King of the castle

The brickies have been working hard over the weekend to get the garage wall finished so the neighbours can have their privacy back, and oh my goodness is it TALL?!!

It’s about 8 brick courses higher than next door, towering over their own garage. That’s even without the front gable effect we’ve gone for to balance out the upstairs dormer window which is likely to make it appear even taller.

I am so glad we’re putting weatherboard onto the gable (also to match the dormer) which will hopefully break up that expanse of bricks or else it’s going to  look pretty daft being so high! (more finger-crossing it has the effect it’s supposed to)

This progress also means we finally got to see the stepped brick finish at last. This garage wall has been a saga and a half, to say the least. Because of its position on the boundary line, building regulations around fire resistance say we can’t have any exposed timbers there. The front gable means just that: exposed timber under the roof overhang.

Our options were:

1. Change to a full hipped roof – we toyed with this (and it would have been a lot cheaper) but in the end we both decided we preferred the gable effect and needed the balance for the dormer;
2. Keep the gable but have the roof finish inline with the brick edge – this would look daft if the other two gables didn’t follow suit but changing them too would mean losing the aesthetics and shade of the overhang for the dormer. Not a great option.
3. Brick up to the overhang with a wall that juts out so that the wood’s only on our side, not the neighbour’s – YUCK!
4. Or create the same brick effect joining the roof but only start the jutting-out bit close to the top with a series of steps.

After much deliberation (“too much” if you ask some people) we chose option 4. And here, at last, is what it looks like:

Not too bad at all. Happy with that choice 🙂

And finally, as many of you will know, we’ve had to increase our insulation and window thickness because we’re under the flight path, well here’s a shot to show you just how close those planes really are:

Putting on a front

So exciting to finally start to see what the front of the house is going to look like.

Here are the front bedrooms and to the right of the picture is the wooden frame all ready for our double doors:

Amazing too the number of little things that get us super excited – et voila: our meter box (like why am I getting giddy about the mechanism for electricity bills??)

All our door frames have been delivered:

And now some more shots of the walls you’ve already seen…. just because the bricks are so darn pretty 🙂

Left side of house from the front:

Right side of house from the back:

And a close-up of that fabulous kitchen splashback window (fingers still crossed):

First windows

We did a speedy fly-by visit tonight and scared ourselves silly with the kitchen window positioning and whether we’d made some measurement mistakes in the plans to have it and the counter-top too low….!

Kitchen window – inside

Kitchen window – outside

…after some frantic measurements and scouring of the plans when we got home, we *think* we’re all good. Eeeep!

My fingers are getting bruised from being crossed all the time.

Bathroom & Spare Bedroom windows

Master bedroom – french doors