Other bits and pieces

Marlon has been brilliant throughout. He and Chris have been doing a lot of the the jobs that get left out by the specialist tradespeople, because they dont come into any contract. Here they are putting up boards and felt on the roof.

Originally we were going to have a zinc roof, but we visited Grand Designs and decided to go for an optical fibre roof instead. we also put in rooflights to let more light into our kitchen. Chris and I had a bit of a debate about black or white glazing bars - in the end went for white, because Dominic our architect, says these look better from inside.

Other things going on have been Sorin and his guys working on the drains, as these need to be upgraded and Thames Water require us to have a manhole cover so that we can access the drains if need be. I know this doesn't look very exciting, but these are the little things that are now of extreme importance in our everyday lives, and Chris in particular is making sure he knows everything there is to know about every details of the construction.

catch-up

Can't believe my last blog was early October. So much has happened on the house since then. I'm afraid the optimism of my last blog has evaporated. At that time, we thought we were on track for finishing the heavy work by Christmas, with painting and decorating shortly afterwards. Now we are feeling, perhaps we can finish everything by Easter. In the picture above, the ground floor wall is up. Down below we have the first floor extension going up, timber frame, covered with insulation and then bricks on the outside.

Unfortunately shortly after, the two builders fell out, and the brickie walked off the job. The hapless manager was unable to find a replacement and so we decided to find someone ourselves. The replacements we obtained were two elderly Polish builders. They were careful with their work, took pride in their work, but were very slow. During the work, one of them hurt his hand and was unable to continue. This slowed the main brickie down as he no longer had anyone to mix and carry for him - he finished the main parts of the job and went on to another job where he was due. So there we were, about 2 weeks behind schedule and the leading and pointing incomplete.