My apartment Project log

[Dr House]

Small update.

So things are moving again.
I have been out of the uk for the last 6 to 10 months so not much has happened.

I have decided to project manage the rest of the build my self, so I have employed a couple of builders and I am on site everyday with them.

We have plastered all the walls in gyproc soundcoat its a parge coat for increased airtightness to optimize sound and thermal performance.

http://www.british-gypsum.com/produ...gyproc_accessories/gyproc_soundcoat_plus.aspx

we got through 75, 25kg bags of the stuff in total.

We installed a new smoke vent velux window at the top of the stairs.

It allows some light in but also it will vent smoke in the even of a fire.


We have finished the first fix electrical work now, we have around 250 light fitting and 100 twin sockets.
Unfortunately I was stupid enough to give the electrician a £3k deposit when he decided to keep after doing just 3.5 days work. I found someone else now and I am taking the old one to court.

As you can see we got through a lot of cable

I have installed 15 and 22mm hot and cold water supplies from the manifolds to the sinks, baths, WC’s…..

This is a photo of bathroom 2 manifold, it also supplies the kitchen and utility room.

manifold in bedroom 4 with the UFH manifold next to it.

we have had to pull up a lot of the floors to get the cables and pipes in

so we have spent the last 4 days putting the OSB floors back down

The dorma windows are finally finished.

We have had such a nightmare with them, we paid £9k for top end aluminum windows but the idiots manufactured them wrong and they ended up flooding the flat directly under us.




oh and we got our self a new pupply

the plan going forward:
Next week I am going to put all the waste pipes in, I need to vent some of them through the roof so I am going to have to put up scaffolding again

Then I am on holiday for a month to Thailand so nothing will happen until I get back. After the trip we plan to start plaster boarding the walls and ceilings, after that we are going to install the floor and under floor heating

Then the kitchen, bathrooms and decorating. I expect to be finished by March at the latest.

 

[Dr House]

You must be rich, nice project.

lol no not rich at all (I have spent everything I have on this project and then some) but worked hard to for the last 10 years to fund a project like this.

 

[Dr House]

Looks good, are you running cat 5/6 to all the rooms and wiring for mult room audio ? Easy at the build stage even if you aren't going to use it but more tricky once finished.

Hi yes we have LOTS and LOTS of cat6 cable. around 3km worth in all.

Does the building have a lift?

yes it opens into my hall way.

The apartment looks enormous, will look and feel unbelievably good when it's finished!

Yah its quite big but it does not feel it anymore

 

[Dr House]

forgot to say speakers arrive next week.

http://stealthacoustics.com/products/invisible-speakers/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxymKAB-vy8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaCCNIRBkw&feature=plcp

They are 100% invisible speakers. I can even paint over them.

I have ordered a pair of LR3's, pair of LR8's, SLR5, pair of B30 Subwoofers.
They are going to be driven by a 8400 amp and a 255R amp for the subs.

 

[Dr House]

Looking good will be a great place to live when finished.

Sorry to hear about the impending court case, you never seem to have the best of luck really, makes you stronger I suppose. Will house insurance cover her claim?

nop the insurance will not cover me but we will get it sorted

fantastic, so after you finished you going to be living in it yea?

That is the plan, its been going on for 2 and half years but it should be done soon. I really do not like living in the uk however my wife does not want to move again.

looks wicked mate. I would LOVE to have a project like that and have so much input into my living space.

can't wait to see it when its done.

thanks

 

[Dr House]

There is no way I would stop in the UK after that project was finished. I would have sold it off (OR) move and rent them out so there is a constant income.

I am finding its very difficult here and can seem my self being quite unhappy if I end up back here long term. I really want to go to Australia as I think we would have a better life there. My wife would make £150 to £200k on top of what ever I earn. On that sort of money we could have am amazing lifestyle.

 

[Dr House]

Nevermind all that, what you call the puppy

Oh and good luck with everything else

Barney, he is a havanese!

Give you 30 grand when it's done

That would not cover the cost of the kitchen.

