Even after ‘completing’ our house and living in it for the last 7 years there are still jobs that need to be done. One of these jobs we finished this weekend…

Below is the BEFORE photograph…

Our house – before weekend project…

Our house – AFTER:

Our house – after weekend project

Eagle eyed viewers would spot the new Lindab galvanised steel hopper, downpipe & shoe that drains the water from the grass roof. Now you’d think this would be any easy job. Think again:

1. Anything non-standard is very difficult to get here Out Wesht; the builders merchant stock upvc or if you get a subbie in they will do it in aluminium or upvc

2. Galvanised steel is used for agricultural uses but neat rectangular hoppers are hard to come by; and if you find one they need to fit the downpipe

3. Even when the pipe was ordered from a localish merchants, it had to come via a bigger warehouse via the UK; the first pipe was damaged in transit and the clips holding the pipe to the wall were missing. All in all, from placing the order to receiving everything we needed it was over 4 months waiting.

4. Admittedly we did take a long time to get round to the job, sometimes it takes a while to make decisions. As architects, clients and self-builders these decisions are sometimes easy and sometimes hard. It took us a long time to commit on this one.

Another job that we haven’t fully committed on is the concept of putting up blinds to the front of the house; this deserves a blog post all on its own – so watch this space.

Well anyway,the job got done, without any arguing between the building team (me and better half) and we both gave ourselves a pat on the back when it was over…