Build Me a Love Shack

A Little Film of the Love Shack!

2011-09-12T17:03:00.000+01:00

We won a RIBA award!

2011-06-20T11:27:00.005+01:00

A rather belated Mexican wave for us - the Shack won one of the 5 regional (NW) awards granted by the Royal Institute of British Architects. It's the only domestic house on the list, and has also been shortlisted for the prestigious Manser Medal.
Even better, our other local project by Sutherland Hussey Architects at Lawson Park - also won a RIBA - 2 out of 5 ain't bad for Adam and his brother, our architect, Charlie ;-)

Race-y chair

2011-01-31T17:08:00.003Z

We have just bought the Shack a very nice present in the form of a classic chair and footstool by British designer Ernest Race - the Heron (archive photo on left), a classic which was in production until 1961. Unlike the photo, ours has an ingenious additional neck cushion suspended from a lead-weighted ' strap' that goes over the top of the chair. And boy is it comfy.....
For lots of lovely similar-era seating you might like this site....

RIBA!

2011-01-20T17:26:00.002Z

Apparently the Shack has been entered for the 2011 RIBA Awards - wish it luck! I see one of the criteria for the judging is 'delight'. We've definitely got that covered.

Shop Revival

2011-01-20T17:24:00.002Z

The local shop,Sawrey Stores, has re-opened, hurrah.
Not for very long now that it's winter, but the new folk seem very nice. Long may it survive.

Visitors of all kinds

2010-09-17T09:16:00.002+01:00

Very pleased to say that both Cumbria Green Build Festival tours yesterday were fully booked and we welcomed a wide-ranging group of would-be self-builders, professionals and young architecture fans.
To top off the good times we say our red squirrel in the garden this morning, for the first time in over a year!

Come & Visit Us

2010-08-23T11:28:00.002+01:00

...As part of the Cumbria Green Build Festival, on Sept. 16th 2010
Full info here on the free event
PS we are also in Grand Designs magazine this month...

Some local 'charm'

2009-11-19T11:49:00.004Z

There I was lamenting the sudden closure of the Sawrey Stores, a valiant village shop that for several years supplied us with milk, odds and ends on our way to and from the Shack.....
I admired the lady who ran it and advised all our guests to use the shop rather than the Hawkshead alternatives nearby.

And then I happened across her last blog entry, which offers no explanation for the closure but does include a rather sarcastic snipe at the Shack and ourselves!

"Funny how there was no mention of their plans to let it out, not sure what the council planners might think, especially as there is such a shortage of affordable housing in this area"

Sadly the blogger has disabled comments and so we're unable to respond directly to her, so I'll just put her right on a few things here instead:

In our first planning application we offered to restrict the occupancy to local-only, as we too have concerns about affordable housing and were prepared to put our money where our mouth was: the LDNPA rejected this restriction

Incredibly, some of the most vociferous local objections to our proposed plans for the Shack were that - I quote - "they plan to live in the house instead of it being used as a holiday let"!
These objections came from 'locals' who for some reason sought to maintain the very situation that has probably contributed to the closure of the Sawrey Stores - i.e. few permanent residents

We finally got the Shack's planning permission after 5 long hard and expensive years of battling - understandably some of our domestic circumstances shifted in the meantime and we in the end lived in the Shack for 6 months

We are now obliged to live in a nearby tied house linked to one of our jobs - this is a very common situation here in the Lakes. The Shack remains our only owned home and one that we use and cherish a great deal

I don't need to tell anyone reading this that starting a new-build in a recession means making a few harsh decisions about how to keep your head above water - renting the house out sometimes being one of them

We dedicated a sizable portion of the Shack's building budget to using local suppliers and companies (often at much greater expense than available alternatives) , and therefore feel that the project supported the local economy as much as possible
---
The shopkeeper's comments of course show how complex a rural, tourist-driven economy is, and also - sadly - that we make assumptions about our neighbours' circumstances based on presumed greed and dishonesty. This isn't unrelated - the seasonal 'boom and bust' of the tourism calendar means that quality, ethics and consistency are relegated in favour of whatever-it-takes-to-make-a-quick-buck (before my month of recovery in the Maldives) , and the sheer exhaustion of customer service at the cliff-face of visitors in their thousands takes its toll on people's faith in human nature.

We struggled a great deal with the principles of letting out the Shack and I used to think that in an ideal world of course we'd be rich enough to keep the place entirely for ourselves. But now, after 6 months of guests, I've now changed my position as I have been won over by the appreciation of our visitors. After the pain of the planning and build it's extremely gratifying to hear feedback on how the design of the house works for people, what makes it special and how the experience of staying at the Shack can be healing, cathartic, eye-opening.

Importantly for us, the Shack also works as an educational experience - few visitors have had the opportunity to stay in a self-build contemporary building or an eco-building in this country - and with the rise of Grand Designs et al there is a huge curiosity to experience this first hand and to take some of that experience onwards into one's own life.
It's very exciting to think that the Shack can inspire more great architecture, and that our hospitality is part of that.

Media attention

2009-08-06T20:05:00.002+01:00

In swift succession (ah, the rigour of journalism) we have featured in both Wallpaper* and the Guardian recently as one of "the best cabins in the world", the latter causing a temporary suspension of our website due to traffic volume!
http://www.wallpaper.com/cabinclass
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/gallery/2009/aug/04/best-cabins-in-the-world?picture=351182492

Happy Campers

2009-08-06T19:39:00.004+01:00

Well it's hat-eating time for me.
I would be the last person to expect that renting our hardwon self-build to complete strangers would be a rewarding and life-affirming experience - but I can say that it really is!
Guests we've had so far have been just unbelievably appreciative and have treated the house like royalty. It's fascinating to read the visitor's book - it seems most people arrive expecting to get out and about a lot, but then they are so relaxed by the house that they rarely manage to get onto a fell or into their cars until they reluctantly leave.
It's a tribute to Charlie the architect's skill in creating such an oasis - but also very amusing when I remember the screaming hab dabs (actually, what are they?) that both Adam and I let rip with at regular intervals during the build. What a contrast to the now Zen-like calm that pervades the place and makes it so unique.

