Week 24 - Onward progress

I was away for 10 days in Norway and Ireland and was pretty eager to see what had happened in my absence. We had a site meeting with the builders and the architects on Friday afternoon. Things are progressing although I was hoping to see the trusses for the rest of the roof up. they are piled up and ready to be erected on Monday. 

Still the main extension is coming on well and you can really get a feel for the layout of the rooms. We now had lots of decisions to make in the next few days about fireplaces, staircases, door handles etc etc. 

I have some good timelapse footage which will be posted as soon as I get a spare hour to edit it all. In the meantime here are the obligatory photos.

Main extension dressed in shiny tin foil 

Its that curved piece of steel again. View of the main living area 

Upstairs and a view of the main extension and the east extension. All that is left is the trusses to go up on what was the old part of the house. They are piled up ready for the crane

Stonework has cleaned up nicely. This will be exposed to capture some of the feel for the old place 

View from our bedroom window, will be even better once the scaffolding has gone 

Week 22 - And we have a roof ...

...or at least we have some trusses up on the two extensions, which is a definitely moving in the right direction. (Click on the photos for bigger versions)

We always knew that when the joiners arrived things would start happening quickly and it has. On Wednesday the crane arrived to lift the trusses on and since then the guys have been busy building the upstairs and the roof. This is a really nice stage because you can start to see exactly how the house is going to look.

 I was down there most of last week building workshop and storage space in the bothy and the whole family was there on Sunday receiving visitors and Katharine turned the VW into a cafe wagon and distributed tea and bacon sandwiches to all comers. Later Sophie was the first member of the family to actually sleep in the house.

The main extension with a roof 

Lots of stud work in the downstairs 

Main living area, kitchen and dining room.

Upstairs view of the trusses for both the main extension (left) and the lounge extension (right)

Steel and Wood 

And some nice sandstone

Forget Roddy Doyle's van, this is Katharine's Kitchen  

Happy customers (especially Max)

Sophie gets to be the first person to sleep in the new house 

Week 21 - The joiners have arrived

As the title suggests, the wood working boys are in and most of the inside walls are now framed. Gives an excellent idea of how the room layout will work. Picked up a couple of minor glitches but nothing serious. And its finally stopped raining!

Some delicate adjustments to the steel work 

Kitchen and living room area. Note that curved bit of steel again 

Main extension framed up. Room are an office, bedroom, shower and boot room , clockwise from top

Some nice neat welds on the steel work 

Upstairs in the main house

Upstairs view of extension with the bothy and the steading in the background

Farmer has also been making good use of the fine weather 

But the fungus gives an idea of how wet it has been 

Week 19 - Steel erected

I have been away for a few weeks doing fun stuff in Greenland with helicopters, guns and laser scanners. Meanwhile work has progressed, although its been slowed down by the monsoon and by the holiday season.
Regardless the steel frames for the dining room and lounge extensions are up. This is good because it means that there is finally something exciting to put on the timelapse (new movie here). It is also good because it gives a real feel for the shape and size of the finished house. It's big and pretty much as I imagined it.
The roof on the bothy is also finished and slated. Looks grand. Meeting with builder and architect tomorrow to discuss how big the delay is and that all important question, will we be in for Christmas?

View from the south showing the steel for the dining room. This will be filled with glass to make the most of the nice views and also the passive solar heating (if the sun ever shines) 

Dinning room from inside

Our roof will be held up by these bolts! Hmmm

There's that curved bit of steel again. That will be the family bathroom

This piece of wall will be left bare to show of the original stonework 

General view showing the house and bothy 

Bothy looking a lot more complete than the house!

Whilst sifting through the 9800 timelapse photos from the last two weeks I cam across this (and the following three were the same). I think its a buzzard checking out the camera. Would explain all the half eaten rabbits around the place.

Week 16 - TV licence and general progress

We recently received an letter informing us that we need a TV licence for Cowieswells. We informed them that a roof would probably be more us but it has been pointed out that there is a TV aerial!

