Clive, the first living thing to move in. He was getting a bit cold in the garden and he's too big for the caravan


The house is wrapped up like a Christmas parcel.

Obviously I didn't allow Kate enough sellotape in her youth - she and J-P have done amazing work today, sealing all the cracks with high-class German tape. They each did the work of three normal people or, in the current circumstances, 6 to 10 Lizzies. Here are some pics of our Local Heroes. They have wrapped up almost all the whole of the first floor. Lots of leaping up the scaffolding tower and tucking themselves away in the apex of the roof. They have so much energy!! I, on the other hand, have been involved in the very intricate technical work of sweeping up and making a large Sunday lunch.








This picture is NOT turned on its side.

Kate spent the whole time like an owl - tucked in up among the roof timbers in a tiny triangle of space (two actually). They are at the top of the two outer bays of the house and are very important - the roof panels were a new departure for the timber frame company and they need all the help they can get to stay airtight.


J-P was leaping up towers and balancing on timbers to do the bit above where there is no first floor - lucky he's a climber.





Next time, for your delight and delectation, we have the first pictures of the completed north and south walls - and they are things of beauty! We move along.

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.

More windows

The upstairs windows are now in and we're starting on the ground floor, which are bigger - most of them need three people. Being as how I am temporarily disabled, we are inviting friends and relations to window-fitting parties - the latest was yesterday and we put in five windows. Eric came all day and Kate and Ali in the afternoon. When the timber frame is exactly the right size, the windows slot in so easily. Or sometimes a certain amount of planing down of the window opening is needed. But mostly, with three or four people, it's a joy.

The plan at the moment is to get the exterior done before the winter sets in. Which means: windows and doors, battens, render board and render, also the guttering. The renderer is coming a week tomorrow which means that we are hoping for good weather this week. R doesn't have to get all the battens and render board on before he comes because he's going to be here for a couple of weeks. There's a lot of stuff to order: window brackets, expanding foam, battens, render board, special screws for render board, special washers for render board, special cement for RB, render, beading, bell drips (whatever they are), window sills, door thresholds, etc etc. R spends a lot of time with a pencil in one hand and a calculator in the other.

My main job at the moment is to get more work so R can be full-time on the house. I got a job as a mobile library manager but had to give it up owing to stupid shoulders - I have two interviews coming up - one as an immobile library manager and one in the Communications Department at the University of East Anglia. Fingers crossed.

The windows are in the house - that is to say some of them are in the window frames and some of them are in the hall waiting to be installed. They're lovely! Ready painted and just needing to be slid into their sockets. They arrived yesterday (Monday).

They came on a ship from Lithuania to Felixstowe then on an artic to the Green Building Store in Yorkshire, who import them, because our drive is too small for an artic. Then they came all the way back down here in a small lorry. Listers of Halifax, no less. The driver was a very nice Yorkshire lad who didn't have many other drops so he kindly helped to unload. It needed four strong men: R, the roofer (who has now finished heroically clipping the tiles) the lorry driver and our friend Eric from Rendlesham, who stayed on afterwards to help Russell put the first windows in.
The first window!

They started on the smaller windows on the top floor cos they're smaller and easier, and R's friend Ali came today to help finish the rest of the top floor.

R and Eric


Ali


The ground floor windows will need a bit more muscle though - they are a lot bigger. R says it'll be a few days. But there's plenty to do to get ready for the plasterer. Battens to hammer onto the walls (and it turns out that the upstairs of the timber frame is a different size from the downstairs so we need two sizes of battens) and Heraklith render board to put on top of the battens. So that'll keep R off the streets for a few days.

My shoulders have been a source of despair and despondency 'cos I thought it was genuine frozen shoulder which can last for many months, or indeed a year or two. But I saw a brilliant physio today who seemed to think that it wasn't primary FS but caused by the garage-demolition setting up a vicious cycle of muscle spasms and stiffening, and she thinks that with gentle exercise and a TENS machine and some other stuff she can have me as fit as a flea in a matter of a few weeks or months. So that's a great relief. Also it's great to have something to do to make a difference - I was feeling a bit hopeless and helpless. I'll let you know how it goes.