Honey, I just cut the house open

2009-05-03T15:27:00.005+01:00

Try as we might we couldn't get a soul locally to take on the install of our stove in our wooden house. Calls were not returned, even after visits to inspect the matter, heads were scratched etc etc. This is how it came to pass that, after very very detailed communications between architect and local building control officer, Adam had to do the job himself.
From his silence (DIY round here is usually wildly swear-y), I could tell that ( though we had concise instructions on how to do this) he was rather worried.

To save space the stove is a Eurostove inset model, with its firebox in effect 'outside' the house in the storage recess under the big panoramic window. The twin falled flue therefore passes up through the cladding outside the window, upwards through the 'eaves' of the flat roof and out the top of the house (the flue isn't in in this pic). I have never seen any other stove installed this way, not had anyone else we spoke to about it! Hence Mr Building Control coming out to get his head round it and ours.

So effectively we had to cut out the SIPS panels under the window for the stove, loadbear onto temp. structures at either side, add an agroprop below the stove on the base of the building, and pray. I had a vision of the house turning 'V-shaped' and caving in, thankfully unfulfilled. Between the actual stove and the building (see diagram) there is a complex layering of things like vermiculite board, that I didnt know existed.

The stove sits on a bespoke cast concrete hearth made for us (and better still, delivered up the hill by hand) by the excellent Lancaster Cast Stone (also now doing a simple surround for us) (www.lcs-uk.co.uk)
And now, we have had the fire on, its gorgeous, and save for maybe adding a bit more chimney onto our roof for better draw, it all seems to have worked.

Bank Holiday pause for enjoyment

2009-05-03T15:18:00.004+01:00

My sister and her family visit this weekend, the first in my family to see our endeavours since the site was a mouldy old log cabin on the hillside. It's given me an incentive to have a good clear up in the spring sunshine and even take a moment to enjoy the place. The light through the fresh leaves is astonishing, very Japanese, I could get quite emotional....

Over and out - I have to start grouting again.

Pale green?

2009-04-20T12:35:00.002+01:00

Here's an interesting feature on the slightly controversial green credentials of Corian, a material we've used in our kitchen here both as a surface and a splashback.

Bedroom green roof install

2009-04-14T18:40:00.003+01:00

Our bedroom - the smallest and least visible of the two green roofs on the site - is about 3.5 x 4.5 metres in size, and for this green roof we used 9 x 100litre bags of lightweight vermiculite mixed in situ (see pic!) with 8 x 35litre bags of sterilised loam topsoil. This gave us a soil depth of about 15cm.
This mix went on top of a large piece of woven membrane, in turn on top of a kind of black plastic eggbox in sheets which very simply lie on top of our butyl rubber flat roof.
I'm fascinated to see what the birds and wind bring in to this roof so I'll be not seeding it at all and monitoring what comes up - watch this space!

Cue Mother Nature

2009-04-12T20:53:00.004+01:00

Amazing weather this Easter means we've got on with the green roofs here. For urban folks these are a tiny oasis in the overheated city, a little postage stamp of biodiversity in the concrete. Here its more about having a nice feeling of nature growing on all sides of your house, any maybe even breaking up the ruthless lines of modernist architecture ....
If I was going to live here full time I'd be building a vegetable plot or a chicken run. Ok, or maybe a freerange guinea pig run. But at the mo we're installing two extensive green roofs on both storeys of the house, each about 15cm deep.
I decided -as I'm a big gardener - to leave the smaller roof (on the bedroom) to colonise naturally over time with windblown / animal-carried seed. The large one -visible from the bedroom - will need more 'real cultivation'.

Fellow Love Shackers

2009-04-06T15:45:00.002+01:00

Of course this is the REAL Love Shack but one of our summer guests just sent me this story of a couple who - like us - struggled to get their local Council to allow the naming of their house:

LONDON, April 5 (UPI) -- Artist Simon Cassini says he and his wife Sheba were allowed to officially name their London home Love Shack thanks to a backyard barbecue.
Cassini, 51, said while the Richmond Council had concerns the name Love Shack would mislead emergency workers, firefighters easily located their home while responding to a call of a possible backyard fire, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

"Richmond Council would not let us change the name of our house because in the event of an incident involving the emergency services, they would not know which house to go to," Cassini said.

Read the whole story here.

Hollywood Hills stylee

2009-03-21T19:06:00.000Z

Decking, decking everywhere

2009-03-10T10:32:00.005Z

We don't like commercially available decking, easy and cheap though it may be.

At Lawson Park we designed and built a long boardwalk last summer, of this rough-planed '2 by 1' green larch and so far it's stayed reasonably unslippy and has aged gracefully. So we have decided to use it on the walkway and decks here too, brad-nailed with our lovely new nailgun and setting each bit about 3mm apart for drainage and to add grip. It's a slow process with a certain rustic-ness from the timber's variability - occasionally pieces are narrow or warped and you kind of get used to working around these defects.

Below this carpet of decking pictured is a simple grid of joists and bracing made of larch and recycled timbers, with larch uprights driven directly into the ground. This approach was also approved by the local Planners as it protects the roots of the trees on site, arguably more than a lawn or gravel area would.

