Loose ends

If you’re a fan of Channel 4’s Grand Designs as we are, you will after a while begin to spot some common show themes:

things always start well but by the second ad-break someone has picked up a life threatening disease / got pregnant / ground to a halt by Covid or been made redundant;
they always run out of money;
things miraculously come good in the last 10 minutes, and most importantly of all;
it’s all going to go very wrong if you don’t have a good independent Project Manager.

Wait … hang on a minute … but we don’t have a project manager?

Go!

Work on site has commenced which is off the scale exciting!! The next couple of weeks will be all about preparing the site, we need to have 550m2 of hard standing laid, so not exactly sure when holes will be dug or things actually built. We do have a digger on site now so hopefully not too long.

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28th June

Well that took longer than expected. While negotiations are not completely finished, we have very nearly agreed build costs for our new house and this week signed a letter of intent which will allow ground works to start in two weeks (eek!)

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The five stages

Value engineering continues.

The team have been brilliant, working flat out to drive down costs with cunning plans and practical suggestions. Some are no-brainers, others require some serious thought to make certain we won’t regret it later while a few have been vetoed to preserve our goal for this project.

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Oh … that’s a little unexpected

Finally the wait is over and we now have a cost from our builder! This is an exciting moment for the project. Less excitingly, while we always knew the budget was going to be tricky, it would appear we are miles away from being able to afford it which is a bit of a shock.

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Inspiration Part Two

While we’re waiting for the build cost to arrive, the restorative alcohol is on standby, decisions on finishes and style continue to rattle round our heads. Here’s some more from the Pinterest archive on where we’ve got to so far.

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Do not adjust your set, normal programming will resume soon

Just a quick message to say, no we’re not dead and the project is still progressing. We are waiting for the Builder to get back to us with a quotation, a process that has been a bit delayed by easter, suppliers and life in general. Hopefully not too much longer before we can agree the contract and actually start building!

A lot, and I mean A LOT, of drawings

Things are starting to gather pace now at an excitingly alarming rate. The Team have finished the RIBA Stage 4 tender pack which is now with the Builder – yes we have a preferred builder, more on that later.

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Yet another shade of blue?

The team are working hard on finalising the pack of documents so the Builder (more on this later) can pull together their costed proposal. Our part in this has been finalising our choices on the different finishes we want – floors, ceiling and so on which feels very surreal given we have yet to dig any (proper) holes. It will however smooth the build process if this can all be agreed up-front.

In the course of all this, the architects suggested we take a look at an environmentally friendly, mineral paint for our walls. This then led us to getting distracted for days in the fascinating and confusing world of colour.

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An unexpected turn of events

A wise friend told us that building a house is a seemingly never ending series of hurdles but eventually there be none left and the house is finished. This week’s unexpected hurdle has been fire safety. Apparently the fire brigade have minimum requirements for access to domestic houses and needless to say we appear to fall short against these. However there is a solution … install sprinklers!

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