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A roof, a roof

 Will and Scott have been labouring for some weeks and the structure is now emerging.  Every day, when the builders head home, the boys clamber excitedly up the ladder onto the scaffolding to see what new beams or joists have been put in place. By now the majority of the primary timber frame is in place, revealing the shape of our new bedroom and the new dormer, and the size of the excellent looking rooflights that will sit directly over our bathroom and the new ensuite. It feels a little precarious to step over the half-built awning, using a loose panel placed on top, and to see the concrete floor of the kitchen yawning through the gaps beneath your feet.  But the steels and beams are as solid as they should be. I'm somehow drawn to the space when no-one is watching.  I wander through the gaps with plans clutched in hand trying to imagine what the space will be like when it's finished.  It's both easy to imagine and difficult to see accurately.  What feels...
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Some structure emerges

 The mud has definitely abated.  Shortly after the last post a few tons of hardcore and concrete mix went down on the mud in the "kitchen" and "patio". And now the world is drying out and mud levels are not what they were in January.  Thankfully. The chippies turned up for a week and built the porch, it's kinda remarkable to see how quickly we went from having simply a brick and concrete footing to having a full mostly weatherproof structure.  It's just timber frame and membrane, but it feels like a room when we step out the front door. And steadily the shape of the new kitchen is emerging.  Some blocks have gone down that represent the side and outside walls of the kitchen - no larger than before.  And the internal wall that had been completely demolished has now been mostly rebuilt to show the new location of the larger doors to the playroom and kitchen.  The door to the study (currently our mini-lounge" has also been bricked up and some marks have a...
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Emerging from the ground

This week the build appears to be turning a corner.  After slogging in ankle deep mud for a couple more weeks, and with another five 16 ton grab lorries hauling great piles of muck off our driveway, the majority of the excavation seems to be complete.  Darren appear confident that no more muck lorries will be needed. The upshot then is a fully cleaned out and excavated hole where the kitchen used to be.  The back wall, side wall, floor and roof have all come down, leaving a wet, clay and water filled hole.  And they've extended the whole to dig out the patio space further out and back together with a trench for a retaining wall footing.  The best milestone was seeing the large brick pillar that has dominated the kitchen since we moved in fall to the floor.  It will not be missed. I chipped in a bit too.  Asbestos cladding for the Aga flue where it ran through the under eaves needed removing, and I decided that I could do it myself and dispose of it via...
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Christmas in a building site

Two months down, here's some observations on progress and life in a building site. Darren, Chris and Bogdan finished their 2025 efforts by pouring footings for the back kitchen wall, then they swept and cleaned the paths, all in a horrible rain storm.  They were so efficient that they left the site before we could give them the Christmas presents we'd put aside for them. The heating is confused and kinda broken.  With the house split in two, and the thermostat in basically the coldest, draftiest area of the house spaces are either swelteringly hot, or cold.  The thermostat gets cold during the night, bringing the heating on in the bedrooms and making us sweat.  Plus, Keir's radiator is broken and won't switch on, whilst Ula's radiator is broken and won't switch off.  On average, everyone is fine. The hot water system is also kinda broken.  For no good reason we can determine, at some point over Christmas, whilst no work was going on, it stopped delivering r...
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Renovation round-up week 4

Work's been going on the best part of a month.  I think it feels like it might have been longer, and that every morning has been grey and damp and cold and muddy.  But maybe that's just the winter blues talking. Week 4 saw the corner properly turned, and whilst demolition continues, stuff is also being created.  The underpinning of the kitchen walls proceeds in sections, and now about 5 large concrete blocks have been cast at various points around the wall.   The team also managed to excavate the footings for the newly enlarged porch, digging a trench probably a metre deep in a short space of time.  They managed to pierce the water supply heading into the house, leading to some rather panicked rushing around trying to find the stopcock.  I largely ignored the panic, figuring I'd only need to start worrying when half the garden slumped down the hill.  Fortunately it was resolved long before that point, but I did get to witness the trench mostly fil...
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The great (wood) wall of Walnut Tree House - Renovation Day 15

More faces on site (I've been told, I wasn't at home).  Wayne stood down, but new grounds people on site.  And more pertinently a pair of carpenters. The carpenters spent their day erecting a large wall that runs through the lounge, hall and playroom.  They removed the entirety of the playroom door and surround, and walled off a whole set of shelves.  From the inside it's an impressively monolithic construction. And they took care to route light switches so that we can control the lounge and playroom lights, albeit at about 6 feet off the floor so that Keir has no agency at all. All so that they can keep digging lumps out of the kitchen, and knock down walls and so on without too much impact on the rest of the house.   And with the wall in place the demolition continues.  Three full grabber lorries of dirt have gone from the driveway, and there's at least two more still to go.  The pantry is mostly gone, although the floor remains.  And they'...
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Through the mud - Renovation Day 10

 It was grey and damp and dreich almost all weekend.  Which coincided in a mucky way with the excavations of the kitchen.  Wayne and Chris had spent most of Thursday and Friday with the digger and dump truck in the kitchen, with the result that about three quarters of the kitchen was a metre lower and all the earth that had once been beneath our feet was mostly on the driveway. I say most of the earth was on the drive way, because of course, there was a thin patina of mud all the way across the patio and around onto the drive.  Such that every time someone, or a pet, walked into either of the external doors we were using, they tracked some mud into the lounge or our teeny new kitchen.  Upshot: filth.  And a never-ending tide of it too. We snapped on Saturday and spent the day cleaning the house, dusting and hoovering and tidying to make it feel slightly more pleasant to live in.  We managed to keep muddy pawprints off things for all of about 20 minutes...
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