The nature of the timber gives scope for all sorts of patterning and we have frequent discussions about whether to 'chevron' the wood, to line it up with the house etc etc. As you can see here we think we'll offset it at an angle, quite Japanese-y. I'm thinking of dropping the odd potted tree into the surface too - maybe an acer or similiar.

Despite the many interior jobs left to do we have taken advantage of any recent sunny day to get on with this external decking as when done, it will offer us a much-needed 'clean' and flat space on which to do everything from painting the odd bit of wood, brushing the cats, Tai Chi (when Nina's next here), or God forbid, relaxing......

Mmmmm - Corian

2009-03-10T10:16:00.003Z

Regular readers will have endured our search for the perfect kitchen surface along with us, and the end result is shelling out a slightly embarrasing sum for this gorgeous Corian worktop in 'Bone'. It's looks a bit like that roll-out icing you can buy, and has the advantage of a seamless sunk-in sink and lovely details like this upstanding edge pictured - which we designed to join up with the cedar trim we're using throughout the house. It's very warm to touch and - Adam tells me - makes for a very nice wiping experience too.
(Actually I did wipe it - for the picture...)
PS The uncluttered but still cute hob kettle behind is called Nio, by designer Oliver Hemming

Stairs - are they rocket science?

2009-03-04T17:50:00.005Z

I've mentioned the hell of our house's 3 staircases on this blog before....I know thats a lot of steps for a one bedroom house but if you want views you need to get up high! I lost count of the number of builder conversations about the steps, I nearly had to ban it at one stage from discussion and would have if it wasnt such a fundamental part of getting on with things (have you ever tried accessing 3 floors with no stairs? It's...interesting, and hard on the knees)

Basically 2 builders we were using disagreed on how to construct them and this is where the problems start. This set pictured are the main ones into the open plan living room, and were made mainly in a workshop, by laminating the oak floor tiles to treads and risers of the structure before joining them and positioning them in situ. The issues started with warping once brought in to the house, but with a lot of wood you can live with it, and when our backs were turned one day they seemed to go in ok.
Or so we thought.

We immediately noticed how cold the house was around the stair area, despite our builder reassuring us that they had insulated around them as they went. Some weeks later we started to notice worrying 'flex' and gaps and realised that the booked-in flooring contractor (who needed to floor up to the steps and do all the sanding / varnishing) was about to start and we had a big problem on our hands.
Aforementioned builder eventually told us he couldnt come back to examine the problems in time, so Adam opened them up at the weekend to find all this gubbins in the picture. Not only is there a laughably inept and wobbly triangular 'support' (thats where all the screws are hanging out) there was almost nothing actually holding the tread and riser together at the joint. No wonder it was flexing. Now I'm no builder but even I can see that this job is what my dad might call 'a bugger's muddle' - I can only guess the builders never imagined we'd go to the lengths of digging it all up and would settle for their effort.

After much swearing Adam spent a weekend reconstructing the innards but his neccessary butchery sadly had consequences as regards the finish of them and we will probably have to get them re-filled sanded and varnished in the near future.

Oh, and after that we poured over 100litres of vermiculite in, the whole area warmed up nicely.

So the moral of the story? Well, maybe build bungalows?

Our nicest neighbour

2009-03-04T17:27:00.004Z

Yes I know this has absolutely sod all to do with house-building but this little guy (or lady?) gives us much more morning entertainment than James Naughtie ranting on the Today programme.
My brother suggested he may be a Planning Authority robot equipped with a spycam - and I thought I was paranoid.

I've got a sweat on

2009-02-10T16:46:00.003Z

Even in February, when the sun shines on the shack, boy it gets warm.
Our oak flooring is nearly done as you can see from this picture - c/o Pro-fit, a local company.
Using a local?! I hear your shriek incredulously.
It's ok, he's a German expat.
Phew.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

2009-02-10T11:07:00.006Z

Anyone who has built a house in the UK will know that the US style of 'customer-focused' service has not yet arrived / been imposed on the world of building and its close relations. At least not here. The client is in general the one apologising for stuff in they builder's way, not enough biscuits, the architect's drawing's lack of clarity and for pacing the site with a bin bag permanently attached to their hand gathering up the builders' discarded fag butts, Pot Noodles and - often - the instructions for the sliding door that have been trodden into the ground.

On a meticulous building like ours one spends much time getting people to correct errors they have made along the way. I've come to accept that rarely will things be right first time, so the stomach-sinking moment of calling a tradesperson to begin the re-appraisal of the job, is something I am trying to get used to. And yet I am time and time again floored by how reluctant tradespeople are to say 'Sorry' even for the most superficial customer relations reasons. In other words, saying sorry even if you think you're in the right, to make the other party feel better and hence treat you better in the long run. Is it that hard to?! Why are tradespeople exempt from this common courtesy?

It must be page one in almost every other profession's "Guide To Getting On With People You Work For' and yet I have never ever heard it from anyone that's worked on the site regardless of how often they have delayed the job, got it wrong, misjudged something, not turned up or damaged something on site. Is it a guy thing or a coincidence that the profession is male -dominated?
If you've hired female builders please let me know otherwise!?

Take for example our order to have a simple coir doormat fitted on site recently by one of Kendal's leading carpet retailers. The guys come and go, we look at their endeavours and find 3 out of 4 badly hacked edges and even a slither of mat stuffed under the door frame to try and make up for the all-round undersizing of the piece. The bill arrives - £133. Adam calls them to tell them that the job isn't good enough and is met with the all too familiar terse local response "Well, OUR people were satisfied with the job..."
Well, that's the matter settled then is it?
No!
Here's how to do it: "Oh, I am really sorry to hear that and apologise if the work is not to your satisfaction - how can we help put it right?"

