House of Bamboo

"Number 54. The house with the bamboo door. Bamboo roof and bamboo walls, they've even got a bamboo floor" Andy Williams, what a classic. And yeah, we have made ourselves the House of Bamboo - certainly with the flooring, the foliage and now thanks to a Friday morning delivery, some actual plants. They were £35 each from a garden centre in Enfield, the black plant tubs were £65 each. £270 all up for what is now a massive improvement to our deck.

In addition to providing a bit of privacy and shade, we're hoping these will provide a slight barrier to prevent the girls from constantly flinging themselves over the fence to annoy the neighbours. We've had the bamboo for exactly four days and it's already looking a little dry and floppy despite two massive watering sessions. I am optimistic these plants will survive (£140 for replacements! They'd better survive!) - actually, I'm off to read up on how to look after bamboo right now...

House of bamboo

It's amazing how massive this room looks now that the flooring is down. The strips of engineered planks of bamboo run the length of the house, rather than the width, which adds to the lengthening effect. As you can see it has a slight reflective sheen and lies perfectly flat. The top floor of the house creaks with every footstep, due to the flooring not being screwed down properly. This will get remedied when phase two of the build goes ahead. The downstairs loo floor was concrete and rubble until Friday, and when our toddler popped her head in and saw that there was a proper floor she actually clapped with joy. She doesn't even use a toilet but even she can tell the significance of a well laid floor.

Imagining the extension

Image from LivingEtc

I seem to have aquired a lot of photos showing black folding doors, which is quite weird as I thought we were being really adventurous and bold. This image illustrates quite closely how I imagine our extension will look - with folding doors, a similar sized garden and wooden floors.

Instead of a solitary skylight we'll have about four metres of glass on the ceiling running the whole width of the room, also I think we're laying our floor running across the room rather than down it. This serves two purposes - it makes the room seem wider, and it also won't draw your eye to any issues if the lines don't exactly run straight. We're completely sold on the bamboo floor, but I must check whether it's from a sustainable source and if the glue is free of toxins and nasties.