Week 4 - Blockwork to DPM

The last two days Nigel has been here laying out the blockwork. This is very exciting as we get to actually see where the walls go and get a sense of the shape and size of the rooms for the first time. The levels are still confusing everyone. On Thursday night I had 5 exhausted builders trying to do the maths and telling me we had 11 inch rises on our steps- it was going to be built for giants! But Nigel and I had a quiet think this morning and realised that two steps actually equals three rises -so they are only 6 inches after all - praise the Lord!

It's looking really great- but it needs to. We are off on our hols this weekend so it's good to leave confident that the guys know what they are doing. Well... we'll see when we get back!!!

Rest of footings poured

On Tuesday we got the rest of the footings in. It was pretty hectic- pumped through some big tubes....

Phil leveled out the concrete with his "vibrating plunger" (!!!)

It was a rainy, muddy day- the site really looked like a muddy building site for the first time. But the concrete crept along, filling up the bottom of the trench and within an hour we had the stepped footings in place. Despite the rain we could walk on them the following day.

Our new bricks!

Bought my bricks today. Quite a terrifying selection, but the Mr Ron of Ronson seemed to know what he was talking about. So we bought some lovely handmade reclaimed bricks from a house demolished a few days ago in Gloucester. They should be with us, cleaned up in a week.

Week 3 - The Stroud Underground

The week has continued with more uncovering and replacing of drains... our soil pipe, the one we share with No.2, the one from No. 3 that comes through separately, the main one for the whole of the terrace and the whole of Orchard Lane that will flow past our new patio doors. The guys had to deal with a few flushes of unpleasantness I can tell you. But at least now it is new and spangly we hopefully don't need to worry about anything untoward leaking out underneath my new kitchen floor! We also experienced a burst water main that I found the guys struggling when
I arrived home one day. They looked up mournfully from knee deep in water and sewage holding the offending pipe spurting everywhere and said they had rung James who was coming back with some supplies. "Surely a bit of PTFE tape would sort that out" I said... "I'll just go and get my plumbing kit" - returning a

minute later with an old Pinot Grigio
box full of tools. A few twists of a monkey wrench later and the problem was solved.... I'm my father's daughter ;o)

We finished the week with some six foot holes that I can stand up in and you can't even see my head. We are pumping concrete on Tuesday.

End of Week Two - Finally we are starting to build something.

First lot of concrete footings were poured today along the party wall. The building inspector came out to check them. "Thats good soil" he said picking some up between his fingers. In an Indiana Jones type fashion he put it to his lips and tasted a bit... "good mix of Cotswold sand and a bit of clay" he said with a satisfied nod. Mikey looked at me horrified. When he had gone he explained a few hours ago he had emptied the contents of our soil pipe in that very spot.

But he gave the approval and the concrete arrive about 2.30- you have half an hour to get it all off the lorry and into the ground or the evil company charges you about £150 per five minutes overtime so Phil and Mikey went into overdrive.

At last we have moved on from knocking things down and are starting to build something :)

Noise levels 4/5

Stress levels 4/5

What's in an inch?

I made our builders check the boundary line about 20 times, and then took some photographic evidence. Some basic trigonometry was employed (something about right angled triangles) and lots of pieces of string....

Where are the L plates?!

Nick comes home from work and immediately wants to be in the driving seat...

End of Week One.

Well, more of the same, knocking down bricks and cleaning them up. The skip turned up on day three and it was on the wrong way round (door the wrong end) so the guy had to turn it at the bottom of the road. Micky said "its probably best not to watch this bit" so I scurried inside have cringing at the neighbours tree taking a battering!!

Here is the skip nicely nestled in the farmers drive. Thank you Mr Farmer!

All the walls are down now, apart from the dreaded party wall. Yesterday (Thursday) they started to dig up the floor. They quickly discovered the "mystery drain" that Brendan had told us about. Well 3 drains actually. One is Brendan's (thanks to Heather for the running tap test) and one was rainwater from conservatory (redundant). We still have one mystery to solve though!

Here's a pic of ground zero, in fact there is even less of it now as I speak. I'm guessing this is the noisy phase as they are using the hammer thingy (hydrolic breaker) to smash up the slab. Next door have just had a go. It won't always be this bad (?!)

Noise levels 4/5

Stress levels 2/5

BT - oh dear!

Internet was a bit intermittent yesterday, and we realised that the master telephone socket was dangling around outside. Hummm... best get a BT engineer out says Phil.

Just called them and its going to be 25 DAYS!!! And that's just for them to come and have a look, not to actually do any work.

In the meantime we have shoved it in a plastic bag and tucked it behind the soil pipe. Oh dear Nick, you really do need to go find a hot desk somewhere!!!