What's really perplexing is that 9 times out of 10 the person does return to remedy the problem and not always because we won' t pay them until they do. They usually look at the work, sigh deeply and acknowledge the cock-up.

The peculiar dynamic of these meetings is such that one can't tell if they literally couldn't see what a bad job they'd done before (bad) or if they left the job knowing it wasn't going to wash with the client and didn't care (worse).
Probably they just hoped to get away with it. And now they haven't.
And it's you, the client, who should be sorry, ok?

Flattery will get you anywhere

2009-02-05T22:30:00.003Z

Sometimes building can really get you down, as the guy on last night's Grand Design's more than illustrated. But then he was clearly nuts, trying to build what was really a folly and getting into a Planning nightmare that I sincerely empathised with (one day I will write our saga)....
When you spend your waking hours persuading locals (tradespeople, Planners, neighbours) of the sincerity of your ambitions - and usually failing - its SO nice to get feedback from perfect strangers on how much they love the Love Shack.
I had some the other day from The Modern House a company which to call an 'estate agent' is like calling The Love Shack , erm...just that, a shack.
Thanks guys.

Nearly a bathroom

2009-01-29T17:09:00.002Z

News in brief

2009-01-27T21:54:00.005Z

Since moving in to the house for some reason I haven't felt much like blogging, and Lord knows it isn't that there's nothing to say. Since the world's longest festive holiday we have had exactly 8 hrs of builder time - that's in over a month - for reasons unclear. Could be that we've stopped paying bills until the work is "finished to our satisfaction" as those bills say at the bottom ;-)
However Adam and I in typical style have responded by cursing our tradesmen on one hand and flailing around with rollers and tools whenever we can, on the other. Some DIY has been more successful than others...
- Last weekend Adam and me hired some tools and clad the entry porch in crisp larch, very nice from the house to see it
- We still await various bits of cedar interior trims mysteriously languishing in someone's barn - rumour has it they arrive Sunday
- A nice tiler, the first in the Yellow Pages - is underway already in the bathroom
- The woodburner install now needs a prop under the cantilever - I'm told it won't show - as it's so heavy (I keep asking why the engineers forgot this, its one of those things you lose energy pursuing). I now accept that the stove will probably cost more than the kitchen in the end...
- Speaking of kitchens, the Corian saga goes full circle and we're back with the real thing cos its the only thing they can actually do the sexy moulded sink in
-I have ordered a disgustingly expensive sofa which takes 10 weeks to come, at least the cats might be out of here in time not to ruin it
- And finally I have updated the budget, though in the present climate it all seems dangerously like Monopoly

Filthy lucre

2009-01-17T19:08:00.003Z

Anyone who knows us will guess that it is with very mixed feelings that we let out the Shack this year for holidays. But a self-build without a mortgage is not at all easy, and needs must.
So www.lakedistrictloveshack.com
has been born and awaits bookings.
I confess I have rather enjoyed doing the website, which has included looking at a lot of other cottages' websites and recoiling in horror at "luxury kitchens" of wall to wall 1986 MFI units, maroon carpets and orange pine bedsteads. Not being someone who self-caters much, I hadn't realised how bad it had got out there. My family had a holiday home on Arran for decades and it resolutely stuck at its very basic slash eccentric end - a 60's homemade kitchen, a baby grand piano and a lot of unmatching porcelain.

I name this house

2009-01-05T16:13:00.000Z

I thought that renaming our house officially to The Love Shack would be fairly simple, but it turns out you need to have it approved by the Council before the Royal Mail say yes too and they might deliver the odd letter.
When everyone agrees it means your address is 'official' and you can get your stationery printed.
The origins of The Love Shack as a name are lost in the mists of my memory, but it quickly stuck and even found its way onto the Council's documents, to my amusement. It's written all over the building's components too.

The shack's current name is "Argent Close", which as someone in the Council's Building Control said last week, sounds like a whole row of houses in a mining town, rather than a tiny log cabin in a wood.

Apparently the whole point of the Council's Naming & Numbering Dept. is to clarify things like that. No-one there mentioned - at first - concepts like 'appropriate' - a word much favoured by the Lake District Planning Authority and used fast and loose in any context which requires them to quash stuff they don't like.

So after a pregnant pause from them I received a message back:

"We would like to receive your second choice of house name."
Me - "Why, is there a problem with 'The Love Shack'?"
"We would like to receive your second choice of house name."
Me - "Yes, but why?"
" Something that reflects the local area is usually good. We will then check that there is no duplication before going ahead."
(Duplication, of The Love Shack?!) I then -to them at least - begged that the quirkiness of the house deserved a quirky name. And that it was Christmas.
Privately I raged against the local Taste Police, irate that even the name of your own property was controlled by the Council, was there no end to their attempts to derail us?! Would it have to be called "Fluttering Leaves" or "The Cabin"?!

Then this morning came a quiet email from the Council in my Inbox,
"I have a note on my desk stating that your house name has been accepted".
Not exactly a warm reception but a small triumph for freedom! And no, we're not big fans of the B52s actually.

Sunday night at the shack

2009-01-04T17:32:00.003Z

The move was of course unspeakably hellish - it's one thing carrying all your building materials up a steep hill manually but when it comes to one's worldly possessions you really do start to question whether you need more than two mugs and a toothbrush. I even began to wonder if the cats could be shackled to small paniers to move their cat litter and food bowls uphill. The worse thing was having to move the 6 ringbound folders of Shack admin up the hill, as we can't risk storing it when there's all the VAT return to do and bills to organise.....
Anyhow, very unfinished but very cosy, here is Adam relaxing for once waiting for the builders to return this week. We hope / dread.

