Hi. Hard to tell from the photos but it looks like it’s made from ceramic, most likely a studio pottery and handmade. The light fitting itself looks like a standard indoor one, you can tell because of the switch on the cable. For outdoor use you would need a different kind of fitting. Tried to find one similar with no joy. You could perhaps get one made on commission tho if you have any pottery studios near by. Looks fairly easy to do and an earthen ware glaze would look great on it.

Sarah is right. Don’t do anything without a build over agreement from your water company. It’s easy to apply online, but there is a fee. We applied and it turned out we didn’t actually need the agreement and they refunded our fee.

My first thought was that I'd aim to match your door, windows, and boards, and that the pale grey you've chosen is a good one to go for. When I thought about it a bit longer, I remembered that your house is brick, not rendered. Pale tudor boards on a white house looks great, because it's a subtle contrast. Against brick, pale tudor boards would be a huge contrast. I wonder if pale grey windows and dark grey boards would work? It would show that you've considered the whole, rather than just replacing parts piecemeal, but it wouldn't be as stark as pale grey. Here's just the windows: Here's the effect with matching boards: And here it is with medium grey boards: I took the pebble grey and darkened it a bit. I think it looks quite smart! You could go lighter still, maybe just a shade or two darker than the windows. You could also go darker so it's more similar to the current effect, but clearly harmonised.

We're currently having an extension built, builders on site preparing the footing and brickwork starting in a week or so, but I've hit a problem with our cavity walls specs. On the architect drawings (top down plans and structure cross-section) it shows 100mm facing brick, 100mm cavity, 100m blockwork (then normal plasterboard). All of the floorplan measurements are based on this size of cavity wall for the whole build. Our builder (who I have complete faith in) however says that the plans are wrong, it shuold have an additional 90mm of insulation board on all internal facing walls.... this has come as a shock as of course we agreed to the plans and had planning permission approved for what's on the plans. The new kitchen we've had planned and ordered will need to be redone, and the rooms are now 180mm (90mm each side) smaller floorspace than we were expecting. All this has only come to light right when the work is fully underway. With the plans, our architect included a "General Notes" page which includes this regarding the cavity walls: "6.0 EXTERNAL WALLS: (max 0.18W/m2k U-value) 315mm nominal cavity work, finished in facing brickwork. 100mm facing brickwork, 100mm full fill cavity insulation cavity with 90mm 'Kingspan Kooltherm K106' (0.021 W/mk) foil-backed extruded insulation to internal face (continued min 150mm below ground floor insulation level) and maintain 50mm clear cavity, 100mm Celcon Standard (0.15 Wmk) blockwork 3.5N/mm2 finished internally with 2 coat 13mm plaster." Before I contact our architect and try and find out what went wrong here, can anyone confirm whether the above tallies with what our builder is saying? I also feel as though surely the local Planning department should have picked up on this conflict. Can anyone offer advice on what options there might be to try and reduce the size of these walls? Are there thinner options available for example with the same thermal properties? This is a very standard south-facing kitchen / diner extension, really nothing fancy at all.