Apologies for the long silence. There was a media temple/wordpress hack that put us off-line for a while and it proved more complicated to get the Larick House site up and running. So finally here goes: This is ridiculous I know but we have had to apply for yet another extension. When we finally got ourselves set to invite the Building Inspector along, it turned out that we need a larger window in one of the bedrooms to act as a fire escape. Somewhere along the line we took our eyes off the ball and ordered a window that’s hinges don’t open wide enough. We also need to get barriers, aka juliette balconies, for the opening windows.
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An Extension
No, not that kind. Ignoring the wise words of our friend Val ‘not to set deadlines’ we tried to get the work done for the Building Warrant before it expired. This meant tracking down the Building Warrant which we couldn’t find for a while. Do we have it or does Chris? We had it, buried amongst the SEPA permissions.
Bottle Walls and Building Warrants
We were fortunate to find a new plasterer after Ian got a new job. Dave comes from Carradale and keeps trying to retire but is too much in demand. Along with Dave2 he did a fantastic job clambering about the scaffolding and planks like a proverbial monkey and has finished all the walls and ceilings in just over a week, including some loverly curves at the eaves. We still have to finish off the hall and stair wall but managed to finish flooring the main bedroom in merbau by hiding the worst bits under the bed! Since then, the weather has been fantastic so we’ve been working outside.
Spring
Lanzarote was lovely and we made a return visit to Cesar Manrique’s house, one of our first inspirations. We also had a day at Ecobuild in London on the way back. Everyone was getting excited about the new Feed In Tarriffs and jumping on the bandwagon. The Show has grown and grown with many com claiming to have some eco-credentials and thereby being entitled to exhibit and a lot of it was marginal. But we did discover that the first passivhaus in Scotland has been built in Glasgow. Must check that out.
Winter
First of all, apologies for not updating the blog for so long. Like the rest of the country we had a very cold spell over Christmas with temperatures well below zero for a prolonged period. As it remained sunny for much of the time we had that thaw/freeze scenario which leaves paths and driveways treacherous. I confess that we smashed our eco credentials and bought some coal so that we could keep the fire on overnight.
2009 Summary
This is mainly for the benefit of Christmas letter readers and summarises our whole year, not just the house build.
The Bathroom in the Sky
Going Up in the World
After much planning and imagining and discussing and calculating, we finally took a flying leap and entrusted the stair design to John Dement of Handmade Stairs. He took out the top bend so that the stair lands facing the big window at the back and added an extra riser. He and Frank were here for 3 days fitting the stair and building the enclosed balustrade and the rolled handrail.
Still Going
Most of the time spent since our last post has been spent on finishing touches and little things. The coffee cup kitchen worktop is in very neatly as are the splashbacks. More boxes are coming out of the garage and we are going to need more storage space, maybe a sideboard and certainly a drinks cupboard.
Getting the Hang of it
We’ve had a busy few weeks. Once the cladding arrived, John pushed on with the tip of the west gable (I couldn’t watch!) and finally got it finished together with all of the other bits and pieces such as the window masticing, the vent axia, (which couldn’t be reached with the scaffolding in place) not to mention the large barge boards.