Things are progressing well. In the main house the opening in the walls are pretty much finished and the steel is in for the upstairs. The roof should go on next week. Really felt like things were progressing this week. The builders reckon that that are about two weeks behind schedule due to the weather and having to take down the gable well at the east end of the house. If it's only two weeks then we are not going to complain.

Even more exciting in the Bothy. The slates have arrived for the roof, the velux windows are in and inside the stud work has gone up for the interior walls giving a real feel for how its going to look and feel once its all done.

Main house, steel up for the floor. Note the TV aerial.

View east in the main house. There is that curved piece of steel! Note also that the end wall and gable have been taken down to make the opening to the lounge

Slate for the bothy roof 

Inside the bothy. Really taking shape now

The east end of the bothy is open to the roof. Looks very cosy.

Upstairs in the bothy. A single bedroom.

Week 15

I was away for a couple of weeks running trips in Spain and South Wales. By the time I got back I was itching to see what had been going on. Here's a quick summary
In the main house they have been mainly bashing holes in the existing stonewalls and then making them secure. So we now have: 
A doorway into the utility room 
A window in the kitchen 
The dining room hole is now secure 
The passage way from the main house into the extension is also secure 
They opted to take down the end wall rather than try and knock a whole in it for the lounge extension. That is ongoing. 
In the bothy there has been more visible progress. The trusses are up and the roof is on. There is an upstairs floor. They have also knocked a window to give up a seaward view and built the fireplace. 
The weather has been pretty horrible but the guys are cracking on. We are almost half way through now. It was amazing there today, the storm has passed and apart from the wind singing in the scaffolding and the swallows chirping away it was completely peaceful.

Overall the place still looks like a bomb site, but note he missing gable of the far end of the house

Velux windows have arrived 

Inside the main house looking east. They opted to take down the gable rather than punch a hole through for the lounge extension. Note the opening for the dining room (to the right) has now been secured.

Looking west in the main house. Note the new window and the opening to the utility room  

The bothy now has a roof!

Inside the bothy, it all looks rather cosy. the upstairs floor is in. The near end will  be open to the roof.

New window in the bothy to capture the nice sea-view

Sandstone waiting to be reused - we have knocked a lot of stuff down. 

Hay meadow almost ready for a cut

Week 13 - Progressing nicely

Things are getting a bit out of sync with the week numbering. This update is up to the start of June which is the last time we were at the site. Since then we have been on tour in the van and doing other fun stuff that doesn't involve having access to the internet.

Work on the house is progressing nicely. They have started to build the wooden frames for the extensions and have made virtually all the required holes in the old stone shell for the various windows. It is interesting to note that although the house commands an impressive location with great views out to sea, there was only one very small window on the east (seaward) side of the building. I guess this can be attributed to two factors. Firstly, back in the day when it was built the insulation was so poor that they avoided having windows on the exposed sides of the building. Secondly, if you work outside all the time you are probably not so bothered about seeing the views.

Well one of the main reasons we bought the place was the views, so we will be putting plenty of windows facing both east and south. Another aspect is that window technology has advanced so much that the benefits of passive solar heating out weigh the heat lose through the glass. All these windows have required a lot of holes putting put into the walls and at the moment it looks a bit sad, with huge gaps punched through it.

Work on the Bothy is coming on even better, much of the steel work is now in, the walls are rendered and the chimney has been built. Persuaded the builders to save the stone lintels from the fireplaces and to use them again which is all part of the vision of "having a modern house that features some elements of the traditional building".

Off to Spain now for 9 days in the Pyrenees followed by a couple of days in South Wales, so it will be a while before about two weeks before I get down there again.

The place has a very healthy (and productive) rabbit population 

Steel ready for the inserting

Watch this space to see where this unusual piece of steel ends up 

The house looks like its been part of a war zone

This hole will be a very large south facing window 

Our mantra remains " can't wait to be living in Cowieswells, can't wait to be living in Cowieswells....