I think we're alone now

2008-12-23T19:21:00.005Z

Not exactly 'It's a wrap', but a lot of progress in the last few days means we have a functioning kitchen and bathroom (ok, I had to drive to a layby to meet the big yellow Ikea van that was refusing to come down the road to us with the oven). I was so excited to have a bathroom door I had a dance around to the sounds of Lakeland Radio, a guilty pleasure originating in weeks spent with builders in da house.
No tradesmen seem to work until Jan. 5th now, so it's slow DIY till then...

Back by popular demand

2008-12-22T22:00:00.005Z

This is our builder Guy McCollough again - his back anyhow - installing the minute kitchen that has obsessed us for months.
The recipe is:
Ikea cabinets
Spenny solid surface worktop in the New Year
Groovy round Baumatic hob
No visible clutter AT ALL (bets taken now on how likely I can be to keep to that)

Nighty night

2008-12-22T21:42:00.006Z

The water-tightness of the shack has been tested to the limit in weather of the last few weeks, and recently our first builder Marcel had to return to look at a leak in the roof...
I slithered out onto the mud to take this picture of Adam taking a break the other night.

The exterior of the house has sadly looked the same for months due to all the intricate progress beingon the inside, but I still find it thrilling to see it lit up at night, and realise that we have created this!

As (un)happy as a sanding girl

2008-12-22T21:36:00.002Z

Our flooring is rather more of a challenge that we anticipated. Lovely as it is, I was in this position for about 22 hours this weekend and that was just the bedroom. The hired belt sander has to sand out the tape that holds the 'mini-parquet' - like oak strips together, plus any imperfections in the level etc, which being a real wood floor, there are a few. Only then can you fine-sand and start the 3 coats of acrylic-based varnish off.

I name this house

2008-12-15T21:14:00.007Z

Local colour

2008-12-14T21:44:00.005Z

We're lucky to be able to use local timber from the nearby Graythwaite Estate for much of the Love Shack, and now we can also use local-ish paint.
One of the UK's leading eco-paint manufacturers is in Lancashire, Ecos and we used them first when we painted Adam's mum's floor in a delicious yellow floor paint they do. For the Love Shack we are just using their whites so far, and they go on like a dream. My one small gripe is that emulsion only comes in 5 litre pots and we'll have a lot to spare.

The stairs, a financial hernia

2008-12-12T17:43:00.005Z

The fandango of the 2 staircases in the shack has been elaborate to say the least. It ended with both parties of builders blaming the other for devising the slightly arse-wise solution we actually used. Mind you, now they're in its a nice change from bodily lobbing your way up the change in levels as there was nothing between them. They actually look really good, which is what matters, but when you pay your builders by the hour (as we do) this isn't just an irritation, it's a financial hernia.

The main challenge was that our chosen flooring is like tiny parquet, supplied in small bound 'tiles'. One the tread and riser these have to meet edge to edge, so they were kind of laminated onto the step bits before bevelling and fitting. Of course the joint was very vulnerable as the oak was so thin at that edge, not to mention the inevitable warping of the treads and the occasional human error.
We're using commercial oak flooring usually deployed for heavy duty use in airports and the like - we were able to buy a small quantity because it's also what we're using at Lawson Park, the hillfarm being refurbished by Grizedale Arts, where Adam works. It's supplied by a really helpful small company called Rutherfords Real Wood.

Christmas time, drains and mastic

2008-12-10T19:01:00.007Z

I'd be lying if I said this was getting any easier, though what do I expect with only 8 working days until we try to move in?
On the plus side the clear, cold weather is merciful compared with the site chaos that comes with rain. Especially when it freezes the ground so hard I don't have to dig trenches for a day or two.
Today I personally moved 450 kg of gravel up the steep hill to line the drainage trench with and then the same again of tiles. I may not be able to walk tomorrow.
And there was noone there to take a photo of me in this heroic endeavour.
When it came to the 150kg stove (more on that later) I gave in and asked Mike and Mark to assist. I then wrestled with the serpent-like 25m flexible drainage pipe until it lay in the first part of the trench. (FYI the drainage solution was spec'ed by a nice guy called Nick from Elemental Solutions a company specialising in 'eco' drainage in tricky places, it's simply a 'leaky' pipe in gravel in a trench attached to the septic tank)
Following that everything else seemed dead easy.

Other progress has included the finishing of the windows with a brown mastic, I don't pretend to know exactly how important this step was. The company doing it have been a bit of a nightmare. Not having encountered the strict contemporary aesthetic of the shack's windows before, here were many sharp intakes of breath and suggestions of champfered oack beading. For a while we had a memo from the architect on the wall saying "Do NOT let the windows people tell you how they will do it".

And skimming, looking lovely and turning the rather chaotic interior into loveliness.

From the bathroom door

2008-11-30T20:23:00.004Z

Finding a bearable electric heater

2008-11-25T17:34:00.008Z

I have neglected the blog-friendly listings of recommended sources we've used this far, so here's a shocker - I found an electric panel heater (no gas in these parts and what with the price of oil....) that actually looks ok and is made by Dimplex! I know, weren't they one of those dull British companies making dull, poorly-designed things? Not any more....
It's a white, glass-fronted and nearly square, and half the price of the stone radiators we were going to get. Whilst we will rely mainly on the inset woodburner for heat, it's realistic to have a back up for when you get in on a cold night or run out of logs. (That can happen, even with your own woodland, especially when it's got a Tree Preservation Order).

See more about the Dimplex range here.

View from the bed

2008-11-25T17:30:00.002Z

Not at all bad, huh?

