Friday 30 December 2016

Our Building Site

Originally written on 28th May 2016.

Yes, its been a while, don't all my 'recent' posts begin like that? Let's not dwell. 

Obviously lots of changes have happened in a year but I wanted to blog about the extension as I've been photographing it daily. Extension? Long story but I decided, almost on a spur of the moment (well its a bit more complicated than that but I'll explain later), to have the 'Sunroom' knocked down and replaced by extending the kitchen. I think that decision was around February. Since then I have found a recommended builder, who sent me an architect, and we've been through the planning stages, obtained building regs. approval and the work started a couple of weeks ago.

So let's have a reminder of the beautiful 'Sunroom', as named by Oliver the Estate Agent in 2010, which stuck, although I still think he was pushing the boundaries of trading standards with this one. How it remained standing for a further 5 years after we moved in is somewhat a mystery too, I swear that some of the wood is held together only by paint.








Day one: 

Child #1 looking confused, I tried to let her figure out what was different for herself.


Day two:

The view from the back door


 We are trying not to lose the cat in the project...





The visit from the Building Inspector was somewhat amusing. Picture the scene: My eldest was at home revising for AS Level exams (yes, she moved back home for good last August and returned to college, I did say there had been changes), dressed in tracksuit bottoms, ugg boot style slippers, and not even a brush through her hair, the inspector knocks. She answers and he introduces himself while handing her his business card which clearly displays his credentials and membership of RICS. He explains why he's there so she says...

"Well, my mum's not here but if you know what you're doing you can go through" 

(bearing in mind we are just talking about a hole in our back garden here!)

I clarified that that was the exact phrase she used, later when she relayed this incident, and said that in future she might want to go with "I'm sure you know what you need to do so I'll show you through". To which she replied, with a shrug, "same difference". Not really. We did wonder briefly if we would get home to find the builders had been told to dig another couple of feet down! Clearly the man had a sense of humour though as all was good and appeared to continue ok.

Day 3:

No further progress yet but thanks to the weather we do now have a moat, let the battle begin! 
Day four:


A cement moat.

Landscaping at its best.

Lesson from the builders in how to hide a cement mixer with a Christmas tree and wheely bin lid...

can you see it?! ;-)



Day 5:



They got better at the hiding thing...can you see it now? 


Day 6...promising



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