December Images

Final Dig Out, the dark area on the walls shows how much!

Re-using our old bricks as part of the sub-base, green and cost effective.

Footings dug, note (if you are interested) the bricks topped off with compacted millwaste, giving 150mm of sub-base in total.

Footings concrete, we've elected to use the 'mix on site machines' brilliant, I'll never use readymix again.

Barrowing the concrete.

Dave doing the skilful bit (Levelling the footings).


Pouring the footing for the kitchens folding sliding doors. 1m deep, and I dug half of it!


Laying the sub-floor walls. These are the below ground sections of walls that will be under the main slab, and damp proof membrane.

Re-using some existing bricks where possible.

Once the sub-floor walls were finished, the whole area was blinded off with sand, and then the entire floor and walls was covered in 1200 guage damp proof membrane.

The whole floor and walls covered, taped and ready for pouring the slab.

Preparing to barrow the concrete.

We have a floor.

Next post: Walls.

2007 Update (just in time)

Yet again I've left it practically two months to update the blog, in fact its been a few hints from friends and family that finds me now on the last day of the year trying to quickly bring things up to speed.

Since the last post we had a fantastic weekend when Jen and Fred came to stay, picked up shovels, breakers and barrows and really got stuck in. Many thanks guys for all your help, even the kids got on with breaking up the concrete in the old workshop floor!

November found me finally finishing all the major dig out from the barn, once the concrete and rubble were out, it was a fairly speedy dig down into the soil and clay, using a combination of midi-digger and tipper lorry to cart the spoil out. This ended up another 80 tonnes of dig out. By the end of November and with so much work to be done on the underpinning next door it was now clear that Dave would not be starting our build in the near future I got some of my own lads from work in to do prepare his way.

Under Dave's watchful eye its been a great success, see next post for images. The lads have seemed to enjoy the challenge of something new, all their skills are fairly transferable, and Dave has been holding a masterclass in each of the stages, combined with through to check on everything as its progressed. In the five weeks before Christmas they've finalised the dig out, laid all the brick and millwaste sub-floor, dug footings, poured the concrete (with Dave), laid all the walls to sub-floor height. Sanded the sub-base and sheeted it with the radon barrier/damp proof membrane. Poured the concrete slab (with Dave again doing the cerebral bits) and started the internal walls.

Time Lapse (click on image to watch)

Image Update

Some non-building work images of our new views:

A whole months update

Dear oh dear, it seems we've left it a whole month to update the blog.

I think we have a decent excuse of being just too busy, but I'll try and recap as best we can. Dave and the lads started as promised and set too knocking down what walls we'd left. I tried to break up all of our concrete (see images from last post), but had to have the digger back for one more weekend to finish it. I used the small JCB to knock down my outbuilding and Rob used his excavator to knock down the bigger walls of Paul's outbuildings. We then got (neighbour) Rob to load and cart it and the brick rubble away, some 150 odd tonnes to date and counting.

Although Dave spent equal time on both Paul and Cathy's and our barns in the first week, from week two we made the decision that Dave would work Paul and Cathy's up to internal block walls for the next few weeks. There are two reasons for this: There are some complications to our initial build, (mainly to do with the dig out to achieve our new floor level, (in a nutshell the floor level needs to be some 300-400mm down from where we found it, plus to meet Part L the new floor is some 375mm deep thats a 700+ dig out). This is a hell of a volume which I'm not sure I'm happy about, so I'm working out where we can best set our ground and first floor levels to get the most out of the building; mainly though I want to do as much preparatory work myself, at least the demolishing of walls, dig out and hard core. As this is clearly weekend work I've got at least three solid weekends of this so it makes great sense for Dave to crack on with Paul and Cathy's first.

