Random pictures (too busy to blog)

Sliding doors in construction

Site visit to Timbertech to inspect doors in construction. Main impression under the sodium lights was the size - huge! Made a few design changes, doors to only slide one direction, short bolts top and bottom (means we will need a step to reach the top bolts).

Kotatsu table legs

The 150Kg concrete table (photos here showing underside with OSB texture) needs some serious support... 75x44 American white oak legs, work ongoing.

Staircase: stringers water cut, saw cut treads and risers (Stewart & Kieran), assembled by Clare Slifer and Kieran Gaffney

Saturdays are my favourite days on site, because there are no distractions, no deliveries or phone calls to make it is just sold work all day. Today Clare and I assembled the stairs and fixed them in place, a big job that I am very happy to have done. Water cut plywood stringers supplied by JetCut in Glasgow for the princely sum of £200.

Plasterboarding is a difficult job

The plasterboarding is taking a long time, it is a fiddly and time consuming job, not the slap it up job I was led to believ it was. But this week we broke the back of it.

Bathroom going in

Alex will be glad to hear we can now have a bath in the house! Though I have yet to do so. Underfloor heating laid in tile screed 12th December 2008.

Curved ceiling

The radiused ceilings are starting to go in. The jury was out until today when the shadows started casting interesting shadows...

Luck like you wouldn't believe (drain connection)

The full story of the drain connection is the subject of a long and lucky story. The short story is that I am the luckiest builder on earth for 4 reasons
1. The water main was 2 mm above our drain pipe
2. The street drainage pipe was 0.2mm above our drain pipe
3. The connection point of the drain was exactly 80mm below our 8m run (giving us our 1:100 fall by the skins of our teeth.
4. No sooner had we filled in our trench with type 1 hardcore but the "water man" turned up and agreed to tarmac the trench at a great saving.

I am grateful. And to Hall Mossman my groundworks contractor, many thanks!

We are now fully connected to water, electricity and gas. The heating is on!

Coldest day of the year

Brrr


Paul, Dave and I crack on with plastering downstairs. After a few minor hicups with sockets we get pretty fast and get all the external walls done on one day. Thanks you guys.

Super Saturday

Clare, my sister, and I are freezing in the house but the benefit is you can't stop for anything and together we finish the ground floor electrics (including the extra branding and insulation), design the lighting and board up the house to the make the site secure. Great day Clare!

Protection for concrete floor

One layer Teram followed by Antinox. Really enjoyed putting down the woven white fabric off a 5m wide roll - beautiful job.

Lighting research

task lights


Anglepoise The original!



And the more bespoke industrial options...

Concrete floor - more information and specification

Australia seems to be a leader in providing good specification information (PDF).

Polished concrete floor 4 (powerfloating into the night)

As the concrete cures you can walk on it without marks using proprietry foam shoe padding.



In this image you can see the swirls being removed and a perfectly flat and smooth finish forming.



The last phase is when patches of sheen start showing up - that's when you know when to stop. For us it was a 2am finish mainly due to the cold weather slowing the curing down.