Walling Up

One things for sure I'm starting to pick up the building trade lingo now - life will never be the same - I've even started noticing the different types of stone course used, whether it's dressed or sawn and I can now name the quarry certain houses are built from.  You start comparing build quality and can see where builders have cut corners by not mixing the stone off pallet.

Anyway I digress this week I have been on holiday...well for me it's been more like a Busman's holiday!  I spent a few days helping the gang with walling the foundation blocks - well actually labouring with James.  OK I admit making cups of tea and doing a bit of digging and fetching all helps BTW.

Whilst Paul blasted out meter after meter of walling (and trust me the foundation blocks weigh a bloody ton), Kerry spent the day "faffing" with the Bay Window - still it looks nice Kez honest!





After a couple of days the walling had been completed, levelled off ready to take the Byson beam flooring - a recent innovation in the building industry now common place with majority of new build houses.

It comprises of an inverted T concrete reinforced beam that sits on foundation walls and is in-filled with concrete blocks to create a solid flooring system on which internal walls are built to frame your rooms.

Things are really starting to take shape now and for the first time the paper drawings done by the Duncan (my Architect) come to life albeit still very much in 2-D.

It was at this stage that we got the urge to extend the size of the kitch and make it even wider so my wife could have an island feature in the middle of the kitchen-diner area.  We drew out the extension with blue ground spray paint and started sketching the kitchen layout on the floor - it looked amazing.  A quick call to Duncan on Sunday and he popped out to inspect and confirmed it was feasible from a structural design perspective BUT advised we discuss with Derek and our building inspector as planning amendment was likely.  Not perturbed by this I made a call to a friend of mine who is on his 40th house build already and he said that for extensions (which is what this effectively would be treated as) you can increase the footprint by 3 square meters for a semi-detached and 4 square meters for a detached property without requiring planning permission.

DILEMA - if we were to extend now was the time to do it so we either asked Derek to crack and extend the footings and foundations and then seek retrospective planning permission and building regs approval OR we engage all the relevant stakeholders first and risk stopping the build dead in it's tracks.  Decisions....decisions...my wife and I then recalled our moto - "keep it simple stupid" and instead of letting our heart rule our head we decided against the extension - besides which Derek flipped his lid and started spouting words of wisdom - the time to change is during design not build - and then I remembered all of the heartache I had as an IT Project Manager whenever the business changed requirements mid-way through.

I may live to regret this BUT if I do at least I'll be sat in my new house reflecting on what might have been rather than risk the entire build and not have anything to show for it - risk management real world!

Anyway the floor is now down and we are officially out of the ground - major milestone accomplished with relative ease and we're £7K under budget (Derek take note for when I start over-specifying on the finishes
!).

Weather has turned slightly this week and with all the site machinery running too and fro my lawn is starting to chew up...so in time honoured tradition - Custers last stance and all that we erected our defence!