I've written stuff about this house, its history and our plans before - from the decision to move in, to the work in the roof, the living in shit years, the bathrooms... But I've only alluded to the last big chunk. So here I am, writing about the last big chunk. Because, suddenly, we find that we are now pretty committed to seeing it through. We have a 3 tonne digger in the garden. Actually, we have no garden. We have a building site.
We set out on this last phase over a year ago, by way of a conversation with Kevin at KJC, a chance encounter resulting from me seeing someone recommend him on Nextdoor and thinking he might be a good chap to help us develop our ideas. And we didn't really bother going anywhere else, because we liked the way he thought about what we wanted to achieve, his energy, his disparaging attitude to most domestic building projects. Also, he is slowly redeveloping the entire Carshalton Park environs and has won awards for the highest density of billboards in a suburban area. He drinks tea by the bucketful and is really good at swearing. We couldn't have asked for more.
Kev has our project on his site, although the plans have moved on somewhat since he put it there and he hasn't updated them. Because he is really good at swearing but not at updating his website. You can watch a video of a slightly more up-to-date version of the model below, on the left. Or, if you want to play about with it, click on the '3D Model Viewer ' link on the right, below and wait a while for it to load up in your web browser. You can access the controls to manipulate it on the right, once it's loaded.
We set out on this last phase over a year ago, by way of a conversation with Kevin at KJC, a chance encounter resulting from me seeing someone recommend him on Nextdoor and thinking he might be a good chap to help us develop our ideas. And we didn't really bother going anywhere else, because we liked the way he thought about what we wanted to achieve, his energy, his disparaging attitude to most domestic building projects. Also, he is slowly redeveloping the entire Carshalton Park environs and has won awards for the highest density of billboards in a suburban area. He drinks tea by the bucketful and is really good at swearing. We couldn't have asked for more.
Kev has our project on his site, although the plans have moved on somewhat since he put it there and he hasn't updated them. Because he is really good at swearing but not at updating his website. You can watch a video of a slightly more up-to-date version of the model below, on the left. Or, if you want to play about with it, click on the '3D Model Viewer ' link on the right, below and wait a while for it to load up in your web browser. You can access the controls to manipulate it on the right, once it's loaded.
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We've actually played around with the internals quite a lot since KJC produced this model and I buggered about with it to try and convey some of the detail of what we wanted. But, in any case, it looks nothing like this at the moment. At the time of writing, this is what it looks like:
Kevin ran a tender for us. And after lots of meetings and discussions and negotiation and cogitation, we commissioned Tom Power of Tom Power Design to come and build our vision for us. Tom was massively enthusiastic about the project, which is mostly what sold him to us. He is also an expert in variation management and runs a firm full of slackers who have taken two weeks just to knock a load of shit down. He even employs his own family so they can turn up and charge me a load more money.
I'm joking, obviously. After two weeks of frenzied demolition activity, the footings are going in right outside my window as I type. We are very happy so far. But there are 13 weeks of a 15 week project to go and ample time for everyone to fall out. Which is what I'm told often happens. Not seeing any sign of it yet to be honest.
Nothing focuses the mind more than seeing a three-tonne digger turn up in your back garden and start tearing the crap out of everything (my Dad's ponds are GONE! :-) ). Some early pictures of 'knocking shit down' below. Inevitably, I will be writing more on this topic in the coming weeks...
I'm joking, obviously. After two weeks of frenzied demolition activity, the footings are going in right outside my window as I type. We are very happy so far. But there are 13 weeks of a 15 week project to go and ample time for everyone to fall out. Which is what I'm told often happens. Not seeing any sign of it yet to be honest.
Nothing focuses the mind more than seeing a three-tonne digger turn up in your back garden and start tearing the crap out of everything (my Dad's ponds are GONE! :-) ). Some early pictures of 'knocking shit down' below. Inevitably, I will be writing more on this topic in the coming weeks...
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