a house, it's things you can't add on to the property that really matter. Like the size of the plot, the location, and walking distance to school etc.

For us, we didn't really suit the new build standard of living. We felt confined, and hemmed in. I like trees and open space, and the village life. I like being able to walk to a small local pub on a sunday afternoon, and look out of the window to trees and a nice big garden. None of these things you can buy in a box, and install into your house, which is why I think Location is so important.

Practice Makes Perfect

...It would definitely appear that way when it comes to laying blocks. Steve counts up the number of blocks he's laid that day, and at first it was around 40 and now it's closer to 100!

He still has a day job, so most of this work is done on evenings and weekends if the weather is fine. Little things like being able to pick up a block from the top, help him lay quicker and more effectively he's getting the knack of flicking the cement down at the right angle, too. His hands are drying out and cracking from days of mixing and handling cement. But he seems to really enjoy it. 

We've recently been looking at window options, because we need an idea of cost. Apparently you need the windows to be a certain percentage of the size of your room, to let in enough light. And given the size of the new kitchen/dining room, and the fact that there is only one window going in there (right at the front) and a 3m bi-fold door at the back, the window needs to be around 2m.

We are up to window height!

When you look at windows online, anything over 1.8 meters requires extra support, or a change in the way the window opens. It's all quite dull, but basically it means they'll cost us a bloomin' fortune. But we only have two big windows at the front on the ground floor. Two small ones on the porch, and two small at the back of the house in the utility room and w/c. 

We are going with white render, and Anthracite Grey windows & doors.

Then three Dormer windows and one Velux at the front upstairs, and seven Velux windows across the back upstairs. There will also be one small window at the side for the girls Jack and Jill en-suite. 

So hopefully it will be nice and light and not too bad on the pockets!

Porch/dining room

He's a man with a plan, and it's quite exciting thinking ahead. He's now tieing the house/extension/new garage in together, which meant cutting into the existing house, which looks scarier than it is.

He's used wall ties on the other side, and on the inner skin on this side but he's had to cut out and tie in with block here because it joins off for the back wall of the garage and we aren't finishing that part yet as it would block the back door up. So once we've emptied the utility room, and don't need it anymore we can knock it down, and do the garage floor slab.

For once it's not me worrying about it, and I'm actually quite looking forward to seeing it get knocked down, but it will create so much dust and mess. Plus We'd need to sort out the shed to make space in there...and I hate tidying the shed!

This is also where the house inside starts to get knocked about a bit, too. Because there is currently a little porch from the kitchen into the utility room. This will need to be removed and blocked up, which means moving half of the kitchen around to suit. But it's only temporary, then the kitchen will be moved to the opposite side of the house once we have moved the kids rooms to the upstairs.

Kitchen porch leading to the utility room

We'll also need to use the front door, which we never currently use. It has the worlds smallest internal porch, which is so small the door doesn't even open all the way in. So we will remove some walls inside to make way for the hall being used as the main entrance from then on.

It will be such fun at christmas time in our house!

Blocks Galore!

I'm going to try and pop an update on here every week. Although progress is pretty boring at the moment, and there are only so many pictures of blocks I can upload without them all looking like the same photograph.

This weekend (9th & 10th Sept) Steve got a fair few blocks up, with the intention of having a good full day at it on sunday as the girls were away with their Nana for the day. However, the weather had other ideas. When you are doing this type of building work yourself, you'll know the hardest part is setting up and putting away. It can take a good hour to tidy up, clean everything out and cover up the freshly laid blocks so they don't all slide off and collapse. Well sunday it rained on and off, and was forecast heavy showers in the afternoon...great!

The wall at the back is part of the dining room

Anyways, work on the front extension is well underway, and Steve is aiming to get a full course of block all the way around the front by the end of this week, and then getting the corners setup and it should be fairly easy from there on. We aren't in a massive hurry for the blocks to go up, as we won't be able to afford the new roof until early next year when we have had the chance to save money from overtime and general savings. Which means I need to curb my spending...luckily we put money away each month for Christmas, so that is already paid for!

But we are running out of daylight hours once Steve gets home from work, and weekends are spent laying as many blocks as he can (weather permitting) so he's missing out on seeing the girls at their swimming lessons, and gymnastics lessons, but it's not forever, and once the weather gets cold, and weekends are darker earlier, we'll start making the most of the time together and just pack up until the clocks go forward again. Steve was hoping to have all the blocks done by then so we can focus on the roof earlier, then make a start on the upstairs, but we always knew that this is a long-term project so whatever will be, will be!

