I have settled on the kitchen

The housebuilding is going well. We are partially insulated and plasterboarded and some of the outside walls are bricked up. The plumbers and electricians have done as much as they can for now. We are at a point that is not very stressful. I am happy as there are men there every day working. One of them is my brother and it is special to have someone working who really cares about us and our house. It is also exciting for the kids to go down and join him for 10 o'clock tea. 

The main news is that I have finally settled on the kitchen. I have spent weeks agonising. Yes, really agonising about worktops, sinks and taps. It was my last thought at night and my first thought in the morning. Obviously, I have lost all sense of perspective. The trouble is I found a kitchen I love but couldn't afford so I bought it and compromised by selecting cheapo worktop, sink and tap. The kitchen doors are white-painted timber shaker-style with modern long handles. I wanted to put on a black quartz worktop but I couldn't afford it. At long last I have decided to go for an oak worktop, belfast sink and beautiful tap. This way I can marry the modern with the traditional, create a heart of the home kitchen and be comfortable that I am using natural materials. Wood is the most environmentally friendly choice as it is a renewable source. I feel happy. Just have to squeeze the budget a bit.

We are trying to be as green as we can with the build. It is timber frame, well-insulated, high-performance timber doors and windows. We will have a wood-burning stove and we have installed underfloor heating. The heating system is an air source heat pump. It is expensive but should pay for itself within a few years. Basically, the fuel source is the outside air. The air is compressed which makes it hotter and it then heats the water for our water tank and the water that flows in the pipes of our underfloor heating. As there is an infinite supply of air we will always have fuel and we won't have to worry about not being able to afford to fill an oil tank. 

we dug down and now we're going up

I have stood in the foundation trenches and watched them being filled with concrete. Within a couple of days the foundation  block work was complete and we could see the size and shape of the house. A giant footprint on our patch of this earth.  It looked big but when I stepped in to the lounge it seemed so small. "I'll never fit a three-piece suite in here!" I said. I knew the room measured up to a big space but in the wide open without walls to limit the eye it was impossible to guage. I'm a typical woman when it comes to visual-spatial exercises. 

The next stage was to fill it with hardcore which the digger man dug out from our site and created a great back yard space in the process! We had to compact the base with  a vibrating whacker plate. When that was done we dug up some of it to drill holes through the foundation walls for drainage pipes. The brickies should have left the holes in the first place and we should never have filled it in without making sure there were holes there! It was all our fault really as we are the project managers. Anyway, it is all sorted out. I hadn't planned on getting my hands dirty at the foundation stage but the night before we did the concrete floor I was out working at the site filling in holes with a spade and helping to place drainage pipes. My hands were wrecked. Cracked skin, raggy, broken nails and dirt so ingrained it wouldn't wash out. It wouldn't have been so bad but the week before I had spent £20 on a manicure!

Concrete floor day was exciting. There I was in my yellow steel-toe cap Lidl wellies my father-in-law had bought me years ago laying DPM (damp proof membrane) and expansion boards and pressure-testing the drainage pipes. I really enjoyed getting involved and it fuelled my enthusiasm for the whole project. The best thing about the day was the atmosphere of all these people helping us. Friends and neighbours working out of the goodness of their hearts. It is heartening that there still exists a code of helpfulness in our highland village. Neighbours help one another and know they can call on each other for help. Of course, not everyone is willing to lend a hand. We had people on our site pushing 60 and working hard. Yet, our old friend a fit single man kept his distance and took his dog for a walk instead. He doesn't like to help anyone. Resents giving his time away. Although he is like that the people here are so good that when he needs it they will help him too.