Once the outbuildings were down I rang our new planning officer Paul Taylor to see if he could visit to see how awful the South East elevation appears and to have a pre-application discussion as to whether we could clad that whole façade in timber boards, something I have always loved but had looked up until now unlikely due to the tight restraints on barns (no chimneys, no extra openings, no porches etc.), less than a week later he rang to say that the council would approve any plans to clad that side. This is a seriously good bit of news, this side is for me the most important as its the side that faces the gardens, and as a result the side we will most regularly be looking at.

Sadly Paul and Cathy had some bad news, the front and part of the North West wall have little or no footings and the building inspector and the structural warranty inspectors have asked or underpinning, luckily our fabulous structural engineer Graham has calculated that Dave can use concrete lintels to support the walls.

It finally looks like a building site now with skips galore and material deliveries becoming more regular. As we are proper self builders in as much as we are managing our own project and employing our labour directly its our responsibility to ensure site health and safety, so Paul's organised protective fencing, site warning signs, and I've had to get accident books and first aid supplies, (all of which are a legal requirement).

Other mundane jobs we've been doing are grinding the steel beams that we are keeping and treating with rust protective paint prior to Dave encasing them in block work, Paul has been organising services, and I've had the kids sorting and stacking the bricks that we can re-use.

Work Actually Starts

Dave has surprised us all by telling he is starting on Monday. This is actually earlier than promised, and as anyone who's had building work knows, a week before kick off you get the obligatory "We'll be another month because (tick as appropriate) 'Vans been stolen' 'Its been raining' 'Deliveries have been delayed' 'I've lost a couple of good workers' etc excuse. So this is great news all round.

In order to prepare for Dave I've been doing a little bit of demolishing. Aided by my little helpers.
At the request of my sister (that means there are three people at least looking at this blog) who has asked for 'More images to cheer it up' Here's one of a nice early morning sky. Hope that's the thing you had in mind Jen.

Update Images 2

We had our first major site delivery this week, all the way from Germany, of course with German efficiency it was three days early. The delivery was our pair of water treatment plants. The basic gist is that all our waste water (and I mean all) goes in, and tap water comes out a few days later. That's what the rep said anyway, but I wouldn't drink it myself. Our driver was Gerhard who wore socks and sandals, a style faux pas we had to forgive him for. Paul made him a coffee with four spoons of sugar, no wonder he was early.He seemed quite happy to pose for our blog, saying that our neighbour (and vendor) Rob and son Charlie did all the work manhandling the things down.

Update Images 1

How to upset the new neighbours when the Pikeys moved in.

A small amount of skilled pruning.

This is when I asked if it was possible to get it right in the corner.

'What, like in the field' says Chris.

On Site At Last

NEW VIEW

This post comes two weeks late due to the unbelievable service one gets from BT. Now we are in the sticks there's no cable, and therefore no competition for BT, who kept me waiting 10 days for a telephone line, don't ask about Broadband, that's going to follow 7 days later. Actually the whole BT farrago has pointed out one thing, and that is so far if I had a list of Fame and a list of Shame, BT would be the only member of the Shame side, so I suppose now would be a good time to give some well earned thanks to the Fame side. The whole buying/selling procedure was made far less fraught by the attentions of both our Estate Agents and Solicitors, whilst their opposite numbers seemed to be intent on creating confusion and delay. We have only ever used one Estate Agent to sell our houses, James Sellicks who took a mere 3 hours to procure a sale on our last house, this sale took three days to get an offer we accepted, and they managed to get seven offers in those three days. I'd like to personally thank Sarah and James for their timely advice and help, and the way they nudged and cajoled others to bring things to a practical conclusion. Just to put our sale into some perspective, we found the barns the week before our holiday, offered on the Monday of the holiday week, had our offer turned down, made an improved offer on the Tuesday which was accepted the next day.

