Inscape Joinery

The address of the new house we are building is on Tipperlinn Road in the Morningside district of Edinburgh. Our clients told us that Tipperlinn in the 18th century had been a little village on the outskirts of the city situated roughly on the grounds now occupied by the Royal Edinburgh Hospital on Tipperlinn Road. We did a little bit of research (googled) and put together here the few facts that we learnt. First of all the name itself; Tipperlinn is from the Gaelic and it m

Following the site clearance it was time to start the heavy work. We carefully took down the 4m high garden wall that formed the corner of Tipperlinn Road and Stable Lane. This became the access onto the site for all lorry deliveries, excavation vehicles cement lorries etc. But it also meant that we couldn't carry out any of the groundworks in this area for the time being. We began by levelling the site with our own digger and driver. The excess earth was taken away in lorry

The first survey of the site. Estimates at this stage suggested we would need to move about 120 tons of earth off the site during the groundworks. In fact we moved quite a bit more than that. Initially the plan was to make a lorry entrance off the front street by taking down the wall at its lowest point near the pedestrian gate. After some consideration we decided to make the entrance on the corner between Tipperlinn Road and Stable Lane, mainly for safety considerations. We

Inscape was chosen as the preferred contractor and after a short period of negotiation between ourselves and the client's quantity surveyors, which allows the client to be confident that the estimated costs are fair, the contracts were signed and the site was handed over to us. Building contracts are often awarded after the job is put out to a 'competitive tender'. Here several building companies all offer their 'best' price and the clients/architects choose one, maybe the ch

While the clients still occupied the original house we were asked to install what would become the new drainage connection for the house that was about to be built. The drain would run across the remainder of the original house's garden and then track around that house to a large disconnecting manhole at the front of the property. Drainage is such a great part - and the guts of any new build. This work was done ahead of the build and before the original house was sold so ther

We thought it might be interesting to create a blog post on the web site charting the construction of a new house we are building that has been designed by Richard Murphy Architects. The house is in the Morningside area of Edinburgh. The idea is to take the project from start to completion updating regularly and detailing the whole building process. In this case the project started on site in January 2017 so initially the blog needs to catch up. The new house is largely conce