Even More About Our People

Elly’s husband Mike is no newcomer to building. He resourced materials and implemented Elly’s design upon their family home using a novel self-build system with high thermal efficiency.

Having originally qualified in mechanical and production engineering I then pursued early business interests and broke into IT working on large projects in various roles until becoming absorbed by the family home extension project.

I decided to take a fresh approach to building a modern home extension and embarked on a self taught apprenticeship improvising and learning as I implemented Elly’s design. I called on the knowledge /expertise of many of Elly’s excellent building contacts to overcome challenges that presented themselves but I physically took the project from 1.8 m below ground to 5m above ground, it was a two storey side and rear extension.

I dug and implement off-set and conventional foundations, diverted and build tunnels for sewers and built new walls with PIF blocks. We filled the structure with a specialised concrete mixture and installed a solid concrete first floor.

Tradesmen were employed to construct and tile the pitch roof and I used their scaffolding to navigate around the external walls to spread a lightweight plastic/cement render and finally seal with textured silicon paint.

Once the double glazing was fitted that was it....., or so I thought.

Never having been through the loop before , .....I’d no idea how long fitting the services, bathrooms and kitchens and finishing the interior was about to take and it meant working indoors for many months. I battled fatigue and confusion brought on by layers of problems and stress. Eventually I prevailed and finished the internal work and am now planning to landscape the garden before the end of 2010.

So what do I bring to the party? I’m instinctively a resource investigator type, but I love experimentation and implementation.

I have good process skills (management and operations) understanding how to break down complex operations into a simple set of tasks and explain them to people new to the environment which I’ve again taken from working on large IT projects,...... and I’m a pretty good facilitator having spent most of my life working with the clients telling me what they do and don’t want their end result/ system to do, similar in some ways to Elegant Design’s projects.

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