houseplans

For our original house design, we gave a load of drawings to an architect. Amazingly, although we paid him a reasonable amount of money for the technical specifications, the actual house layout was what we gave him. All he did was to redraw it using a technical software tool (and added all the technical bits). As for technical detail, there was nothing in respect to the water, waste water and electrical layout. Perhaps we should have demanded more. However, as we have found out during the course of our build, ideas develop and changes can be made if you are doing your own build. So, where you place things changes as well.

Usually, the architect will give further advice and make site visits during the course of the build so that when the day comes (assuming the fellow is still alive), he will sign it off at the Architect's Institute and the building can be assigned to the deeds (more or less). In our case, our architect just simply never turned up for meetings - even if he had arranged them!

Unfortunately, after our bore hole failure (New Year - New Problems) we decided to radically change the house size and downsize it as well as change the layout. What we are building now is nothing like our drawings. It is also, of course, nothing at all like our 'reform project' layout so we are working on a bit of flyer at the moment.

For the more boring stuff: the walls will be a cavity construction which is not normally used around here. They will provide insulation against heat and cold and will also provide a thick wall that is more aesthetically pleasing and provide an element of shading in summer. We are using reclaimed railway sleepers for most of the lintels. The ceiling to the kitchen/salon area will be marine ply over chestnut vigas (ceiling beams). The is a huge central pillar to hold up the front of the house which has chestnut corners. Two open areas at each end of the building have open roofs with chestnut poles supporting chestnut planking, thick natural cork and roof tiles, some reclaimed from the old house.

Upstairs, a large bedroom and bathroom area will be capped off with an open roof structure. Due to the large open area, I will be using some different joinery to make up the long central ridge beam and trusses. I've seen some locking scarf joints that can utilize lighter timber making it easier for me to fabricate and handle them.

The flooring side of things is still indecided. We would like wood flooring but the local stuff isn't stored or cut correctly, is a sod to lay and it is debatable how well the bugs can be kept out. Imported oak may be better but costly. Tiles are hard to live with particularly in winter months but, I guess loads of rugs can be put down.

On the heating front, we're aiming towards a good, large woodburner backing it up with a gas water heating system with two or three radiators. Most of the wood will come from the finca itself although, at the moment, a lot of the wood is difficult to retrieve. More on that later. We did think of a backboiler woodburner to supply some heating but in the end the ease of having a gas system won the day.

The outside will, eventually, be rendered in a 'rustic' style and we will add pergola type wooden structures so that we can grow vines and jasmine to add some shading during summer. Hell, that seems a long way off!