Enjoying the facilites!

It was a hot day, we were going to Esledes to work on the house, but we had the girls with us. What would they have wanted to do at home? Mmmmmmm....maybe they could do that in another garden......

They look happy enough amoungst the weeds. But possibly a bigger paddling pool maybe required! This is probably why they then discovered the spray on the hose!

We were later busy insulating the upstairs bedrooms, when someone said 'where's she gone?' We found her relaxing in her bedroom....

Who needs an orthopaedic bed?!

An idyllic wild flower meadow...but wait, what is that pile of pallets doing there?

"Daddy's Den" was a DVD in the back of Daddy's car while we worked on the house!

The bosses survey our garden!

Adam kindly helping out with our mesh for the ground floor. He just popped in to see it. Ha ha...never do we miss an opportunity for a bit of help!

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Please, please can we go up.....

                                            Now who could we get to crawl through there!?

Odeon, UCI.....who needs 'em?! Our own personal cinema

This building lark is EXHAUSTING!

 No, no Daddy, this is how you do it!

Sheer luxury that outdoor rug, fit for a donkey!

Screeding & Underfloor pipes

Next job on Tony's week off was to 're-wack' our TechnoPor flat and lay the DPM ready for the Underfloor heating pipes. So after Tony' worked it so hard on the lounge the first Wacker plate died. They sent a new one and.... taddar.....we did all the downstairs rooms.

  
Wacker plating - just like lawn mowing, but no bits!

oooh..so elegant...get stuck in Mrs G

Dan & Leon's beautifully neat pipework ready for our underfloor heating. Maybe the only deterent for stopping the foxes coming in and leaving some treats for us.

The screeders finally arrive....not much English being spoken but a lot of hard work being done, as their loud pump efficiently delivers the mixed screed into the rooms ready for spreading

The playroom unsmoothed but full of screed. Wouldn't the girls just love a playroom like this with just piles of sand in it!

Ooooo how lovely...a beautiful smooth kitchen floor. Well....apart from when they ran out of concrete. Our neighbourly constraints on stopping us continuing on into Saturday afternoon and delaying the other half of the house until..... next Saturday.
Mmmmm...somehow one suspects we are a sly job on the side at

Bendy glass!

After an extremely long wait the roof window finally arrived.........however.......not without it's own set of problems. The fitters turned up at 2pm instead of 8-10am, due to a part missing. And then looked up at our roof and said...'where's the zinc flat roof?'
Er....exactly...what zinc flat roof? And they promptly told us our window would not work as it had no corner flashings. After much discussion and heated calls it turns out we had the MOST rubbish site survey conducted by a MOST rubbish employee of Express windows with the slopiest shoulders ever.
A lesson learned of who not to use, however, it does look good so far...

How scary is this?!

Just hand that over 'ere mate!

Slides up like butter in between the scaffolding!

S'alright Tony's got it...

Are you sure glass is supposed to bend like this?!!

Nah...more like this...

Fits like a dream.

All the panes are in, but no corners for the flashings, so one very leaky window.......

Special self-cleaning glass that you can barely see through is clear to look through from the inside... oh la la!

Get On The Floor!

We had a few days work preparing the floor for the Underfloor Heating and Screed. The first job was to prepare the ducting to the kitchen island for both electrics and water. This involved digging up the TechnoPor and re-laying it.

Following which we had to "whacker" the whole downstairs to compact the TechnoPor again where it had been kicked up etc during the frame build.

Then there was about 100m2 of Damp Proof Membrane to lay down followed by a layer of "Rebar" (Steel Reinforcing Mesh) which gives strength to the concrete screed but also serves as the securing point for the Underfloor Heating Pipes.

Then we marked out the various places that don't need Underfloor Heating; the kitchen island, stairs, shower etc. We thought it would be a good idea to mark out the measurements and photograph them for future reference - i.e. the avoidance of drilling through them when fitting the kitchen!

1st Fix electrics

The arrival of the solar panels and our electrical connection spurred (get it!) on the start of the electrics.

UKPower networks dug a very neat line to lay our cable in the road (over looked by the Marcie foreman. She ensured it was filled in nicely!

'Taddah' - We have electric! We are no longer reliant on our very kind new neighbours for their outdoor electrical socket.

















After desperately getting our 14 solar panels are installed in time for the FIT tariff until.........circumstances proved otherwise. The electric suppliers are happy to take our generated electricity, but wouldn't accept our predicted SAP energy rating. So therefore, we have to have our completed EPC energy certificate which won't be until the house is completed and the good tariff is long gone. Boo. But hey, it'll just take a bit longer for the payback, but we'll still generate our own electricity. Wahoo!

Electricians need to be slender! Mick doing a fab job routing our cables.

Mick proving we can get in-between the joists on the curved section!

PHEW! He does still have 2 legs.