Building a new house

The forecast for last Friday was pretty poor, with named storm Babette threatening much of the country with flooding. It's important to put the relatively minor problems it brought to us into perspective: elsewhere in the UK a handful of people lost their lives in flooding incidents, and very many lost possessions and the use of their homes for months ahead. We woke early to the sound of rain drumming on the skylights, and outside Andy the stonemason arrived as daylight broke, quickly assessed the situation, and within 5 minutes left. I then discovered that in the dining area our apples and oranges were floating in the fruit bowl, with water dripping from the ceiling around a light fitting onto the dining room table, something that years ago happened to the same table in our Heaton Moor home when a tap washer failed in the bathroom above. Having searched out buckets and pans, and dropped the light fitting to provide an easy route for the water, I had to find some rectangular contai...

It's 6 months since my last post, and 16 months since we moved in. We always knew that we would have to wait a while for things like the stone boundary walls and the woodburning stove - a combination of waiting for much-in-demand craftspeople and supply delays. Now we have a few things happening again. We have gates - galvanised steel gates made locally and, in the case of the ones at the front of the house, hung on posts which will be enclosed by stone boundary walls. Closure fixings for the side gates are still to be fitted. We also have our woodburning stove, though it is still awaiting installation. We know that our underfloor heating is so efficient that we will probably never actually need to use the woodburner, but it will be there for occasional entertainment, as an additional focal point in the room and as possible back-up in case of a long power-cut. One concern we had last winter on the few days when the external temperature dropped significantly below zero was for the ...