March 2010 - Final Delivery from Scotframe

On Friday we had the final delivery from Scotframe of the '2nd Fix' materials. This consisted of internal doors, staircase, skirting boards, window cills and other internal woodwork. The wardrobe doors will arrive direct from the manufacturer and these should come next week some time. The lorry arrived on time at 11am and I asked one of the local farms if we could hire their forklift to offload the pallets. Then came the task of lugging it all inside. Luckily it was a nice day so we didn't have to worry about anything getting wet. It's been dry for a week now - long may it continue!

Lorry arrived from Inverurie

Forklift and driver

Carrying everything inside (and thanks to next door neighbour Barry!)

Internal Doors in their frame ready to hang

More internal doors

Internal double doors with opaque glass (hopefully this won't show the dirt as much as clear!)

Double doors for the cupboards either side of the entrance

Main part of the oak staircase

Rest of the staircase parts

More internal wood - window cills, skirting etc.

September 2009 - Walls are complete

2nd September - here is the finished article (in terms of the Supawall panels being fixed in place). It's now starting to look more like a house than a slab of concrete. It's nice to see something physical for the money that has been spent so far. We have spent 77k of our original budget of 220k and at the moment are pretty much on track, although some of the quotes we're about to get might be a bit more than we originally budgeted for so we will see.

It's been a busy week in terms of people coming round to quote for different jobs with quotes coming in for roofing, blockwork and plumbing and we're pricing the materials with quotes from local builders merchants.

Front of the house

Rear view

September 2009 - First Floor Panels

2nd September - The second delivery, containing the first floor panels, arrived from Scotframe. As you will see the first floor went up pretty easily. Unfortunately the roof trusses didn't arrive on schedule which was a pain as we only had the crane on hire for 1 day.

Crane arrives and prepares to lift the panels off the lorry

Panels are lifted off the lorry

First floor panels start to be fixed into place

Panels at the front of the first floor are erected

Panels at the rear are erected

April 2009 - Timber Frame Kit ordered

We have ordered our timber frame kit from Scotframe. After weighing up various options we decided to go with the company that the original owner of the plot had been dealing with. Being from the south east we're more used to seeing brick and block houses as timber frame is not as popular down there but it is very popular in Scotland.

We wanted to build a well insulated house so we have gone for Scotframe's closed panel timber frame system called SupaWall that should meet future thermal performance targets. Once combined with mechanical heat recovery and solar panels we hope that this combination will keep heating costs manageable.