Rainshore Update 0.4 – ground breaking adventures

posted in: Designing, Inspiration | 14

Can you get excited by concrete?

Well Mrs Mole once wrote a whole post about it.

We have a completed ground floor slab. The first picture was taken when we had completed on buying the land in June 2015. The second was taken in January 2016. The three trees are the same, but have lost their leaves. The green plastic sheeting is still there between our site and the lake. Between June and January we agreed the design and got planning permission. We have been waiting for the contractor to complete the ground works and I am thrilled we have now completed the first package works of which includes piling, caps, beams, insulation and concrete slab.

We have still to agree the costing of the works – if the price is too high we may have to do some “value engineering” – this involves reducing the specification for specific items or eliminating them to bring the cost down to the budget. Once that is done the building work will start. The building is promised for Christmas, but things always take longer than expected. We shall see.

In the meantime we have been discussing the colour of the paints. The outside of the house includes some render so we were obliged to choose the exact colour we wanted this week – H 68.

We have decided to use Welsh slate for the worktops. We have slate in our flat at the moment and we love the colour and the wow factor it gives to the kitchen. In our flat it was a reclaimed billiard table top as our flat used to be a billiard hall. This time round we will have to have one made.

slate work top
slate work top

Inside the house we will be using Farrow & Ball paints and I think we managed to choose the colours we want to use for the walls. It is all rather subdued and calm; the stronger yellow – the Hound Lemon is for my sewing room. The floor will be oak, and we have bought some 1940s metal lamps for the kitchen which are a greyish blue.

 

That’s it for now. When my draping classes end (at Easter) I may sign up for a textiles class. I think some linen cushions in these sort of colours with some blue, turquoise or emerald printing might make the whole thing a bit more exciting.

 

 

14 Responses

  1. Marianne Koster

    Lovely colours! After some research I painted my sewing room yellow and it’s a perfect choice. It enhances natural light without clashing with multi coloured sewing supplies and it’s not influencing your judgement of fabric and thread colours, like stronger wall colours can do. It will be a wonderful place!

  2. Kim Hood

    How exciting to plan absolutely everything. It will be nice to experience this even though the house isn’t for me!
    I hope you will be keeping loads of pictures as you grow.

  3. Susie

    Exciting! Thanks for sharing. I love your slate, it’s something I had not considered, but it is beautiful. I like yellow walls, especially where daylight is not abundant. I find it is even better than white.

  4. Mary

    I think the concrete looks super exciting since it looks like a house! I bet you can vision it pretty nicely as you look at the slab. All of your colors are serene and unified. What a wonderful project. I look forward to watching it build since nothing is more pleasing to me than good design.

  5. SJ Kurtz

    Well, yes I can get excited about a slab of concrete (my father was a engineer, speciality in concrete, and I see you aren’t in an earthquake zone).
    I got yellow marmoleum for the floor, which helps brighten things up here in the north. It also shows all the dirt, but I can choose to ignore that today. I have sewing to do.
    May your dreams become happy realities!

  6. Sew2pro

    This is shopping of the most exciting kind (how much nicer than with my various friends who are shopping for their extensions whilst living in a building site nightmare). It’s such a long project but I’m sure time will fly.

    My kitchen floor BTW is horrible. Some kind of speckled tile effect made of ‘Karndean’. The speckles have an unintentional ‘pavement pizza’ effect (*shudder*).

  7. Anne

    Exciting! Enjoy the choosing. Fingers crossed that the plan will be finished on schedule without too much value engineering! I love the slate surface. How fascinating that your flat used to be a billiard hall!

  8. Whistle

    How exciting! The slate looks lovely.

    It might seem a bit early for colours, but from hard experience you absolutely have to be ready with the details long before you expect, for example with the precise location of every socket, light point, and switch.

  9. mrsmole

    Concrete is very exciting when you own it and it is part of something bigger in the future! Love the slate counter tops and looking forward to seeing the house grow up and out with your colors and ideas. To have your dream home built just for you…OH MY…heaven!

    • Fabrickated

      The very day I posted this they “archived” Hound Yellow, ie took it off their colour chart. Obviously while you were ahead of the trend, I missed it!!

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