Adam moves into the drainage trench

2008-11-25T17:24:00.006Z

After the septic tank burial Adam now turns his attention to the 12m+ of drainage trench. Luckily its much shallower than the septic tank, being a simple perforated pipe in gravel.
Bizarrely all the old shack had attached to its loo was a rough old soakaway, barely buried. And for 40 odd years it seems to have worked, we expected to uncover something very grisly in the recent excavations but so far so good.

Glazed Expression

2008-11-21T16:34:00.004Z

We've waited rather to long for this moment, having got our glazed doors in months ago. Finally the windows-that-don't-open ("glazed units") have gone in and very lovely they are too.
Now we're on the final furlong, I've never seen so many people on site and a nice vibe too.

The Bigger Picture

2008-11-21T16:28:00.002Z

Note how uncannily similiar to the architects' impression (website header pic) this current site view is...

Sinking the Good Ship Septic Tank

2008-11-21T16:18:00.005Z

With a very slightly loose interpretation of the neccessary health and safety regs, the septic tank finally got installed today by Adam, Guy and his guys. These pictures don't show that it took 2 goes - and that's not an easy thing to lever out of the hole without someone risking being buried alive.

2008-11-18T15:30:00.002Z

No machines allowed on our Tree Protection Site, so spades-are-us....

The Good Ship Septic Tank

2008-11-18T15:23:00.002Z

Building regs prevent you from fitting a septic tank commensurate with the size of your (in our case, tiny) house. The minimum size you can get is frankly massive, about two thirds of the size of the Shack's actual bedroom.
This one - an 'Acorn' - is kind of lozenge shaped, saving our protected tree roots from excessive digging to bury it.
Try telling Adam - who has done the lion's share of the digging - that what he's done is not 'excessive'!

2008-11-03T09:17:00.003Z

One of the reasons I hit the glass ceiling in Girl Guides (never ascending through promotion beyond patrol second-in-command) was that I refused to go to camp, on account of my horror of the hand-dug latrines.
What irony that here I am three decades on hand-digging an almighty hole for our septic tank to go into.
Only a metre to go.

All roads (nearly) lead to Ikea

2008-10-29T13:35:00.003Z

We've been through the wars planning the shack's tiny kitchen area.
As enthusiastic cooks we want it to be a hell of a lot more functional than most 'holiday home' type kitchens and as it's open-plan its needs to look fantastic too. We have done millions of sketches, so has the architect and in the end we have decided to combine off the peg units with bespoke doors made in our own cedar.

Last weekend we made not one but two attempts to reach Ikea in Warrington (why else would you go there) to see the holy grail - the acrylic 'Personlig' worksurface with moulded sink. Gosh. This is after going to the Glasgow branch where they could sell it to us but, no, they didn't have one for us to see. Adam survived by eating his own body weight in meatballs and by the promise of soft-shut drawer fittings.

So, this stuff is the Ikea version of luxury Corian and LG Hi-Macs, two gorgeous but superleague priced (even via MFI) surfaces. We did go down that path for a while, and even designed it with both MFI and a luxury kitchen shop-that-will-remain-nameless in Kendal. The former was helpful but still exorbitant (the surface was going to cost 10 times the price of the cupboards) and the latter couldnt even be arsed quoting. Ikea has a tiny range of colours in comparison and one sink size unlike other suppliers.

Anyhow, on both days last weekend we were fought back by floods on the M6 and instead went to staunch the flood threatening the shack itself, still windowless. This was done with no tools to speak of and a tiny washing up sponge.

So this afternoon we make what we hope will be our last trip to Ikea's kitchen department

New guy on the block

2008-10-22T21:52:00.004+01:00

Guy and his team are our new builders on site, Guy having built his own house in Ulverston and having an active interest in new / eco-ish design. They've made a great job of this wood-clad 'fascia' on the front elevation, trouble is we interpreted the drawings slightly wrong and it's not quite at the level with the window anticipated.

But on the plus side it's probably something only an architect would notice :-(

Pregnant pause

2008-09-24T12:17:00.006+01:00

This week there are many kind of invisible but important things happening on site - windows being measured, bathrooms being delivered, lighting plans being discussed. The sunny weather has meant that our builder come farmer Gareth has been on the silage more than the building!
Meanwhile Adam and I progress with the porch, which is fast becoming a work of art. The steps - though of (deliberately) rough timber (a local larch) took us 3 goes to get right - unbelievably. This had a lot to do with every bit of that lovely local timber being a slightly different profile and a lot to do with my inaccurate tape-measuring.
Now we are roofing it and doing 'noggins' which are the 'fill-in' bits between the uprights and roof beams. I'm trying to forget how much this finish reminds me of my school gym, a site of many humiliations as bad as getting the steps wrong twice.
Ultimately a lot of the porch will be clad over the sterling board, to match the house.

In the bottom picture those of you who haven't been on site can just see the rear wall of the old 1960's 'shack' - we have kept its floor and back wall as they're useful for working on and propping stuff against.

Now that's what I call an imposing entrance

2008-09-03T13:42:00.003+01:00

Between showers

2008-09-03T13:18:00.006+01:00

When the house gets going the blog gets quiet!
I'm not on site as much as poor Adam, whose doing this week on his own mostly having -ahem- let our main builder go home a little early.
So where are we now?
As you can see in the pix, the SIPs carcass is now covered in a grey fabric membrane (very 80's) which is part of the waterproofing, and blimey do we need it with this insane weather.
The timber porch (seen here from above) and walkway have been very demanding but are really stunning. The porch especially is a surprising and truly inspired element - with shades of our architect Sutherland Hussey's celebrated Tiree ferry shelter. It's very tall and imposing, with a door inset. Once through this you are very much in the 'compound' and you then ascend 14 shallow steps to the house - the line of the stairway apparently took donkeys years to get right in the design... You see, the ground is uneven and steep and the house is uphill - easy huh - you just build steps right?
Kind of - but to get them to run in a steady angle uphill (esp. when your engineer has set the house level too high) is not so easy. But it's been worth it - it's an amazing entrance.