The windows are in the country! Having made their way across the sea from Lithuania. Let's hope they fit - it's a long way to send them back. We are assembling muscle for next week. Lee the plasterer came this week to talk about battens and beading and other esoteric plastery matters. He can start about October 1st - on the render which will define the look of the outside of the house.

The result of all this sudden activity is that R gets himself released from the tyranny of The Wall for a couple of weeks, while he gets wooden battens on the outside of the walls and lightweight render board (Heraklith) fixed to the battens, for Lee to plaster on top of. Look out for exciting window-going-in-photos. The doors are coming at the same time as the windows so then we'll have a weather-tight house.

You'll have to talk amongst yourselves for a while - there is stuff happening but nothing worth getting excited about. R is about 1500 bricks short of a wall - my mum says he must be getting bored up the wall, but R says he's just impatient to get on with the house. Has not affected the excellent quality of the brickwork.

I have come down with what appears to be an unexpected case of two frozen shoulders. Very boring. Almost all work on the house has stopped for me - some taping may be possible. So I focus on earning the dosh so he can do the house. I am learning to be ladylike - that would be a first - asking people to get things off the top shelf in the supermarket and open doors and all that.

The plasterer came today and will come back in about two weeks, by which time we need to have got the windows in. If anyone would like to come for a day or two to help, now would be a great time! When the windows come we'll need four strong(ish) men. I will provide wonderful food and we have a three-bedroom, eight-berth caravan. Plus we need to get the battening and render board up before the plasterer comes.

Windows will be coming at the end of next week - yikes! It won't half look different though.

So watch this space.

Sinks and Seals

I dunno – you wait two weeks for a blog and then three come along at once.

Point one: cheap stuff. This has been a bargain week – two sinks, two toilets, a washbasin and two sets of taps: all at knock down prices, which is the kind of prices we like.

It all started when I went to London for my birthday the week before last. While I was down that way, I went to the IKEA in Lakeside, Essex, where I found a very fine kitchen mixer tap for a tenner and two wooden loo seats for £2 each. This sparked a tour of the IKEA Bargain Corners of the Midlands and North, in the course of visiting family and friends.

The net result was two sinks, which I loaded into my car along with all the other paraphernalia I always carry on these trips. I was hoping that someone would say to me, “You’ve got everything but the kitchen sink in there” so I could put them straight.


This is an IKEA showroom picture. We bought one just like this - what I call a ceramic sink and my mum calls a pot sink - she doesn't like them!

Then last Friday, I was on my way back from work Mildenhall way and I drove past an Aldi, so I dropped in just in case, and they were selling toilets for £50 and washbasins for £40. So I came home and dragged Russell out to buy them, in case there were dozens of other people all clamouring for discount loos. Plus an added bonus mixer tap.


The next point on the agenda is the making of the house airtight, which I am sure I have mentioned before. Obsessed or what – but I thought you’d like to see some photos of it. It’s done through a combination of gunk, tape and membranes. The gunk is Orcon and I have put it, so far, between the ground floor panels to stop air coming into the insulation down there. I got the guys to put it in as they were assembling the floor – it went on like lines of bright green toothpaste. The wall panels are taped with bright blue tape where they come together. And a membrane goes around the outside of the first floor panel and is then taped to the inside face of the top of the ground floor panels and the bottom of the first floor panels.


Ground floor panels with Orcon



The top of the walls - the checked stuff is Pro Clima's Intello - it wraps right around the outside of the first floor beams, which sit on top of the ground floor walls. The blue stuff is the Tescon tape - both stretchy and very sticky.


The bottom of the wall. The black stuff is the damp proof membrane which wraps right around the outside of the ground floor panels.


Now the stairs are in I can leap up to the first floor with tools in hand to do up there. I still haven’t quite worked out how the roof will go but I’ll let you know as soon as I do. It's a lot more complicated up there what with the roof and all; and also I seem to have come down with a couple of unexpected frozen shoulders - R says I'm just showing off as most people settle for one - so that's going to be interesting.

It's another sunny Saturday morning and R has just laid the first forty bricks of the day, and I'm off to Norwich to get these blasted tile clips.