Looking Awesome...but a 330l tank and the bath holds 440l, could you not have got a bigger cylinder??

well the 330l tank holds water at 60'C, so you mix it with cold water when you fill the bath. Also the boiler will heat 14 to 15 L/min so the boiler is refilling the cylinder almost as fast as you are filling the bath.

 

[Dr House]

Nice build. I think those sloping ceilings would annoy me, but your fully loading up with toys to offset lol.

Are those cable runs going to be properly tidied up before the floor boards are put back down? My cable OCD would kick in big style.

Yes they have been tidied up now.

Maybe I'm missing something but doing this seems madness if you don't want to live in the UK, you're never going to recoup the cost of all this work?

Well when we started the project the idea is that it was going to be our long term home. We should make back everything I spent on the project as I got the space for very little. I have put in top end stuff but I got really good deals on everything.

 

[Dr House]

market is bad round here mate

haha I hear the market for Supercharged V8 engines is quit bad so with that in mind hows £10k sound for the jag?

What is going on to the celotex? I am wondering how you are going to fix the gyproc

cheers

I will install a Lafarge plaster grid system.

Looks like it is going to be a realy nice place. But what is a dressing room and I think it might have been better having the lounge by the balcony, although would not have made that much difference.

Its a room to get dressed in lol, we will probably use it as a study or baby room. .

 

[Dr House]

Right we are moving again.

The central vacuums system has been installed in every room.

http://www.nutone.com/products/product/6aa4aec5-ca9f-470d-aaef-933d516aef2e

This thing really sucks!!! it has a 5hp motor in it which produces about 1000 air watts, a Dyson has about 250.

We had to put up a bit of stud work due to the idiots that installed the sprinkler pipes.

Joiners at work here in the study

We have insulated the roof with 100mm celotex between the rafters and then 20mm celotex over the top. We had to fix a small damp issue here.
The joiners have done really amazing work.

This is the Kitchen

We have dot and dab'ed 15mm Sound Block plaster board onto the walls. in total we ordered 7000kg of plaster board which was a nightmare to get into the flat.

I was not happy with the job the plasterers did, they worked really slowly so they have all been fired (they did the dot and dab above). It 4 of them to 7 days to plaster 3 rooms and put a little dot and dab up.

Kitchen plastered

bed 4 plastered

Bedroom 3 plastered

 

[Dr House]

Yep its really moving.

Next week all the waste pipes are going in, plastering should be finished in 2 to 3 weeks.

Then the floors will go in along with the UFH.

We finally ordered our kitchen which ended up being 20k over budget but its a REALLY nice kitchen. We had to drop the steam room to help pay for the kitchen.

 

[Dr House]

Kitchens more important. Looking forward to that update, most important room in the house and never done correctly outside of self builds, even then most of the time people **** it up.

The kitchen is so well planned it just cant go wrong. We have 3 ovens (miele) which will be floating half way out of the wall (Microwave combi oven, Steam Combi oven, Normal oven) and 2 warming drawers.

Gaggenau full surface induction hob (I have wet dreams about this thing lol)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYeJiKqg6aA

Gaggenau ceiling extractor hood which can suck 1800m3 per hour

http://formul.ru/_CATALOG_FILES/pro...genau AC 402-180--197931-ac_402-180.83344.jpg

 

[Dr House]

Would be very interested about all things kitchen related. Problems you overcame, how you chose contractors, design influences, how you chose PM / Architect etc.

Will likely be buying a total gut-job for our next house, and am quite nervous on whom I am going to trust in designing, fitting and implementing. Lot of money on the line.

Good luck with it all

I will post a bit of info when I have time later.


The Kitchen has been ordered and paid for we changed the design a little. In then end we went with an Italian kitchen

The island unit are white frosted glass.
The tall run on the back wall is a are a dark oak colour like the back unit here
http://www.poliform.it/varenna/cucine/kyton_2_9717_178_0.html

as you can see we have pocket doors, it will look like this inside so we can hide all our appliances

The gap on the side of the tall units will have our appliances floating in out of the wall a little like this

I will post more info on the appliances when I get home.

