Week 12 - Brick detailing and preparation for first floor

The mild  weather and lack of rain this week has been great for the build to progress.

The builders have concentrated on the brick detailing above the windows and garage doors, our chimney, the brick panel front feature and placing the lintels ready for the floor to be put in next week.

The scaffolding has also started to go up.

We love our woodburner so we are really pleased that we are having one in our new house as well.  The chimney vent has been cut out in the main wall and the chimney construction work has also started.

We spent yesterday finalising kitchen designs - the finished design from Sherwin Hall looks like this, and we are also awaiting another quote for a similar design from Astley Kitchens.

We are really pleased with it.  The front bookcase will face onto the family room so it will make it more homely by adding some books/photos to it.  

It's time to also start thinking about bathrooms.   A sales manager at work recommended that we visit Pochin Bathrooms in Leicester and I have to say that I can see why he did.  They have some beautiful bathroom furniture so we are going back in two weeks for them to build some plans for us.  Sherwin Hall are also looking at other bathrooms as well.  We are loving this design for the family bathroom, particularly the floor tiles.

Next week the upstairs floor is being installed on both plots and then in a couple of weeks, the build will be up to roof level.  That will mean asking for another stage of our mortgage, which hopefully will be stress free as I am now not working for Dad.

Day 78 - Mum and Dad's House/Kitchen Designs

I write this on a dark Sunday evening with our log burner keeping us warm and cosy.  This week, I started a new job at Triton Showers in Nuneaton, which is further away from my old job, so it's been dark when I come home and I can't see the houses.  Although, I haven't actually missed that much on our house as there has been a lot of rain which has frustrated the builders and they have been concentrating on my parent's house. 

Their house now has full walls downstairs, the joists have started to go up and on Friday, the scaffolding arrived.  It's starting to look really good.

The kitchen/hall/utility room/study

Back of kitchen with bi fold doors position

Lounge with window at front

Garage - Dad's favourite room :)

Mum and Dad's house from front

Mum and Dad's house from back

Dave and I have been working on our kitchen and bathroom layouts.  We spent Saturday morning at Sherwin Hall in Leicester and Astley Kitchens are also working on a design for us.  

This is the design from Sherwin Hall and the Astley Kitchen one is very similar.  I have persuaded Dave that he doesn't need a red wine fridge so the fridge on the end is just for white wine.  

It also looks like we won't be keeping our American fridge/freezer - and that Mum and Dad will use in it their new kitchen.  Instead we are having integral units around the ovens.  

Dave's favourite is the James Bond style extractor fan that appears from the breakfast bar when you turn it on.  Both designs are work in progress - we do need to have them finalised by mid December though.

We have the first bathroom layouts as well so we need to do more work on these and the styles that we like.  When we get these, I'll post them on the blog.  That's it for this week - hopefully there will be some more building work on our house next week to show you.

Ann Marie