Trying to keep the walls covered in the rain

The next big issue we'll face is having to knock down the strange inside-outside room which is attached to the side of the house. We use it as a utility room and a room to store all the building materials and tools. It is so handy! It's also a boot room, pet food store room and somewhere to hang our coats and bags up. Once that needs to be knocked down we'll be left with no side door too, so we'll have to start using the extension (which won't have doors/windows in until next year) and access via the exsisting front door. Which makes quick access to the house really difficult. Plus space is an issue as the hall is crammed full of large furniture bought to fit our old house.

Not the best picture, but this is the utility room which will need knocking down soon.

Once the inside-outside room has been knocked down, we'll need to put in the floor slab, which is absolutely enormous. In fact, I'm told it's that big, it'll need to be sectioned off and done as two different slabs. It is long enough to fit the pickup in with the trailer attached! and then another car could fit in  next to it too, but it is slightly narrower than a full double, but over twice as long as a standard. Atleast he'll have plenty of space to organise his stuff I guess.

Once the slab is in, and the walls are built, the roof can go on the garage, and the upstairs part of that house can begin. Which is what I'm most excited about as it's the master suite. Nice big ensuite bathroom, and walk in wardrobe! 💗 I think realistically though, they'll remain as empty rooms until after the girls bedrooms and main house bathroom are done as these are the priorities! 

The walls are going up, Back to school and GIN!

Sooo, I've been really quiet on the blog front. Mainly because of the summer holidays, but also because I've been helping out with the build where possible too. There aren't enough hours in the day at the moment. I'm feeling how pretty much every parent probably feels over the summer holidays...exhausted, and ready for the new school term to start!

I'm lucky that I work in a school, so it means that I get school holidays off with my children which saves us a small fortune in one respect, but costs us a fortune in another. We have packed in a solo trip to New York for me, a holiday to Portugal for all four of us, and a mini break with just me, the girls and their granny to Filey. Plus a trip to the Zoo, and countless other days out to parks, gardens, and amusements. They have so much energy, and require a full day out to properly tire them out, which is pretty full on when all you want to do is hoover up in your PJ's then watch Homes Under The Hammer in peace. The mess of toys, cushions, and crumbs is relentless when you have a day at home, so I prefer to tidy on an evening, then try and get them out of the house after breakfast the next day so it keeps me sane. But the housework standards (until today) had slipped dramatically.
I find when your house is a mess, and your garden is a mess and you are surrounded by a building site, it can get you down, but focusing on progress that is being made, and making sure my little ratbags are happy, fed and clean gets you through it. Oh and, yes. That and copious amounts of GIN.

My Current favorite, mixed with Blackwoods Gin, Ginger Ale, and lots of ice!

We are also fortunate that the bulk of the work is being done without affecting the house inside. The walls are going up around the existing house, and at some point next year a new roof will be going on (the old one will need to come off for this to happen, but the ceilings inside will remain intact. And providing the weather is okay, we will be home and dry once that is complete.) Then we will focus on the upstairs of the house, putting up stud walls, doing electrics, plumbing and bathrooms, plastering and bedrooms etc. Then we will start knocking through downstairs and re-jig the layout to suit the new floorplan. This is where copious amounts of GIN and perhaps long visits to the girls grandparents come into play!

It will take a long time to complete, mainly down to finances, but we are looking forward to the challenge, and then eventually the beautiful home we will have built ourselves for our children to grow up in.

Below is our progress of the past few weeks, in pictures.

Both front and rear slabs are in, and have been passed by the building inspector.

Blocks starting to go up!

Back is almost finished, on the outer skin at the far right hand side can't be started yet though as the outer engineering bricks weren't laid 100% true, so it's out about 10mm. They'll need to come back out and be re-laid. But luckily the slab isn't effected and it's easy enough to fix as it's the outer skin only. Just annoying and a bit time consuming, but hey ho, we've been through far worse 😉

The front will be started next, just another week or so working on the back and then we'll start seeing a real difference. Currently it's being used as an extra patio! haha

We recently celebrated our 5th Wedding anniversary, but it is also our 13th year together. We were lucky that the girls went away with Granny up to Northumberland for the weekend, so we went out and celebrated, but also got cracking on the house front. I like helping (hindering), and cut some insulation up, put some insulation ties together, and loaded up the cement board. I even made the odd cup of tea and then cleaned the house! It's hard work this wife malarkey. Steve is an absolute trooper, and would work 5am-10pm is daylight wasn't an issue. I feel very lucky to have him. 💑