Staircase to Heaven?

Ah, yes, the staircase! 

You may think I have ideas above my station, but I'd always wanted a beautiful stone, winding staircase, with metal balustrading and slender Georgian handrail.  And so that's what we're trying to achieve, although it will be no mean feat if we manage to do it on budget.  The staircase up to the second floor will be in wood, but with the same balustrading to continue the theme through and link both together visually.

Sadly, one of my suppliers, a creative and talented metal craftsman, who was going to do the balustrading for us, has bowed out of the project.  We're therefore relying on one of Steve Osborne's suppliers, to come up with the goods and I do have a concern that they won't be able to come up with exactly what we want. We shall see ... watch this space!

At the moment, a wooden structure has been erected, onto which concrete will be poured to form the stairs and this will then be clad in stone.  Again, another worry I have, having visited a show house built by another local and very well known property developer in the area (no names, in case I get sued!), is that because some of the steps will be curved, the stone will have to be cut to fit and it looked really ugly the way the developer had done it in the show house.  I have voiced my concern to Andy, but he is confident that the supplier will do a good job and that the joins will not be visible.  I use the same stone supplier and they are very good, so will be keeping a close eye on what's going on!

Paul and I visit site on an almost daily basis and every day there is a little more to look at.  With Christmas almost upon us, it feels like such a long time ago that we were decorating our tree in a house that doesn't exist anymore!

Henry steps up to the mark at the end of term!

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions!

It's been a month of decision making for Paul and me.  With only block walls and concrete floors as a guide, it can be difficult to make choices so early on in the build, such as bathroom layouts in the roof, when you're not quite sure what the angle of pitch is going to look like.  It's an endless balancing act, trying to achieve the highest quality in the overall product and design, against the inevitable cost that comes with it.

We've finally chosen our kitchen supplier, after having worked with two different companies on the project.  It's been a tough call between the two, as they are both extremely good quality brands.  Alex Beaugeard, from Mark Wilkinson Kitchens, is my contact there and a designer with creative flair, who I've known for a while.  Alex knew that it has always been a dream of mine to own one of their kitchens.  At the end of the day, however, we decided to go with Extreme Design and my contact, Jamie Harding, as logistically it was perhaps more practical (Steve Osborne is using Extreme Design for the house at the bottom of the garden and one across the road which he is also building).  I'd given both Alex and Jamie the same brief, so the designs were more or less identical - I'm going for a 'New England' look, which I hope will prove both timeless and appropriate in either a modern or more traditional setting.  Jamie is great to work with and extremely enthusiastic about the project.  As a passionate cook, the appliances were as important to me to get right as the kitchen furniture itself and I've opted for Sub-Zero and Wolf products.  As well as looking beautiful, the kitchen will be a real work-horse, so investing in some heavy duty appliances will hopefully pay off.

Other decisions now made include external doors and windows (although the front door supplier has not yet been chosen), which should be installed in January, the audio visual specification (we will get services installed for certain elements we can't afford to do at the moment, but may want to do later, finances permitting) and I'm currently trying to bring our sanitaryware quote down to within budget, which is not proving easy, as the things I like always seem to be too expensive!!

Bricks, Mortar .... and Shortbread!

How do you ensure your builders tackle their work with gusto and do a top notch job?  You bake them copious quantities of shortbread, flapjacks, triple chocolate muffins, carrot cake, lemon drizzle cake ...

Spaghetti Junction!

The electricians were first through the door and are now most of the way through their first fix. I popped up to London to visit John Cullen in the King's Road in London for some lighting inspiration. It's a great showroom to visit, where you can see different scene settings and the staff are extremely helpful. I took away some samples to show the head electrician on our project.  Choosing the right fittings and the positioning of them is key. One of my pet hates is seeing 'runway' lighting strips in ceilings. So many new builds seem to have this and often it's overkill. Lighting should be there to create mood and drama, as well as provide good ambient and task lighting. 

Two very good books on lighting, which I've pored over are The Lighting Bible and Perfect Lighting.  Both of these contain great ideas and recipes for lighting different  scenes and objects and are well illustrated.


Even choosing the right sockets and light switches has been important to me, as I wanted to find something elegant, that would stand the test of time and not be too commercial looking.  Do you go with chrome/brass with black or white inserts?  I decided on white inserts, as most of the flex from table lamps will be white and they will blend in better with the wall colour.  However, if you were going with dark coloured walls, then black may be the way to go. I would prefer to go with the screwless plates, but this would blow the budget, so will have to bite the bullet on that one.

The plumbers and carpenters are also working their way through now.

