Borders House: December 2009 - Progress But It's Been Cold and Wet!

It's been ages since I updated the blog but working on the build 7 days a week and the pretty dire weather we've had has meant that I haven't had too much time (or photos) to put up.

We have made some progress. The blockwork and stone was completed today after a few abandoned attempts at completing where they either had to give up due to being almost blown off the scaffolding, or torrential (and I mean torrential!) rain stopped play. Anyway, today the sun has shone and the stonework at the front of the house is finally completed. The blocks went up really quickly but the stone took far longer. Just as well we are only having a little bit of stone!

The plasterers have started rendering the outside and have the scratch coat on most of the walls now, and the top coat on 1 wall. They hope to complete the outside in the next few days, weather permitting. They have also been busy plastering the inside of the house. The plastering and coving upstairs is complete and most of the downstairs but there are a few bits still to be completed where there is still a bit of plasterboard to put up.

I have painted the soffits and started to fit the guttering and once that's all completed and the plasterers have gone I can paint the outside of the house. Then we can finally get the scaffolding down that has been the bane of this build. I can't go into that at the moment but once everything is sorted I might tell the sorry tale.

So, apart from the outside jobs what's next to do? Inside the first fix electrics are nigh on complete with just one or 2 bits and pieces to sort out and the next job will be to insulate the ground floor and fit the pipework for the underfloor heating and I'm going to do that myself. The underfloor heating kit is all present and correct awaiting fitting. The floor then needs to be screeded (quotes being gathered) before we look at doing all the fitting out such as painting, and fitting the flooring on the ground floor. It's going to be tiles in the 'dog' areas - hall, kitchen, family room, utility room and the downstairs shower room, and engineered wood in the dining room and lounge where the dogs won't be making an appearance. Makes and models still open to debate! Upstairs we intend to have engineered wood in the bedrooms, hall and upstairs sitting area, and tiles in the bathrooms. Looks like we'll be ordering all of the tiles in the January sales. At least with a new build we won't be hit with the vat increase too much as we will be able to claim the vat back.

We have started ordering the sanitary wear for the bathrooms and have all of the WCs, basins, cisterns and frames (we're having wall hung loos) stored in the shed. We also have a bath on order for the main ensuite but still need to sort out a bath for the main bathroom and all of the shower cubicles and showers. We've managed to source some pretty good deals on the net that helps with the budget.

We also have all of the integrated kitchen appliances as there was a sale on that was too good to miss. The 2 fridge freezers are being stored in the shed at the moment, and the rest has been delivered to Karen's rented apartment in Edinburgh and will need to be moved later.

The kitchen still needs to be ordered but we've decided on the make and model (I think!). We won't be ordering the kitchen until we have somewhere to store it as until the floor is screeded we're struggling for storage space.

So there is still quite a lot to do but we're pretty much on budget at the moment (£500 over) which out of a 220k build budget is pretty good going I think.

Just 1 or 2 pictures to post this time, and I'll try to get some more photos when I get 5 minutes!