Major Milestone | Marsh Flatts Farm Self Build Diary

Week 42, Day 5:

Today’s automated WordPress posting didn’t work because the Broadband link was down at 16:00 through being moved over to VDSL / FTTC
Various significant milestones today:
- It’s exactly 10 months since building work started, meaning today was the original forecast completion date; it’s currently expected to take about another month to make the house habitable and a bit longer than that before the landscaping and decorating is complete
- The plasterers completed the last room, marking the end of their continuous 11 weeks of work
  - Mostly a two-person team assisted by one or two others on occasions, so something like 25 weeks of effort
  - A really top-quality job including some difficult areas – especially the inside of the curved roof (which looks amazing, even inside the storage cupboards)
  - I’d highly recommend GC Interfinish to anyone wanting quality plastering in the East Midlands
- All the scaffolding on the south side got dismantled ready for the installation of the solar shading next week, meaning that today’s time-lapse photo looks a lot different from yesterday’s
- Thanks to some better weather, the majority of the zinc got installed on the north roof, with just a few sections left to complete – and then the fascias, down-pipes etc.
- The kitchen worktops arrived and the sink worktop and splash-back is finished but there was a mishap fine-tuning the cut-out for the flush-fitting induction hob and the worktop for the island will have to be re-made
  - I think the mid-grey colour (Silestone Cemento) looks a bit odd against the bare plaster, the blue protective film over the gloss-finish cabinet fronts and the cardboard protecting the polished concrete floor but it should look better when everything is finished

Week 42, Day 5

Zinc roofing mostly complete

Worktop and splash-back for kitchen sink units

View from the south-east

View from the south-west

Week 3, Day 1 – Foundation concrete:

On some days, the team focus their energies on things that aren’t particularly visible: researching options for improving the design, comparing prices from different suppliers, arranging deliveries or completing intricate preparations for later steps. On other days the progress is a lot more apparent; today was one of those other days…
Following all of the preparation of the foundation trenches the concrete got poured today, using some big bits of plant:
- A concrete boom pump for easy access to the trenches at the south of the house, over 15m from the driveway.
  - The thing I found most impressive was the degree of control the operator had over the position of the delivery pipe, using the remote control. He was able to manoeuvre the pipe through the network of trenches, barely touching the sides. I suspect that was as much to do with the skill of the operator as with the capability of the hydraulic control system.
- A total of 7 concrete deliveries, roughly 55 cubic metres in all.

One of the hourly snapshots from the time-lapse camera caught the first concrete delivery.