 

[Dr House]

Making progress, you must be well rich!? Buy me a Mac Pro.

lol no not rich at all. I had a little savings, I moved from an expensive city to the country and had a little help from mum and dad + a huge mortgage.

So info on the appliances

The drawers in the kitchen are all on a servo drive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmwY83RsSwM

Tap -
We have a PureH20 Tap it can dispense boiling water, chilled water, sparkling water and normal hot water.
More info here
http://www.pureh2o.co.uk/products/For-the-home/139/Quatreau-tap-/

Extractor hood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgMLhrugxtg
The way I have set it up can extract 1800 M2/hour which is massive

Induction hob
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYeJiKqg6aA
I love this, its probably my favourite thing in the whole house.

We have a combined Oven + steam oven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR5-Zi6bgKI
http://www.miele.co.uk/steam-ovens/steam-combination/dgc5085xl-320/
I have never had a steam oven but I hear that they are amazing for cooking and they more or less replace a microwave.

Standard singel oven, nothing exiting
http://www.miele.co.uk/ovens/single-ovens-range/h5681b-188/

Microwave combi oven
http://www.miele.co.uk/ovens/combi-microwave-range/h5080bm-193/
again nothing exiting

We also have 2 of these
http://www.miele.co.uk/ovens/warming-drawers-range/esw5080-14-161/

Fridge, freezer from miele and gaggenau dishwasher again nothing interesting.

They will be arranged in more or less the same format as in the picture above.

Pop uk sockets
http://the-sbox.com/uk/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jsvIejx27k
these are very cool

 

[Dr House]

lulwut you paid 3k for the tap??

I got some discount.

 

[Dr House]

Awesome toys though

It is, having boiling water on demand is actually very very useful. I have had it before and would not build a kitchen without one. Quaker and Zip make them but they are cheaper.

 

[Dr House]

It's down as £2.5k on the site, if you click of a price rather than looking at the RRP.

Thats the basic one without the sparkling or chilled water. I think the top one with the reverse osmosis filter its around 4k.

Wow, an amazing project and the finished results look first class. Kudos for sticking with it over the 3 years.

Yah I did not expect it to take 3 years but it will be done in the next 3 months now.

 

[Dr House]

Quooker taps can be found for MUCH less money, we have one in london and its a good tap.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/quooker-t...rden_Kitchen_SinksTaps_GL&hash=item1c318a2b8a

The ZipHydro tap is also very good but more money.

Steam oven - I dont really know how useful it will be but everything I read online says how amazing they are.
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0115444730136.html


Just FYI I have a lot of Mile appliances I will put on ebay soon (changed our mind on the models we wanted) I think I have the following Items that I do not plan to use anymore.

Miele DG 5080 Steam Oven
Miele CVA2660 Coffee Machine
EGW 3060-10 warming drawer
Miele induction hob
Miele H5461 B Oven
Zip HydroTap - both boiling and chilled water

 

[Dr House]

Why mind change over so many appliances already purchased?

I just changed my mind and wanted the higher models. My budget was a problem before so I bought the cheaper ovens however my situations has changed and I can afford to get the proper ones.

We have Zip Hydro taps at work (about 40 of them) and they are amazing. I can't see why you would want to spend anymore.

I only discovered the PureH20 a few days after buying the Zip

 

[Dr House]

A little more progress, its going very slowly but its moving.

wetroom floors have arrived, they are cement imprignateg with a polymer.

Wetroom boards have arrived also.

Most areas have now had plasterboards put up, we still have the living room walls to do but it should be finished by the middle of next week.
(Hallway)

The stud work in the living room is on its way up now

You can see the rear speaker boxes

We have also installed the frame for the kitchen all units. This has taken the best part of 3 to 4 days as there was a lot of work involved. The 2 boxes at the top will have LED strip lights in them they should appear as if they are floating 2 or 3 inches under the ceiling.