Weather woes and exciting times ahead!

Ah the great British weather. One minute it's a beautiful spring like day, the next it's snowing or there's a storm rolling in named after someone's nan.

A Thursday and Friday could be perfect conditions with the Saturday and Sunday not being conditions you want to build a roof in. And repeat the next week. And the next. And the next. That is why progress has been extremely slow since the last update.

So what else has been going on?

In January, Andy enrolled on a course so that he can complete the rubber roofing himself. This course also gave him access to a discount on materials and allows him to self certify the 20 year guarantee. The roofing product has been purchased and is awaiting a run of good weather to be laid.

This is what the product will look like:

Yeah it's rubber but it's a flat roof. Unless you're in a helicopter, you won't see it though!

We also grabbed a right bargain on eBay!  We need reclaimed bricks as we want to make an exposed brick internal wall separating the living room and 2nd bedroom. We managed to find someone getting rid of just under 800 for £150 quid which is more than enough for that wall.

We need more as we are also having a decorative brick plinth up to window height all around the house looking something like this:

Speaking of windows - that's another thing done and dusted! We had thought all along we were going to use a company called Velfac for windows. They were recommended by our architect and we went to see their stand a few times at the Swindon Home Renovation Centre and liked them. But we knew they weren't going to be cheap and we had heard stories of people ordering the wrong sizes and being stuck with them (Velfac are a supply only company). So we decided to get a quote from Everest. Their rep came out and measured up and the quote came out at £44k (including fitting). We eventually got it down to £15k (laughable) but that was still too much. Their windows also weren't as nice as the Velfac ones.

We then got a quote from Velfac and were quite surprised at their affordability. After some negotiation, we managed to get the price down to just under £5k for all 12 windows. But let me tell you, filling that form in that has a nice disclaimer at the bottom pretty much telling you that "no one is going to check it and if you make a mistake - unlucky" is quite unnerving! There's a lot you have to think about. External colour, internal colour. With over 100 greys to choose from, we eventually settled on a darker grey. The internal colour we left as wood (the windows are Alu-clad). Then we had to work out where the trickle vents go, which way they need to open, how much they can open by, the security on them and more! And this is without adding the sizes! We measured several times and read through their guide several times making sure we were taking off the right measurements (it's not just a case of however big the hole is how big the windows need to be).

So in about 2 weeks, they will arrive and we will know if we buggered up or not! One saving grace we do have is that because we have build out of ICF, it's a bit easier to rectify a problem. If the windows are too big, we can cut away at the polystyrene. If they are too small, we can pack the gap out and squirt some expandable foam into the gaps. The polystyrene facade will eventually be covered by wood cladding.

So yes, exciting to see them!

This is some examples of the type of window they are:

We have also ordered and are awaiting delivery of our roof lanters. We will have 1 in the roof of the master bedroom and 1 in the roof of the living room. These rooms will be quad aspect, as the majority of windows are facing the front of the house, where it's darker (trees...North...) we wanted as much light as possible. It should also help to make the ceiling look a little higher as they are only about 2.1 metres high.

Finally, Andy and I have been chatting about progress and we both agreed we want to be pretty much finished by the end of summer. Working full time and having evenings and weekends only to do this meant this was going to be a tough ask. 

If I'm honest, we've not been working every evening and every weekend as it is. We've managed to get a nice balance between having us time and house time. But of course that means everything takes longer. We still don't want to compromise that balance or we will end up resenting it and each other. 

So we both talked and did the math and Andy is going to give up work to concentrate on the house. He will be working full time on it Monday to Friday and the odd weekend - starting this Monday (tomorrow).

It does mean we won't be able to put any money aside each month so our pot is likely to dwindle faster. We agreed Andy would do this for a minimum of 2 months, after a month we will review progress and finances and discuss next steps. 

So hopefully lots of progress to come!