Giles and Paula Add a Room Onto the Side of The House

[neph93]

@Steffen:

The Artisan Wabi-Sabi (I know what that means now  :D) approach you choose is quite cool and from the little I know you very fitting.

If you ever get over to Gosport and see Paula and Giles’ house you’ll realise just how fitting it is. The entire place is a feast for the senses.

[steelworker]

The Delft tiles are beautiful!

[Seul]

Yeah I love those Delftse tegels…

[Giles]

I think this one is my fave…..

[neph93]

I can see why. The maritime theme and corner details are very beguiling….

[Giles]

Precisely…..

[Seul]

I like the tiny party hat…

[Graeme]

Surely the tiles should be Delft Blauw, not Delft Groen!

I do like them, though.

[Giles]

Delft tiles are obviously traditionally blue, but I believe that they do also exist historically in maroon, green and polychrome (whether or not that is true, I like the green and we already have blue and maroon elsewhere in the house and the green will define the colour pallet of the kitchen)

[Graeme]

I used to see original tiles in antique shops when I lived in Delft. One that always amused me depicted a cat eating a mouse.

This mermaid dates from around 1750, and is black, rather than blue.

Whilst this one is from 1600 to 1630, and is multicoloured. However, it does come from Rotterdam, so maybe they didn't do things right there.

The green is good, and it'll match those boots of yours. That's surely got to be an important interior design decision, right?

[ROman]

^ It's all looking good.

[Giles]

It's a glamorous life this construction lark…

[Giles]

First lift goes up…..

[Giles]

Yep that looks really lovely, congrats…..

[Giles]

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, internal block work is nearing completion.

The rear wall is at coping stone height, the left and right are ready for the steels and joists.

[Chris]

Looks like solid progress there, Giles.  When's the projected end?

[Giles]

I don't do projections - IWHWIH…...

I have some logistical challenges ahead of me, all based around trade availability..

Brickwork can't be completed until gauged arches are made, and I could not order them until the actual door and window sizings were known

Steels should go in tomorrow (unless I need a crane)

Once steels are in, I need to get joists and inner roof made (can start that without external walls being complete).  Meeting a man about that today

I need to render the external south wall, no idea who I will get to do that.

Once outer walls are complete, I can get outer roof laid

Then I need doors and windows made (did not know what size to make until brickwork started), meeting a man about them later today

Once it's weatherproof, I can knock whole through to existing house (18" solid brick wall) - Paula is looking forward to the dust.

Then plumbing, electrics, laying floor, painting, installing kitchen etc etc etc....

[louisbosco]

wow. it's coming along well. i'm looking forward to seeing this. or rather, what's been completed by then..

[Steffen]

What kind of Blocks are those on the Inside ?

Didn´t you want to give the whole searching for People and organizing Stuff to an Architect or is that not how its done in the UK ?

[Giles]

The blocks are 100mm thick high-density concrete.

I could have let the architect run the job, then it would have cost me 15% of the total price to have a prick that does not really know what I want, trying to up the contract price so I would have to pay more….

And.  He would have wanted to give the job to a "mate", who would have been busy, so could have taken forever.

And.  I like finding the best at what they do, myself.

And. I love understanding exactly what is going on.

And. I'm a control freak.

And. I actually like having only myself to blame for any fuck ups....

All sad, but true.