One unexpected thing is the degree of 'out' of the SIPS carcass, which makes the (local larch) cladding very tricky and slow - it's an inch out in places instead of the 'tolerance' of 1cm, meaning the battening needs to be individually measured and fitted beneath. Other ongoing probs include sourcing a 360cm long window for the main room and the little matter of having no mortgage yet.

Lakeland scaffolding

2008-08-11T17:53:00.002+01:00

Slightly last minute we found we did need scaffolding after all and it was Lakeland Scaffolding from Egremont that found the site and carried everything they needed up there. Did a great job for a very reasonable price, if you need scaffolding get these guys. www.lakelandscaffolding.co.uk

5 years and 5 days to get here....

2008-08-11T10:15:00.004+01:00

And finally we're on site!!!!
(I think in this instance 4 exclamation marks are entirely justified)
In just 5 working days Adam and the Polish guys from SIPS carried - yes, carried - all this up a very very steep and muddy hill and put it together into a shape that closely resembles a house.

What's in a name?

2008-08-11T10:03:00.002+01:00

Our casually coined name for Argent Close - the Love Shack - has definately stuck.
For several years I was under the impression that it was a private joke only used by us and our architect, Adam's brother. Then at a Planning meeting I noticed that our officer had some plans under her arm, with the typed heading 'The Love Shack, Cunsey'. She remained as humourless as ever nevertheless.
And now every component of the building has the moniker emblazoned in marker pen for future archaelogists to find and ponder.

Shack Shopping List

2008-08-04T18:21:00.003+01:00

SIPS Industries bring our prefab panels on site today!
Meanwhile here is the current shopping list:

30 metres of hosepipe
16m of scaffolding
4 burly lads who don't give a toss for Health & Safety
Cordless telephone (landline in tomorrow)
£25,000

Some not available at Jewsons sadly.

Steely gaze

2008-07-05T16:12:00.003+01:00

Here's the steel, on site on time and looking great c/o PPS of Ulverston.
There have had to be a few alterations en route, seem to be due to errors in engineering which arose from a few people making a few executive decisions en route and not managing to tell anyone else :-)
Of course as a mere layman it's hard to be confident enough to check with people when you notice something is not quite what you expected - in this case the 'base level' of the house was set too high (which is not insignificant on a sloping site), and this has meant redesigning the staircase up to the building and the porch at its foot.
Which in turn has meant our architect taking the drawings on his fishing holiday in Scotland. Sorry Charlie.

Foundations & steel are in

2008-06-21T21:44:00.001+01:00

...apparently, not that I have had time to see them.
Various problems of course, all attributed to engineer making some bizarre executive design decisions. And not telling anyone. Until lots of other stuff didn't fit.
Hhhmmm.

Blast from the past

2008-05-17T11:54:00.004+01:00

Recently found this visual of our first design for the site, the one that was rejected and also failed at Appeal - mainly due to its conventional foundations.
Actually I'm now pleased to say I prefer the current design!

Rather underwhelming

2008-05-17T09:58:00.004+01:00

This little concrete-filled pipe is one of the dozen mini-piles that will hold up the shack. I confess I was expecting to be more impressed, as I can get quite excited about the engineering side of the project...

Due to the site's (IMHO excessive) woodland tree preservation order, we were never going to be allowed regular foundations, so this technique was employed instead.

Each pile is 'drilled' down into the ground until it gets 'tight' (sadly I missed watching this bit) - in this case around 4 metres - and then a small amount of concrete is infilled. The top of each pile is capped at the precise right level in the next stage, and a kind of 'foot' joins it to the steel frame what will support the house.

Do not pass 'go'

2008-05-01T21:19:00.002+01:00

Despite our foundations being built, our house is staring into the throat of a serious threat: Our mortgage company - the to-date very helpful Ecology Building Society - have got very uptight (as is their right in the present 'crunch' I guess) about parking and access issues at our site. This is long after they already lent us the money to buy it in the first place.

I'll spare you the details but there's a whole load of stuff around our neighbours' land adjacent to our site (close to or converging on an area historically used as parking for our site) and the fact noone seems to own the access track to our site (its ONLY access). I thought the fact noone owned the ruddy track was a good thing but now it seems we need to actively prove that noone could ever even claim to own it. Also I had a certain belief in the 'searches' you pay your solicitor to do when you buy a property - if something really threatening about the access to the site had been turned up, wouldn't we have heard?
In my lighter moments I can enjoy the fact that the 'green' mortgage lender the Ecology is so obsessed with the provision of car parking at the site.

Our neighbours - incredibly - got planning permission to put a gate up over the access track to our site. Though this has as yet not materialised, the Planners seemed to have no qualms about permitting development on land not owned by the applicant. This gives great scope to us all - I may apply for permission for a gate just in front of theirs.

Blast from the past

2008-04-18T17:32:00.002+01:00

We recently got a lovely letter from the lady we bought the shack from back in 2003.
She is so positive about our plans - as she has been since she accepted our bid for the place even though it wasn't the highest. It's such a contrast to local responses which have been overwhelmingly negative. One complaint at our planning appeal even cited the fact that we might dare to live in the house (as opposed to use it as a 2nd home like most neghbours)- as a reason to refuse planning!
Beverley (the vendor) also included in her letter a 'round robin' update she had circulated to the many friends who had enjoyed the shack in the 60's and 70's - telling them about our plans - "A bathroom suite - we'd have died for the opportunity!!"

