Rat in mi kitchen

The house is the star.  That's a fact.  However, the one thing that will be on display, given the open plan style, will be the kitchen.

So the challenge is, getting the best kitchen we can without ending up blowing the budget and becoming one of Kevin McCloud's anecdotes.

We have worked with Richard from Luxury For Living for the last year to come up with a kitchen befitting the house, and I think we have made it.  Richard has been incredibly patient with us, and shown a high degree of craftsmanship coming up with a design for us, to the extent that he has produced the mock ups below to help us visualise the finished product.

More info on Luxury For Living here, you can also catch Richard at his stand in Ewenny Garden Centre.

The above images have been provided by Richard from Luxury For Living.

The photo below shows the final materials we have settled on.

From left to right:

• High level cabinet doors
• Green splash back above sink and along the window
• Work top
• High gloss low level doors

And finally, below is the funkiest appliance ever.  When you watch this you need to imagine that the music from Star Wars when Darth Vader appears is playing....

Always the sun

As has been said before, by me in previous posts, we cannot really see much during the week now that the evenings have drawn in.  However, we do visit, and, like burglars, roam the house with torches looking for progress in an environment that would give a health and safety officer a coronary he wouldn't recover from.

So, turning up on a Saturday is now the highlight of the week.  Turning up on a sunny Saturday stirs the soul and makes us realise why we did what we did about 4 years ago when we bought the land.  If we can wait 4 years, we can wait another few weeks - right Rhian? ;-)

Anyway, you are not here for my writing, its all about the photos.  Before you look at the photos below, have a glance at the last post for an appreciation of what has been done.

In summary, this is where we are:

Underfloor heating - fitted.
Floors - done.
Windows - just the front and a bit of the lounge to go
2nd fix electrics - started

The photo above is a great insight into some of the complexity in the build, it is the manifold for the upstairs underfloor heating

I posted my favourite photo recently, the photo above is almost the reverse of that photo.  This one is taken from outside and you can see the trees reflecting off the glass.  Clearly there are finishes still to be done.  In the foreground you have the wrap around deck running across the window.

Something new!  The front living room has a beautiful outlook onto the trees like the cantilever room.  It also has doors that open on to the deck, those doors are now in!  This photo is taken from ground level looking up at the living room, to the right you can see the cantilever room.

The view of the same door from the inside.

I popped up Friday morning for an onsite meeting to find the insulation had been put down in the cantilever room and the whole of the upstairs was being prepped for the underfloor heating, as can be seen above on the floors.  Its also a gratuitous photo of the windows in the cantilever room as this was the first time I had seen them all in daylight.  It was emotional.

When we turned up on Saturday afternoon the floor had been laid upstairs, which was the best news ever.  On the down side we couldn't wander around, but that is a small price to pay for progress.  Because we couldn't wander around I took the photo above, I think this is my new favourite photo because:

• It's the first photo I have taken from the garage looking in and it shows perfectly the layout of the main room.  In the foreground we have the kitchen, in the middle is the dining area and in the distance is the living room/cantilever room with the killer view
• You can see how the sun will beam in through the windows in the autumn/winter when the trees have lost their leaves
• The upstairs floor going in is a bit of a watershed as it now looks more like a house than a building site.

As magical as the house is becoming, the wait is very difficult.  The rented house can feel like purgatory, somewhere temporary where you cannot settle.  The artificial deadline that Christmas imposes doesn't help, making the wait harder.  However, we have to appreciate what we have and what we will have, as Morris West said 

"If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine."

Today, we enjoyed the sunshine.  And it was beautiful.

Freeze frame

Saturdays give us a chance to see the house in daylight, reflect on a weeks worth of progress and get some decent photos.  Today I may have got my favourite photo so far, more of that later.

There are three main themes at the moment:

• Screed flooring needs to be done
• Windows and doors are going in
• Plastering has started

These themes make up this blog.

