Willowbank: Erect SIPS: Tick

Well, the SIPS are finally up, although what should have taken 7 working days, ended up taking 3 weeks. Apparently the roof was trickier than expected but also because SIPS work at other sites seemed to take priority! The SIPS people will be coming back on Monday morning just to finish off a few little 'twiddly bits' inside the house at which point the house will be made weatherproof.

Part of the roof being 'delivered'

The roof nearing completion

Our attractive blue roof

So we now have something shaped a bit like a house and we had our first walk around the inside today. It was really good to see how it looks in the real world after looking at it for so long on paper and in computer models.
The next stages include battening out and plaster-boarding the interior. The next major external work will be the building of the outer brick skin of the house. We are all ready to start bricking now, particularly as we have finally got approval for the bricks and the mortar. However, we have been advised that the roof must be loaded first so that the bricks can be tied to the SIPS wall in the finished position (the SIPS will compress slightly when the roof tiles are added). This means that we need to put the slates on the roof first. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for planning approval for these, so this exercise could be delayed a little longer.

Our kitchen

The view from the lounge

Canal view from our bedroom

...and its en-suite

The spare bedroom

Timelapse - 1:40mins

Oh, and in case you're wondering about the boat which will sit at the bottom of the garden, we have a predicted delivery date of 15th December, but there is some uncertainty about that. It would be delivered to a wharf about 15 miles from here and we will have to sail it down. We are visiting the boat again on Monday, so we should get an update then.