There follows a brief family interlude. More on The House below.

Well we had a great day in London last Wednesday. It was Em's graduation, in the Royal Albert Hall so we put on our best clothes and drove to Epping, which is our current preferred method of getting into London. It's at the end of the Central Line and with good old Ken's Oyster cards it's not too expensive. You can park at Epping station for £3.50 for 24 hours. At least you usually can but last week was half term so it was a bit full.

Anyway we got there and took the star of the show out for a Lebanese lunch in Holborn. Delicious. Then to the RAH which as any parent who's done it know is about two and a half hours of sitting around and about two and a half seconds of peak excitement as the child walks past the Rector and shakes hands. But the venue helped, also the orchestra and choir and the Indie crossword passed the time a bit too. We heard 250ish medics giving the Hippocratic Oath all together which was quite spine-tingling.

Then a reception and canapes then a quick dash across London to see David Lynch and Donovan in the Institute of Education. DL was lovely - relaxed and funny and knowledgeable - people asked all sorts of questions and the whole thing was very entertaining. The place was packed. Then another reception, with canapes. At the end I just wanted a cup of tea!

Anyway, we digress.


Lee the plasterer turns out to be an artist - which is brilliant, because the outside of the house is exactly where you want an artist. R has quite a lot to do with the overall effect being so good - he with the help of Brendan-the-apprentice (see Great Crested Newt story below) have spent days and days getting the surface of the Heraklith render board exactly right to receive the render. It's a bit darker and more creamy-yellow than I had originally wanted but as my mum would say it'll show the dirt less.


The South end, almost done.

R is getting frustrated with the speed of build but I say it looks pretty good to me. But he spends all day out there in the cold with his hammer and nails and I just come back from work and admire the day's efforts.

On Sunday Kate and J-P her boyfriend came to help me on the inside of the house. Due to the Shoulders of Doom I have been unable to continue with the sterling work of making the house airtight from the inside (see previous pix of blue tape) and they came to help. I had done the ground floor - it took me about a week - they polished most of the first floor off in a day, including all the twiddly bits round the Velux windows. They were brilliant and are promising to come back next weekend to do all the difficult bits such as the underneath of the ridge beam at the apex of the roof and the tricky bit of wall that you have to do from the scaffolding tower cos there's no floor there (above the entrance hall). We had a great lunch and they were so enthusiastic that we had to rig up lights inside the house so they could continue after dark. These photos of them are some of the worst I have taken but you get the idea.





It won't be long before we can have our first air pressure test to see how airtight it is - just got to finish all this taping and put the front door on, then seal around all the windows and doors, and we can call in the Man With The Fan (you'll see.....) and then our heating fate will be decided. Keep reading - all will be made clear.

Getting Plastered.

Monday morning and the plasterers are on site. The main plasterer came last week but his assistant didn't (got stuck somewhere between Manchester and here). So we had a week's delay which was good because R and his apprentice carpenter could get more work done to get ready for them.

At the last post R was battening the walls and putting render board - a special ecoboard called Heraklith - onto the battens, ready for the plasterer. He has been having quite a time because the timber frame is not nearly as accurate as we had thought. It may have settled a bit since construction, especially with the weight of the roof. Not a structural problem and for most other houses the discrepancies woudn't be an issue, but this is a vastu house and size - exact size - matters.

Now in sthapatya veda all dimensions are crucial - both internal and external. And the thickness of the walls. So if a dimension - let's say the length of an outer wall - isn't correct, then you can alter it but you can't usually then keep the internal dimension without altering the thickness of the wall. All clear so far? So we have to compromise a bit with wall thickness. R has had to make battens of different thicknesses in order that the render board attached to the first floor is in the exact same plane as that attached to the ground floor. The priorities are to get the internal and external dimensions exact. Possibly we'll do our next house(!) with a cavity so that the two sets of dimensions are dealt with separately. Or, even better, the cost of Hemcrete will have come down a bit and we can have a solid hemp and lime house.

We live and learn. What is this mythical Next House anyway? It's the one we invoke after any conversation about how we could have done it better.

Anyway a few pictures. What is happening in the last few weeks is a gradual filling out of the shell of the house. Guttering, painting of bargeboards and eaves, plaster beading, window sills, filling in round the foundations. All work on the outside to get the place weatherproof and so that we can - as we say in the trade - offhire the scaffolding and stop having to pay rent on it. I am getting to know all the jargon.






Some very special visitors, with a very special car

This week's sponsor is the Great Crested Newt. It is on account of the GCN, or possibly just a single GCN, that we have got on so well in the last few days.

It goes like this.

There's a bloke I know from work who specialises in restoring barns. He was cracking on at a site with several barns round a courtyard doing a very nice set of conversions, when someone saw The Newt. All work immediately came to a halt until the RSPCA or the RSPCN or whoever it is can come out to check that our newty friend is happy in his home and that the new development will not undermine his newtan rights. (I have a picture of him lying down in front of the builder's van like Arthur Dent in front of the bulldozers). Bad news for the barn converter, but good news for us because his very helpful apprentice carpenter has been freed up for a few days. He and R have been going hammer and tongs (hammer and nails actually) at the Heraklith render board and the house is gradually beginning to lose its blueness and take on a much more oaty colour, sort of like muesli without the interesting bits in it. The following are a whole load of self-explanatory and probably quite boring photos taken since Wednesday, interspersed with some slightly more interesting shots of the arrival of the lime render. The plasterer comes on Monday, he'll be here about two weeks and after that we can take the scaffolding down and THEN the house will look something like!

We had some great help today - Eric came with some likely lads from Rendlesham and they raced ahead getting the last, biggest, windows in. We are so grateful to them for taking a day out to help us - these windows were so big they needed four strong men, one on each corner. Nina came too, for a chat and to offer technical help and we had seven round the table, which is about all it can handle, at lunchtime. So a good time was had by all. Now the house has got all its eyes in and looks a lot better. The doors have to wait for new thresholds but they don't actually have to be lifted, just swivelled up, so R thinks they will be a lot easier.


This is the bottom of the biggest window on the south side - the dining table window. It had to be made in two parts because of the weight.



One.... two... three... heave! From the inside...........



............. and from the outside



Have we got it right?..........



Check out this end



The final result, from the cooker to the settee, looking over the dining table



Well-deserved builders' tea and biscuits for all. It was a good day.

Thursday evening - I've just got back from an all-day job interview to find the outside of the house starting to take shape. The last couple of days R has been putting the battening on and today he started on the Heraklith board, which will hold the render. Suddenly the windows look right - set into the outside wall, as it were. The pictures tell the story:



The Heraklith board - looks a bit like hard Golden Slice ... without the cheese ... or the oats, or... well anyway: wood grated and then squashed together. No unpleasant chemicals.





It is screwed to the battens through a special, and ridiculously expensive, plastic washer.




The individual Heraklith boards are cemented together.




The total effect - almost. There's a bit missing to the right of the window.