In one great example of this, a couple purchased a “New England” style wooden kit house from the US, complete with expert guides to help the build (2-4 weeks as I recall). However, the UK chippies that they hired to be the expert labour insisted on hammering in nails with a hammer, instead of using nailguns (as the US experts planned on), so the build was over time, over budget and ran into bad weather.
I hate internal breeze-block construction - it is so much work to hang anything.
Si
What are your thoughts on the rendered cinderblock used in most between-wars blocks of flats? Most places I’ve lived in London seemed to have walls of solid Indestructiblium, and attempting to hammer anything into the walls resulted in nothing but shrapnel wounds. I am now well-practiced in the routine of leaning on a drill for 5 minutes to make an adequate hole for a rawlplug.
This really pisses me off, especially when new building have fake gable ends & the like stuck on to supposedly ‘fit in with’ old buildings around them. The result is a grotesque cariacature of the original architecture.
Those crazy Swedes 
:smack: She lived there for a number of years. I presume she loved there as well, but I’ve never quizzed her about her personal life in that level of detail.
My parent’s house (in London) is just like this, IIRC built around 1910. Every wall is solid brick, outside walls are double thickness.
As a moving in present my dad gave me a hammer drill for making holes in my new place (build in the 70s). I went to drill a hole for a hook to hang a mirror, expecting a ten minute fight with flying plaster and brick dust. Not in a modern house, a hammer drill is massive overkill when all you have to penetrate is plasterboard. I think I’d cut right through to the open air if I dared use it on an outside wall.
And since they’re still building round here* I see the new places going up. What you see once they’re up is all brick but any walls that will not be visible, internal walls, behind facing, behind roofing - whatever - are made of breeze blocks.
They really don’t make them like they used to. If they still build shit-houses I bet they’re not made of bricks anymore.
GorillaMan Please don’t come huffing and puffing round my place.
*I remember when this was all just fields, six months ago.
Are you sure? I thought breeze blocks had been discontinued years ago. The cinder/clinker based blocks have been replaced by a cement based block i.e. Thermalite. Whereas breeze blocks vary in hardness (which is what causes the problem in drilling it, the drill will wander off when it hits a hard bit) Thermalite is a consistent hardness and very easy to drill.
I’d rather have either of these though than plasterboard internal walls.
Thermalite is supposed to have better insulation properties because it’s made from aerated concrete .
And drilling makes such a mess. I have to hang a 29"x29" studio picture this weekend - 4 accurately places holes for a heavy piece of glass and photo. I’ll have to use expanding bolts, not rawlplugs due to the load. And if SiWife does not like the placement - life will not be worth living.
I am NOT looking forward to it.
Si
Why?
I can see wanting to have strong structural walls but why wouldn’t you want to have plasterboard internal walls? If I have to replace some plumbing, it is difficult but at least they can replace the wall fairly quickly. It is easier to put up a painting or anything like that. If the position is wrong, a minute or two is all that it takes. If I want to build a closet or move a wall, it isn’t that big a deal.
I love the irony! And in return, here are the “English Cottage Home Plans” available from an American home design company. I want Home Plan SL-641, and I want it with the ivy already attached.
‘Cottage’? Bloody hell, that’s a stretch of the definition!
“Cottage” as in “fucking great mansion”.
BTW my parents got round the cladding problem by building the extension out of breeze blocks then adding the cladding as “decoration” rather than integral to the build. Decoration doesn’t come under the council’s remit and so permission can’t be denied. Durrr.
Of course, having no planning permission at all leads to insanity like this monstrosity round the corner from where they used to live in the States.
LOL, 1750 sq ft is a closet 
Where would you swing your cat etc.
While I long for block/brick exterior walls here, I absolutley would not want internal brick partitions. Drywall on 2x4s is the way to go. It can be ripped out to fix things like busted pipes, it can be replaced easily, it is easy to hang and relatively easy to finish (I did my own basement - 100 sheets - with no previous experience), it can be used for complex or creative interior design i.e. angles, curves, funky wall reveals etc.
One note, there are a bunch of townhouses being built not far from me and the dividing wall is block all the way up to the attic. This is code here in MD and likely elsewhere and is for fire separation. Also, all townhomes here (i.e. terraced housing) require a sprinkler system connected to the the domestic water supply.
Not required in single family homes (detached).
‘Two-storey kitchen’? How remarkably authentic 
Does it have the proper steel-hard ceiling beams of snaggly old timber set at chin height to a normal adult? I consider that the defining sign of a proper cottage. If you don’t have a profusion of scalp wounds within ten minutes of entering, it’s not the real deal.
Don’t forget to leave the oak pegs uncut and protruding from the joints; a good system of roof beams should be able to blind as well as concuss.
Make the stairs as steep as possible and the lintel at the top of the stairwell about 5’6". This facilitates the classic English “whack head on lintel, roll forwards down stairs” tradition.
Also insure that all the floors slope, and that there is not a right-angle in the whole building.
US elementary school students are taught that one of the primary reasons that England was interested in colonizing North America was that you had so much development of land for homes and farms that by that point in history you pretty much lacked trees with which to build with. Therefore the new world was a wonderful find for its vast timber supplies and other natural resources. Has timber in the UK made a big comeback since?
That sounds implausible. The population of Britain back then was only a few million, and there were still plenty of large forests. General competiton for resources caused by population growth may have been one of many reasons why colonies were established, yes.
Absolutely. I have to duck to get through my bedroom door 