12 Months on....

12 months later, we are still way off completion but some of the final finishes are now in place, giving us encouragement and a good feel for our new house.
Over the autumn and winter we will finish the interior and move in.
Leaving the 'L' shaped extension until spring 2017, this can be built without too much disruption to the current build.

This is the front elevation (the brackets will hold solar panels and form a verranda)

Here is a pic when we started demolition last August...



View from what will be the kitchen / dining room and eventually a nice garden



Over 2000 salvaged bricks from the old building, were hand cleaned by Joe and reused for a feature wall, built by Fergus Robinson and Joe.








The entire floor is a slab of polished concrete and with the underfloor heating pipes, should keep us cosy too.





Once we had done all the floor prep, the guys at Exeter Floor Restoration did an amazing job with pouring, floating and polishing.







For the cladding we used a Japanese technique of burning timber called Shou Sugi Ban, traditionally used to preserve exterior wood. The natural cedar looked lovely so it was a scary moment taking a roofers blow torch to the planks but we love this blackened effect.





We are still living onsite with reasonable comfort but will be a real luxury to move in properly.
Even on a building site, Julie has managed to provided us with plenty of salad and veg, grown from her pallet made raised beds.

2015 Build Progress

Late summer 2015 the demolition and build began.

Prior to this we concentrated on creating our temporary accommodation, to comfortably see us over the winter on site.

The old building starts to come down.
Materials that can be reused like old insulation, timber, roofing sheets etc were snatched up quickly as freebies advertised on Gumtree and some we have kept and will recycle in the new build.

demolition starting

site almost clear

As the site starts to clear, we begin to build the new timber frame, its a single story built on existing foundations so the progress is satisfyingly speedy.

Good to get some of the dirty jobs out of the way, drains all laid and additional foundations done.

A push to get the roof on before Christmas was at times very frustrating, battling with the wind and rain, but now enables a whole loads of internal fit out that can continue throughout the winter.

Waterproof now and with no internal walls, makes a perfect archery range!

Living on site is not always ideal but the open plan area still functions perfectly well as my studio and with a few further improvements on site, we are able to enjoy a good level of comfort.

Christmas 2015 in the studio

Its been a pleasure working with our main crew of Paul + Tom Redman and my son Joe, and although I've always been reluctant to predict a completion date, if we can continue at this pace, it should be safe to say that we'll be in by Christmas 2016!