That's Life!

Well, it's been a long time since my last blog and so much has happened. Apologies for the delay, dear reader (if there is anyone still out there who hasn't lost the will to live, waiting for an update!). I'm afraid day to day life has got somewhat in the way of my literary ambitions.

I came down with a bad chest infection, which lasted a good three weeks and have been trying to play catch up with clients ever since, in the run up to Christmas. Seems everyone wants furniture/curtains/blinds, etc. in before the festive season, so work has been pretty manic recently.


However, thanks in no small way to Jon, our Site Manager, I'm back on track with bits and pieces to report re progress on the build.

Externally, the house is looking good, but we are assured that there is still a long way to go and things will only get busier. The majority of the brickwork is now completed and the timber roof structure is up. The roofers have insulated between the rafters and the breathable felt membrane has been fixed down with batten. This is an important stage to have reached for the builders, because we are now dry inside (hooray! just looking out the window as I write, I don't think I've ever seen so much snow!). Work has therefore been able to commence internally.

Taking Shape

The internal walls on the ground floor are up, so we can walk around the rooms and imagine how they're going to look when finished.

A Job Well Done

I'd like to mention Gary here, our brickie foreman. A significant part of Gary's job is to work out the exact positioning of the walls and instruct his bricklayers accordingly. He has to be one step ahead of his team all the time, ensuring that he knows the orientation of all the walls and openings, heights of windows and doors, position of stonework, inclusion of damp trays and any other details pertinent to the build. He has to relay all this information to the bricklayers before they start to ensure that none of these details is missed.

At the same time, Gary has to keep production moving smoothly and quickly, because every bricklayer (or trowel as they're known in brickie lingo) is expected to lay about 400 bricks or 200 blocks a day for a house of this size. So the more trowels on site, the more pressure Gary comes under to stay ahead. To quote Jon, "if mistakes are made, then time is lost rectifying them and if the momentum is not kept up, then Gary's company would not earn a margin on the job and he would be quickly replaced. Not an enviable position to be in."

I'm happy to report that Gary is doing a fantastic job, aided and abetted by his team of trowels!

Holiday Pics!

We're on holiday! I'm sitting in the lounge of a hotel that has internet, so that I can access e-mails, etc. and find out what's happening on site (sad, really, I suppose, as I should be by the pool on a sun lounger, reading the latest Dan Brown novel, but instead, I'm agog to see the latest pictures Jon has sent, one or two of which I will attach to this post).

According to Jon, "Gary has reached the top of the second lift and the first floor steels have been fitted. Gary was meticulous in the positioning of the padstones, the concrete pads that the steels sit on. Where they normally allow a 10-20mm tolerance, they are actually close to millimetre perfect on both height and lateral position. This will result in a very flat structural first floor, which is not necessarily critical, as the level is always corrected in the screed, but it's better practice as it avoids shallow areas in the screed, which could potentially lead to cracking."

All the scaffolding has been lifted to within 750mm of first floor slab to avoid the fitters falling from a height. Osborne insisted that all the rooms were swept to allow for airbags to be inflated on the ground floor, to act as a fall arrest for the floor fitters.

Scaling the Dizzy Heights

I recently took a fellow interior designer friend around the site and under Jon's supervision, we scaled the scaffolding and walked around the property, looking down into the rooms. Both internal and external walls are going up fast now. By the time we get back from our summer holiday, no doubt we'll see a huge difference. The first floor will be in!

We've Turned A Corner!

The quoins (corners of the building that stand out from the rest of the brickwork) are going up. Gary, the head brickie, spent an afternoon of his spare time, drawing out the design of the quoins, to ensure that long bricks met with short bricks and vice versa, as you can see from the photograph.

Frame structures, showing where the windows will eventually go in, have been installed, so that brickwork can be erected around the framework, thus leaving the openings for the windows.

The fireplace in the hallway has posed an interesting dilemma. Because the house is on three storeys, we've been told by Osborne's technical architect that on no account can we have a gas/open fire. We've been advised that our only option is to go for a glass-fronted fireplace. I didn't like the sound of that and so Paul and I spoke to Yemisi, our architect, the borough council, and my main fireplace supplier, for confirmation. Whilst it is not illegal to install a gas fire, it would be inadvisable. A certain amount of time has to be allowed for anyone on the top floor to be able to vacate the house safely, in the event of a fire. So there is it. Jon, our Project Manager, called me to say that he had spoken to one of Osborne Developments' suppliers, Marble Hill Fireplaces, and that his contact there, Robert, had been extremely helpful and had convinced Jon that glass was the way to go - in an extremely stylish manner!