Today's highlight, as it was something we had not yet seen, was the fact the floor downstairs had been completed - it is a concrete screed that now needs a couple of days to dry out.  It was done on Friday and will hopefully be dry enough on Monday for the guys to carry on working.

A few photos of the downstairs floor....

The master bedroom.

Ellie's bedroom

Caitlin's bedroom

The hallway

The next theme is the plastering.  I love a newly plastered wall, its the new building equivalent of art work.  The plastering is brightening up the house and giving a feel of the size of some of the rooms/walls.

Caitlin demonstrating how high the ceilings will get and how big the wall in the centre of the house is.  Caitlin is stood  where the door from the hallway leads you into the main living space.  The walls are plastered and drying out.

Another one of the main living room showing a bit more of the centre wall.

Doors leading out on to the deck.  This is the space where the dining table will be.

As you come through the front door, this is the wall that will face you.

The front living room is as good as done in terms of plastering.

The final theme today is doors and windows, this includes my favourite photo of the whole build.

The windows that have been installed upstairs seen here from the back of the house.

A close up of the window outside the kitchen (right) and the dining area.  The darker grey is the colour of the window.

Above, my favourite picture so far.  This is the reason the cantilever room was built, so we would feel close to, or part of, the forest.  It was a good view before the window, now the window beautifully frames the best that Autumn has to offer us,

Bits and pieces

As previously posted it's dark in the  evenings by the time we get home, so it would be dangerous and in contravention of many healthy and safety guidelines to enter the house in the dark armed with the torchlight generated from our mobile phones.  Which makes it even more satisfying to do, although the photos aren't as good.

Anyway, there are many different activities/trades currently underway or scheduled:

• Plastering started
• Underfloor heating being fitted
• Windows being fitted
• Telegraph pole for BT line scheduled
• Electric meter fitted
• Gas meter scheduled
• Water supply about to go live
• Concrete floors about to start being laid
• Kitchen ordered
• Sanitary ware ordered

And probably a couple of other things.

Until we get up there in the daylight and are able to take some better photos, here are some glimpses as to what is going on.

Above, windows in the front facing aspect of the cantilever room  This has changed how the room feels completely.

This is what underfloor heating looks like before the concrete screed is laid, the whole of the downstairs looks like this.

Possibly the coolest thing so far, the manifold that connect the downstiars underfloor heating to the supplies that it needs.  Shiny!

A window viewed from the outside.  Here we have a meeting of finishes and materials, looks great.  This is Caitlins room downstairs.

Finally, a completely plastered room to wonder at.  This is the utility room.  The straight lines, the smooth plaster......bliss.

Pride (in the name of love)

We need a name for the house.

I am not sure what else to say.  How do you come up with a house name?

Anagrams?  Local features?  Holiday destinations?  Welsh?

Anagram.

Based on just my name we could have "Nice Arse", it would be fun filling in forms and over the phone, but we should probably rule it out.

More realistically, we could take our initial letters, from our first names and see what happens.

Sean
Rhian
Caitlin
Ellie

You could make CRoESo, which could work.

This ticks the Welsh box as well.

Local features

Blue bells
Forest
Bus shelters
Pub

Maybe something in the first two.

Holiday destinations

This works for pets better, possibly.  Ask Coney and Columbus the cats named after New York locations.  Central Park, too coffee shop.  Upper West Side, too pimped.  Soho, too seedy.  There maybe something in this, needs more thought.

What do you think?

Lily the pink

The dynamics have changed a little in terms of blogging on the house and seeing progress.  Like I said in a previous post, the nights have drawn in, so we are really only seeing progress each weekend, not each evening.  This has its pros and cons.

Driving up to the site today, Caitlin and myself agreed that when the scaffold is taken away we will get a real idea of how the house will look.  It will be a day to look forward to and a day to remember.  As we approached the turn for Nicholls Road we agreed not to look across at the back of the house so as not to spoil the surprise, it's also a dangerous thing to do on a main road.  Anyway, we avoided looking at the house as we drove through Coytrahen.  As usual we turned left at the pub, which is up for sale incidentally, and drew up to the front of the house.

