House Build 4

Zinc Roof

The most successful decision was to go for a zinc roof, it has really made the house stand out as unusual. It came from Germany (Rhine Zinc) and was installed by Q&M Services from Gloucester.
They quoted from the plans, made one site visit beforehand to double check everything and to give advice on the roof construction and then arrived the day we agreed and installed the whole thing including gutters and downpipes in three days.

Whilst the zinc roofing company were very professional, Salop Glass, who we contracted to do the glass roof and bi-fold doors were not. We must have had ten site visits from their useless manager, several different stories about the design. Of course once you have selected them (and paid an £8,000 deposit) you don't have much leverage. Not long after our windows were installed they went bust, if that had happened whilst they had our deposit and we had no windows I suspect we would have lost it.
The picture opposite shows the glass roof finally installed, the doors went in two months later. When their men arrived the conversation was:
Comment 1: "It is going to be difficult getting the frames up there",
Comment 2 "Who do I claim off if I slip on your decking"
Comment 3 "Is there a kettle on site"
All within the first two minutes!

With the house watertight Joe and Craig got on with insulating and plasterboarding all the walls and ceilings. Then they did the plastering and the house suddenly changed from a building site to a nearly finished house.
While they were inside I built the deck and figured out how to build the external stairs.

It was always intended to have wood cladding on the rear of the house however we had not made up our minds what form this should take. One evening on Grand Designs the house featured had chestnut cladding which looked rather good. A search on the internet next morning revealed a company in Birmingham with a job lot of chestnut cladding left over from a project, for £1,000 we were able to buy enough to do our house, a great result.

So by January 2016 the ruin had been transformed into a very stylish house, from outside appearances at any rate. There was still a great deal to do inside which kept me busy for the next six months.