Hillcroft - the wilderness months
So old Hillcroft was demolished and we were faced with an empty space, with things looking far bigger than before.
Sometime around then we parted ways with our architect, and had to find someone else to continue with our detailed design from where they'd left off... thankfully this came in the form of Peter, the architect who works with our timber frame firm. Phew... detailed drawings started to appear. We started to deal directly with the structural engineer. The substructure was designed and drawn up. And over Easter we moved the big mound of earth left by the demolition firm, hiring both a digger and dumper and shifting it to the top of the garden to make a new flattened off area.
But there has been so much more to do to get to the point of being able to start - much in the form of "discharging planning conditions". Firstly a SAP report to prove the house will be sufficiently energy efficient. Then new drawings to show details of our external materials plus various other bits. And a plan to show how we wouldn't have a steep driveway. Nobody else was willing to take this on, so we had to do it ourselves, which involved spending several weekends modifying the original architect's CAD drawings (and learning how to use CAD to be able to do so) and spending hours on the phone to the council staff to find out what we were supposed to do. And getting actual samples of actual materials, and give these to the council. Some wood cladding, some bricks, a bit of zinc for the roof. I've learnt loads about bricks.
And a load of other very tedious things to sort, all of which seemed to involve a lot of money, and all of which took weeks and weeks, to ensure those important boxes were ticked. Sorting the self-build mortgage involved more hoops of fire to jump through. Getting quotes for parts of the build we needed has been in many cases painful, with everything costing more or being more complex than we'd have hoped. But eventually we got to a point where we had not only the conditions discharged but also finances sorted, and we could actually officially start on site. Suddenly the pain started to lift a bit.
Less tedious but still nothing to do with actually building the actual house - we've also had to setup the site, with welfare facilities for our contractors including a cabin and loo. And an electrical supply, and a lot of health and safety stuff (it's called CDM). But the struggle over the winter with the metal cabin paid off - we now have a cabin complete with storage, notice boards, electrics, a table, chairs, kettle, microwave and a big stock of tea, coffee and biscuits.
And the highlight being the site loo - flushing and on mains drainage. Water supply and sink plumbed in by Andy, cleaned and spruced up by me.
And it's an avocado loo. Avocado's are trendy right now aren't they?
So old Hillcroft was demolished and we were faced with an empty space, with things looking far bigger than before.
Sometime around then we parted ways with our architect, and had to find someone else to continue with our detailed design from where they'd left off... thankfully this came in the form of Peter, the architect who works with our timber frame firm. Phew... detailed drawings started to appear. We started to deal directly with the structural engineer. The substructure was designed and drawn up. And over Easter we moved the big mound of earth left by the demolition firm, hiring both a digger and dumper and shifting it to the top of the garden to make a new flattened off area.
But there has been so much more to do to get to the point of being able to start - much in the form of "discharging planning conditions". Firstly a SAP report to prove the house will be sufficiently energy efficient. Then new drawings to show details of our external materials plus various other bits. And a plan to show how we wouldn't have a steep driveway. Nobody else was willing to take this on, so we had to do it ourselves, which involved spending several weekends modifying the original architect's CAD drawings (and learning how to use CAD to be able to do so) and spending hours on the phone to the council staff to find out what we were supposed to do. And getting actual samples of actual materials, and give these to the council. Some wood cladding, some bricks, a bit of zinc for the roof. I've learnt loads about bricks.
And a load of other very tedious things to sort, all of which seemed to involve a lot of money, and all of which took weeks and weeks, to ensure those important boxes were ticked. Sorting the self-build mortgage involved more hoops of fire to jump through. Getting quotes for parts of the build we needed has been in many cases painful, with everything costing more or being more complex than we'd have hoped. But eventually we got to a point where we had not only the conditions discharged but also finances sorted, and we could actually officially start on site. Suddenly the pain started to lift a bit.
Less tedious but still nothing to do with actually building the actual house - we've also had to setup the site, with welfare facilities for our contractors including a cabin and loo. And an electrical supply, and a lot of health and safety stuff (it's called CDM). But the struggle over the winter with the metal cabin paid off - we now have a cabin complete with storage, notice boards, electrics, a table, chairs, kettle, microwave and a big stock of tea, coffee and biscuits.
And the highlight being the site loo - flushing and on mains drainage. Water supply and sink plumbed in by Andy, cleaned and spruced up by me.
And it's an avocado loo. Avocado's are trendy right now aren't they?
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(I remember my Nan being so proud of her avocado suite and decades later seeing an actual avocado 🥑 for the first time!)