I rang James to say 'I need you to sell my house, quickly'.
He said 'I'll pop round on Friday'.
'Ah I'm in Italy'
'When do you go?'
'Friday morning'
'I'll see you this afternoon then'

He came, he took a spare key, he told me how much he'd ask for the house, and then how much we'd get if we were willing to wait a month or so for the right buyer to come along. He said all the usual Estate Agent things like, 'Its perfect guys, buyers will be fighting for a house like this' 'I'll get it in the paper the weekend before you return, we'll organise viewings from the day you get back. He was right, on all accounts. Except he got the month or so price in three days.

As with James its all about personal knowledge and recommendation, when it came to Solicitors I had no real indication of who we should approach, but Cathy had only one name she would be happy to deal with, Eric Roberts at Roberts Rose specialist conveyancers. We found Eric to be a man of great charisma, but with an underlying shrewdness and intellect. From the moment we all (the four of us, (squashed in)) sat down in his office we had the feeling that someone was really looking out for us, as opposed to simply doing a job of work. It would be unfair to point a finger at our buyers solicitor but in the end her motto we made up was 'What I promise today won't be done tomorrow' Cathy and Paul fared no better with their buyer opting for a 'Call Centre' style package. This was no worry to Eric, who like a pike chasing a pair of minnows pushed and prodded them into doing what was required. Unfortunately for Paul and Cathy our buyers solicitor caused a real delay causing us to have to put back our completion date after they had committed to theirs. Two weeks of borrowed flats entailed for them, for which I feel very regretful. It was better news on our vendors font, Eric had known his solicitor for many years so lines of communication were much easier. I'd like to say thank you to Rachel too for keeping a calm perspective whenever I had a wobble.

From a financial point of view we were lucky in Stephanie Heald's recommendation of Trust Financial Planning who have been incredibly proactive in all their efforts with the complications of a self build, its assurance, insurance and our liabilities. Poor old Dan, the proprietor had made an appointment to see us about pensions and life assurances the week before we found the barns, so when he did turn up he found a house full of prospective purchasers and us needing to talk self-build mortgages and public liability insurance instead. Once Dan had gone through a list of needs he passed us into the capable hands of James who has been tirelessly proactive in his research of the best buys for our needs. Paul and I still probably speak to him bi-weekly still, and it was great to know that one part of the build process was being carried out in someone elses capable hands, rather than our own.

It's suddenly reality.

I feel that there is so much missing from this blog already, that has happened between May and now, yet so much is happening day by day. Its a shame you can't fill in the gaps as you go along and end up in a structured chronological order.

However that's not to be.

This week then has been our first visit to building control, Dave (the artisan) builders first look at our proper plans, and the trip to buy our caravan! (Yes its official, I'm now a pikey).

Building control went better than could be expected, our inspector Steve was a constructive and proactive chap. Very aware that we are doing our own drawings* he was thorough in exploring all the areas that he knew we were novices at, fire protection and access, emergency escape, sound penetration and insulation. With the exception of needing a few extra internal doors for fire escape nothing seemed too far out. However we did leave with an understanding of how much legislation and detail there was for every single part of the build.

Dave likewise seemed happy with most areas, Paul and he wanted to see all ground floor walls made of block, 'All?' I said, Dave asked me if I was going to want shelves up? Ah, yes, all I agreed. The best part of this meeting was that we've decided to build all of the ground floor, plus the ceiling/first floor joists before taking the existing roof off. This is a fantastic idea in my mind as everyone can work in a dry environment, plus when Paul and I dismantle the roof, we can do so from the first floor.

As for the caravan... Paul has been a complete star and spent two and a half days literally driving round the country looking at all the mobile home resellers. Its a bit like a shop at home service, he's photographed the good, the bad and the ugly and reported back to us. The conclusions are that a) all mobile home designers have had a taste bypass, and b) the affordable ones have bits missing and smell. Armed with Paul's research we at least felt we had some idea of what to expect and what to pay, the ones we had budgeted for did indeed smell, and required some little bits of work (new toilets/carpets!).

