As a number of you will know on Thursday we attended the Aberdeen Grampian Chamber of Commerce Northern Star Business Awards Gala Dinner, as we had been selected as finalists for the "Socially Responsible Company of the Year Award". Much to our surprise I am thrilled to say we won! It made for a very overwhelming and rather surreal night, and left me with more than a touch of a hangover on Friday!

As a result I would like to say thank you ever so much to everyone who has emailed, phoned, sent cards, texts, messages and flowers to congratulate us on our win. We've been bowled over by the kindness from you all. My hangover has abated, and although in shock we are getting used to the infamy! John was even stopped in Kemnay by a well wisher on Saturday!

We've celebrated our sixth birthday on Wednesday, and are delighted with this latest success for the practice. It's taken a great deal of hard work and as with all our projects, its always a team effort so many thanks need to go also to our client at HCC, the contractor, Andy Dudek, and Steve Mitchell of Beedie Mitchell, the QS, without whom we would be lost. Our full press release is in the news section of our website, with a selection of links to various bits that have been in the Press and Journal, online and even on the telly!

Just back from the site visit today and the windows are all now installed, and looking very good indeed. The client is delighted and I think all the contracting team are pretty pleased too!

Finally at last all the windows have arrived on site and at the time of composing this post, most of them have been installed.

The relief in the office is immense - it is not often the case that the architect on a project has to take on the responsibility of actually doing the site measure for the window order, and it has reminded me why contractors often get a bit stressed out at this point. The tolerance on the windows was deliberately tight to achieve the crispness of overall look, and with a careful bit of cajoling to get them pysically in, they look fantastic now they are installed. The bottom section of the mian windows were not complete at the time of taking the photo above, hence why they look white, not silver. The client has been at Goodwood Classic Revival this week, and i am looking forward to this Thursdays site inspection. The change in the build has been immense.

The lade is now all lead sheet lined, and is looking very slick indeed, the building is more than 50% pointed, the colour for the pointing having been carefully selected from a batch mixed for us by Chap Quarries. Internally, ABC have taken on the plumbing following the replacement of the plumber sadly through insolvency on his part, and the newest recruit to ABC's team, aka Dan's dad, David, is coping well with having to pick up the reins on a complex heating installation mid build. It is our intention to fire up the heating system perhaps at the end of this week, so we can dry out the underfloor heating screed further in the mill. The kitchen units are all on site, the white goods should arrive in the next few days, and there are many other items, such as the front doors that will be delivered in the next few days also.

Both Total Build and ABC have produced some really beautiful work in the past few weeks - TB notably for the works to the mill lade, including the new stonework, and lead work, fantastic rebatted pointing and ABC for the works to clad the garage, including the painstaking pelleting of each of the fixing screws, done so beautifully it is virtually impossible to see where they have been fixed. The photo below shows a section where the pellets have been fitted but not sanded yet, above it they have been sanded and as you can the effect is very neat indeed.

After experiencing significant difficulties with ordering the french Biorock mini treatment unit, we have opted to install the very tried and tested Klargester Bio disc - JAMstudio actually uses one of these at our own office, and it has coped extremely well over the past 6 years. All in all a very hectic, fairly stressful, but intensely satisfying week on site, that sees us edge further still towards the provisional completion date at the end of next month.

The past month has seen a dramatic change in the build, with the main roof on the mill now completely slated, and as of this weekend, finished with its very pretty lead ridge roll. the mill lade has been completely rebuilt, the mill wheel is in production and due on site in a couple of weeks, the windows on schedule for later this month, and the interior of the building progressing at a pace.

As you can see the interior of the mill has been completely plastered, the kitchen has been delivered and is due for installation this week, tiling should commence, and generally everyone is working flat out to have the building largely complete by the end of the month.


The landscaping works are now underway, hence why the site looks like a bit of a mud bath, not helped by a months worth of rain falling in one day two weeks ago - but pleasingly everything on site has been manageable, albeit it rather muddy. Windows will be here the week commencing the 21st, so i will update the blog again shortly once they are in. Filming for the Northern Star Business Awards also took place this month, and we will be tickled to see the result on 24th when we find out if we have won!