Many mini piles

2008-04-18T17:11:00.004+01:00

The foundations of our shack were a big problem in our first (unsuccessful) planning app to build here. The tree protection order slapped on the site immediately after we proposed a new house means that usual dug foundations won't do.
This is where Mini Piling comes in - a fantastic technique whereby slender metal rods with concrete are drilled into your ground (stopping when you get to that really chewy bit) in a matrix which can support your steel frame and house.

The very helpful Anvil made us the best offer for the work and completed our 13 piles this week, the first step in the build. Adam met them on site and reports that - as ever-their staff made a right fuss about climbing the site's slope with their kit (which - incredibly - was a handheld drill) despite them being several decades younger than him.

Before the build ends I'd really love it if one of our contractors came on site and instead said "Gosh what an attractive and challenging elevated site you have found here"....

Get the supplies in

2008-02-22T19:36:00.002Z

Unlike every woman on Grand Designs I actually find all the catalogue browsing, mood-boarding and sample collecting for the house really tedious. So it's nice when a supplier is really helpful and friendly. So here are a few such suppliers:
Proctor, who we're speaking to about their Royale Cladding, a timber cladding thats treated on both sides in the factory, for better longevity.

North West Heating, the only heating specialist who could explain to me what's possible just with electricity, without being a patronising ba****d

Rutherford Real Wood, a small firm in the Borders supplying fantastic hardwood flooring

Rules & Regs

2008-02-22T19:34:00.002Z

Certain areas of the build have had to be redesigned lately due to new building control regs on disability access, apparently. Especially the loo. It seems that regardless of the house not being accessible to wheelchair users, the bathroom has to accommodate a wheelchair user...
Am I missing something?

Still standing

2008-02-08T12:17:00.000Z

After 2 days there's still quite a bit of shack left on site....Built before the invention of No Nails, the DIY builder who was first on site certainly didnt take any risks. We found the structure to be rather better made than we anticipated. Sledge hammers made little impact, a screw driver was needed to meticulously work on the thousands of joints, and I'm still not sure how to get the Ye Olde toilet out without a serious biohazard on the hillside.
Answers on a postcard please.

Trippy 3D visualisation

2008-01-31T21:19:00.000Z

My favourite so far. Might landscape the garden like that after all.

What was there before?

2008-01-30T19:46:00.001Z

The Flowers, a shopkeeping family from Blackpool, built a holiday home on the site in the mid-60's. It was from them we bought the property in 2003, and it was a time capsule of old magazines, whiskey and 70's duvet covers. Beverley Flowers even gave me the house's visitors book which is a sentimental read - all pub meals for £1 and birdspotting from the world before Carribbean holidays for all.
Over the years a few friends have stayed there, and in fact film-maker Steven Sheil made a short horror film there in 2006 - you can read his very entertaining blog on the experience here.

With just a tiny bit of sadness, the log cabin will be removed next week to make way for the new house.

The Basics

2008-01-30T17:48:00.001Z

To outline the basics of the build is probably worthwhile:
Our site has a Woodland Tree Protection Order on it, meaning they (the Planners) would rather you built a hoverhouse - if anything at all - on site. What this translates as is that your house must accommodate the existing trees and not harm their roots.
So our foundations are not dug - they're 12 mini-piles, fantastically small (10cm diameter) 'rods' driven into the ground on top of which a galvanised steel frame sits. Such small piles can be driven by one man and a small manual machine!

The Shack basic footprint is just 10m x 5m, with a small second floor bedroom and a 'basement' entry porch.
After a bit of deliberation our green conscience has meant that we have chosen to use prefab SIPS panels for the Shack. These are Structural Insulated Panels - sandwiches of inner and outer wall filled with insulated foam, that you clip into place on top of a steel frame - they're fairly common in the US and have many advantages over traditional timber frame builds. You even do the floor and ceiling with them. The downside of our tricky woodland site is that all materials have to be manually carried onto site, so the panels may need to be smaller than they could be, ergo a risk of losing some of their impeccable insulation characterstics in the joins. Its also probably more expensive to build with them for now.
Still, the plus side is a very fast build, a greener build by far and a home that will cost nearly nothing to heat.
We're working with the enthusiastic Charles at Sips Industries in Fife - http://www.sipsindustries.com/ - though he threatens to blow apart the carbon footprint of the build by threatening to do site visits in his helicopter !

There are big southfacing windows, an environmentally sensitive waste / drainage system and a green roof which will be colonised by mosses and ferns. Outer cladding will be wood, as will much of the interior.

The Grand Designs question

2008-01-30T17:44:00.001Z

Usually when you tell someone that you're building a new house, the first thing people ask is "Isn't Grand Designs going to cover it?"
To set the matter straight here, yes the show was interested, but when it came down to it the Love Shack is too quick a build to sustain a one hour programme - the researchers quite rightly pointed out that there would be no point in returning after 6 months to shoot progress - it will be all built by then!

Welcome to the Love Shack

2008-01-30T15:10:00.000Z

The picture at the header of this blog is an artists' impression of what we're aiming for at Argent Close (aka the Love Shack), a steep, wooded site overlooking Lake Windermere in Cumbria which currently houses a tiny and decrepit log cabin.
You - dear reader - step in some way down the line on this project:
We bought the present log cabin in September 2003 and so it's nearly five years since I convinced Adam "It'll be fun to try and do a contemporary house in the Lake District National Park!"
Well, so far its mostly been expensive (consultants), a little dull (choosing a bathroom suite) and very very frustrating ('The Story of the Lost Planning Appeal' follows some time). But there have also been great moments, like when dozens of supportive enthusiasts turned up on site for Architecture Week, urging us on to fruition with the project.