I called Marble Hill, got in the car and drove to Twickenham, to the company's showroom. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of the cheap, tacky, glass front I had envisaged, the fireplaces looked smart and very classy, at home both in a modern as well as a traditional surround. I left Robert, feeling that we wouldn't, after all, have to compromise on either looks or safety. Of course, these things come at a cost! (Well, there's a surprise!) Robert has since sent over a quote to Andy who, I understand, took a sharp intake of breath on reading the quote. I don't know what the costings are yet, but will obviously get my supplier to do a comparative quote.

There seems to be a building bug going around! My mate, Jane Blake, who has moved to the USA with her family, is doing a new build which looks amazing! Like me, she's keeping a blog of the process. Interesting how the film, Julie and Julia, has brought out the bloggers in all of us!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a problem working out how to get photos properly positioned on the blog! And I don't know what half the buttons and gizmos are for. I will have to spend some time working it all out, but am so busy at the moment trying to keep clients happy, as well as involvement with our build.

Other friends, the Tates, just down the road in Wraysbury, are also building. They're roughly at the same stage as us at the moment and we've visited each other's sites to look at progress and swap stories.

We had an update meeting on Friday, just before Andy left to go on holiday. Stone sills are just going in now. The staircase design still needs to be finalised and Andy said he would get detailed drawings drawn up, so that we can get exact costings for the stone and balustrading.

I walked around the rooms with Paul, imagining the finished product. Funny how some days the space looks small and then other days it looks much larger! We were told this would happen.

We went over to a showhouse at the weekend, which is a little smaller than our build, but looked positively huge to us!

Rising Damp - I Don't Think So!

Concrete slabs now laid, with SVP's (soil vent pipes) and drain pipes in position.

Steve is taking no chances with the damp proofing course. The builders have put in 3 DPC's at different levels, which is great news for us. It's another indication of a good quality build.

Three steels have been erected, so we can now see how high the ground floor ceilings are going to be. The builders are also beginning to position the internal blockwork, delineating the layout of the rooms. The build is slowly starting to come alive!

Framework shows where the windows and doors will be and the bricks are laid around these, so that later on the actual windows and doors can be installed in these spaces.

Off To A Good Start!

Looks like it's going to be a good, solid build. Foundations are 1.8m deep. External brickwork will be 4" thick, with a 4" cavity and 6" thick internal block work. Engineering bricks are used in some areas, rather than concrete bricks, as they can take more load.

The Bricks

Our budget didn't allow for the brick we wanted. I drove to various parts of the country, looking at houses built in different bricks. In the end, I kept coming back to the one we'd liked all along. It's called Old Clamp Blend by the York Handmade Company and we'd driven past a house nearby early on and taken a great liking to it.

Not knowing what the brick was, I took a gamble and wrote a letter to the owner of the house, asking if they could tell me. It was the start of a friendship, borne out of mutual interests, which I hope will endure over time.

The owners couldn't have been more helpful. I was invited round, given a tour of their beautiful home, coffee and lots of information on the suppliers they used, as they had built the house themselves.

So, decision made. Over budget already, even before we start! However, Paul and I agreed that the exterior is as important as the interior - it's the first indication a person has, driving up to the house, of the quality of the build, so it has to be right. I can see I'm going to be my own worst client! Somewhere along the line, I will have to come in under budget on other choices, to get back on track.

Going, Going, Gone!

Gone Walkies!

It didn't take someone long to help themselves to a lovely old urn that the builders had put to one side and which was going to be a focal point in the new garden design! It was extremely heavy, so I can only hope that whoever took it has done their back in! At least there's nothing else left to take, as we're starting with a clean sheet.

That was Monday. Today is Tuesday. No sign of our demolition men. Another call from the builders. There's a bit of a delay and they won't be turning up for a couple of days. Seems we're at the mercy of British Gas, who have to ensure that our supply is safely turned off before the building is torn down.

The days slip by and then just as I'm beginning to wonder where I put my camera, some men appear with heavy duty trucks and equipment and we're off!

Interestingly, I expected the house to be demolished from top to bottom, but as you can see from the photograph, the front section was sliced away first, rather like looking into a doll's house.

D-Day (Demolition Day)

Okay, it's 9.00 am and there's no sign of them. I've arrived, camera in hand, to take photos of the house as it's demolished, but there are no demolition men on site. The place is deserted. What's going on?

We get a call from the builders. Sorry, but it will be tomorrow. The tension/excitement, call it what you will, mounts.