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.