31st March 2010 - Foundations complete!

And now the foundations are essentially complete. The B&B for the garage floor has been concreted in - the 1st photo shows the "pour" in action. The B&B of the main house floor is lightly screed-ed in - in a few months it'll be finished with UFH of course.

The 2nd photo also shows the retaining wall for the patio at the rear that is now in progress, plus the current state of the rear garden which needs further titivation once the rain goes away.

Now it also seems that Tony is wearing MY yellow hard hat. Doesn't he know that all my kids have nits?

23rd March 2010 - Beam & block floor almost complete

The wife has been bothered recently by some Jehovah witnesses. Luckily, they are buried in the concrete now, so they she ain't gonna be bovvered no more.

The B&B floor is mostly laid now. The rooms are beginning to look bigger now. I must look up the law of paralax and find out why things look bigger or smaller than they really are.

And the building society is just about to dish out some sponduliks at last.

Sponduliks, spondulics, spondulix, spondoolies
from sparán tuilteach, sparáin tuillteach (overflowing purse, overflowing money bags), money, small coins

17th March - Almost up to the DPC

The blockwork up to the DPC is now done on 2 sides, and the internal layout is taking shape. Everyone says "it always looks small at this point".

The first few courses of bricks have been laid at the rear in Capital Brown Multi with the Parham Red forming the quoins. I hope you think it's nice - too late now to change your mind when you have 10000 bricks on site!


And the B&B floor has been delivered too - here is an arty photo. The sharp eyed amongst you will notice that these are 120 T-Beams with 3x 5mm wires. Got it?

10th March - Foundations

Someone seems to have dug some trenches in my garden -1m deep into that lovely Cretaceous Upper Chalk. I checked for Micraster, terebratulids and byrozoans, but to no avail - only found some flinty lumps. Now, how else do I tell if it's Danian or Maastrichtian?

And then - the trench diggers seem to have filled it all up with C20 grade concrete. I guess we better get a house built on top of it now then, don't you think?

1st week in March 2010

The demolition guys have gone, and we now have a nicely fenced site and some luxurious cabins. Good old EdF networks + their friends at EON still haven't finished the electricity connection, so there's no tea for anyone on-site yet...

19th Feb 2010 - Demolition

19th February - the last of the house was demolished by the demolition guys from Biggin Hill. They did a pretty good & tidy job - lost a couple of branches from one of the trees, but apart from that I was pretty happy.


It was also half-term week, so watching the demolition was fun for all the family!

... and here it is half-way down...... and some video.

What is should look like by mid October 2010

... and here is what it should look like by the time it's finished. We have a JCT contract with a nice builder, so by mid October 2010 is should be lovely. The contract has a penalty clause after 5th November, so hopefully that's the absolute latest date for completion. Let's see...