The nearest dealer was just a few miles away in Kettering, it must have been fate that took us to Kestrel Caravans as when we couldn't find one we really liked at all (at least that didn't have a SOLD sign in the window). Just as we were leaving we saw the owner (Chris) working away on a large static. 'Is this for sale' I ask, 'Its just come in, it will be in a few days, you can have a look inside though' That was our big mistake, this one smelt fine, even pleasant. There weren't any missing bits at all. Someone had loved this caravan. Kate looked in the bathroom, it had a proper cubicle with a glass door and a proper shower. It had heaters in all the bedrooms. It was also £1200 above our self imposed budget. Despite the tasteless 'mahogany on every surface treatment' and the dodgy glass lampshades everywhere this one was clearly a nicer prospect, and on the basis its not what you pay, its how much you lose on it in a year, it was a done deal.

*I'm doing my own drawings basically means I'm the chimp with the pencil, Kate's the one with the flair and I've had the most fantastic creative help from three dear architect friends who happen to make glorious buildings for a day job, and some brilliant little ideas from friends, siblings and parents. I'm not wanting to design by committee but any good idea is worthy of consideration. Those details can wait for another post though.

A Start at last - An Introduction.

Having never done a blog I'm already worried I simply won't have the time to keep this up to date, but as I sit here on the start of a year of potential heartache and hard work I'll try my best to keep family and friends up to date. The whole reason for this blog is to hopefully chronicle our plans to develop a huge (fairly ugly) grain barn into a pair of houses for ourselves and for some dear friends. Today Friday 10th August we finally exchanged on a fairly torturous process of let downs, gazumping and false starts. It all started on the 8th of May when I gave a lift home to a contractor who was working with me on a project. As we drove along he (another Rob) mentioned he was selling his barns for development, my ears pricked up, but I did remember that on my last visit some 10 years before I could only remember an enormous hangar full of lorries. What I did remember was that they were on the edge of a pretty hamlet on the Rutland/Leicestershire border, flanked by fields. My memory served me correctly, one enormous barn suitable for two semi detached dwellings and a single barn well suited to a single story conversion. I looked at the big barn, ludicrously enormous was my first thought, unconventional for a conversion was my second thought, that's my new home was my third.

The problem as I saw it was convincing Kate that this carbuncle could be a fantastic spacious house (eventually). The other problem was that the owner wanted to sell the whole plot consisting of two barns to make three properties, and was not considering a split. Part of the first problem should not have been a problem, I had already been looking with a good friend Paul Scott for a large rural house in a state of disrepair to buy, do up and sell on. I remember my text to Paul now 'Found Barns near Uppingham. They are enormous!'

The next evening I found myself standing outside the barns with Kate, Beth and Tom, and Paul, Cathy and their children Megan and Grace. 'This is where it goes Pete Tong' I thought. Unexpectedly the girls were positive, 'We need to sit down and do our sums' said Kate, in that 'Don't start getting exited just yet' tone.

The first start was speaking to my Builder Dave Ardley, (even as I type the word builder it doesn't fit) this is someone I've known and worked with for 9 years) the sort of person who really genuinely does what he does because of the pleasure of the finished project. I'm lucky to start with, in my industry I know and work with a fair number of builders, all of whom are good, but its a different thing to work with someone for a year. I think the word we need to be using is building artisan. Also as I have intended not to use an architect (officially, more of that later) and do all the plans and building control drawings myself, I needed to work with someone who actually is happy on that basis. To quote Dave 'In 20 years I've yet to have a plan which actually agrees with the site/or works out first time'. This clearly is good news for me, if Dave can work from a fag packet drawing, he won't mind mine. Literally after getting the agreement from Cathy, Paul and Kate we need to find out if this whole project is feasible, then we can make an offer on the barns. A quick call to Dave bursts my bubble, he has 18 months worth of work booked in, as he has a years work on a large development. He's gutted too, I can tell.

Two hours later Dave rings back. His had a think and long talk with his wife. 'A barn conversion you say?'