As it happened, the day had come.  The scaffold had been taken down and the house could be seen in all its (unfinished) glory.

Wonderful.

Right hand side of the house, a lot of the features that I have blogged about previously can now be seen together, as a house.  The stone wall will be brought up to cover the two block pillars you can see.

The left hand side of the house.  The drive way will stretch from the edge of the garage to the top of the steps.

The side of the house.  The rendered finish is a thing of beauty.  It will look better when there is no plastic flapping about in the wind.

When stood above the garage, in the rafters, you can see out of the window.  This is that view.  It will probably be a better view when the builders take their toilet away.

This photo is captivating, I am not sure why.  The different materials that meet and work with each other, the angles and the lines.  The architects vision is possibly captured in this photo.  Or maybe it is just a photo of the roof and the sky.  Up to you.

Finally, our house, no scaffold.

This post could well end up being the one that gives me the second most amount of pleasure.  Thanks for reading.

Sean "McCloud" Rice.

Pipes of peace

Some good stuff happening now, not least being able to see the first fix wiring and plumbing drawing to an end.  The amount of wire and pipework to be seen is baffling.  Source of wire/cable/pipe are:

• Underfloor heating - cable for thermostats
• Underfloor heating - water supply
• Piping for 1 bath, 3 showers, 3 towel radiators, 4 sinks, 4 toilets
• Lighting inside and outside
• A laundry room
• A utility room
• Ethernet for wired network/internet in most rooms
• Electric sockets inside and outside
• Deck lights
• Water supply from the rain water harvesting
• Electric supply for cooker

I might have missed something.

In terms of cable colour:

• White is for the thermostats for the under floor heating
• Grey is electric
• Black is TV
• Purple is ethernet

The photos below give an idea of how much cable is hidden inside a house.

Above you can see some of the wiring running above the garage in the rafters.

Above the kitchen more cabling supplying power for the lighting/

Some of the above is for the kitchen appliances, this is the site of the fridge and the over.  Some of this cable is headed downstairs.

Caitlin volunteered to be in the picture so the scale could be appreciated.  The kitchen and dining room ceilings are spectacular and it will take some doing to work out what to do with them.  The photo is taken from the cantilever room looking back in, the opening at the far end is the door from the kitchen out to the garage.

Wiring in the cantilever room, you can also see where the builders are trying to keep the weather out in order to carry on working.

Caitlin again demonstrating the scale of the walls supporting the middle of the house.  This is the front living room, fire place and chimney breast can be seen.  Power, arial and ethernet are on the chimney breast ready for the tv.

The red bricks are reclaimed and will be the inside of the fire place.

There will be no satellite dish, so no cables need for satellite.  They are a blot, I don't like Murdoch and the streaming is the future.  All that said, I might have to eat my words if the internet connection is poor.

Another snap of the living room taken from the hallway.  Again, the height of the ceilings becomes clear.

From right to left - the toilet, node zero (or less interestingly the coat cupboard) where the network meets the internet, the living room door and the kitchen door.  All taken from the top stairs.

Again, because my gast is still flabbered, another shot of the ceiling.  This time in the hallway.  So much wall space and so little inspiration.

Moving downstairs, more cabling that will disappear when the ceiling is done.

Ellie's bathroom taking shape.

Above, Caitlins bathoom.

It's amazing how much lighter downstairs is becoming as the plasterboard starts get put up.

Above, the cabling and wiring for the laundry room.

A maze of pipes feeding the downstairs bathrooms.  Once the floors are in place this lot will never be seen again.

Standing in the master bedroom looking through the dressing room in to the en suite.  Again, cabling for a wall mounted tv can be seen.  Also, the blocks on the floor are actually off cuts from the insulation being used in the ceiling (deck above this room) and will be used in the floor.

The master en suite, specifically where the shower will be sited.

Today may have been the best visit for some time for 2 reasons.  Firstly it looked like a house and secondly....you will need to read the next blog post.