28th June 2010 - Staircase arrives!

It's all coming thick and fast at the moment. The 3 staircases arrived on Monday morning. The oak bits (balustrades, spindles, etc.) are locked away for now, but the treads will be fitted ASAP to make access to the first floor much easier during the 1st & 2nd fix.

Meanwhile, electrics & plumbing is being installed, guttering runs are being worked out, fasciae/soffits/bargeboards are being fitted - basically, there are no parking spaces left in the road because of all our vans - and the vans from Suzanna's building site just along the road....

27th June 2010 - Roof tiling has started

The tiles are now being afixed to the roof - that's the Sandtoft Goxhill, Dark Chestnut, hand-cut clay roof tiles. The gables end & dormers will use the same tile, but Autumn Brown colour.

Naturally, The Mrs decided to spend hours debating with me whether we (she) likes the colour or not - and that's after 20,000 of them are on site (& paid for!) and 4000 of them are fitted. How about "it's too late to change them now, love, and anyway, they are a jolly nice colour, and even if they're not, you don't really notice roofs, do you?"

25th June 2010 - Plumbing

And plumbing is underway too:

25th June 2010 - Roof, roof

The playroom roof is built, and is a work of art, just like the main roof:


And the roof tilers turned up yesterday and have set out all the tiles ready for fixing - fingers crossed that the tiles are an agreeable colour - we can't really tell the colour/appearance until they're fitted!

17th June 2010 - Roofing

And lo, the roofing continues:

14th June 2010 - The roof room: it's a whopper!

Well, they've done a great job on the roof timbers - the chippies are extraordinarily proud of what they've built, and it shows. Everything seems very straight, neatly cut and very tidily finished - and bear in mind that all of the roof timbers will be essentially invisible once it's tiled in, so it's "hat's off" to the guys for building it so well.

The roof room also turns out to be whopping huge - at last a room that's truely awesome! And today they cut the spaces for the 2 Velux windows which look out over the valley. I got them to set them low enough so even the midget wife can see the farm.

6th June 2010 - D-Day

The ridge, the gables, the loft room - all is taking shape and 20,000 Sandtoft roof tiles are being delivered this week.

28th May 2010 - Roof works have begun!

Roof works have begun - the joists for the "attic floor" are mostly nogged* and they have begun fitting the CaberDek which will provide a solid platform to work on as the main roof timbers are erected next week.

* Yes, I checked, there is a verb "to nog" in the OED.

22nd May 2010 - Plate level

And here we are at last, up to plate level. The timbers for the roof have been delivered, so here come's the roof soon!

15th May 2010 - Second lift of the scaffolding

The scaffolders were back on Thursday this week, doing the 2nd lift. That means the scaffold boards are now approx in line with the bedroom windows, plus there is scaffolding across the top of the garage.

Abuv is zee piktur off ze hauz.

Blow, is zee piktur of ze skavolding ovver ze garaj, zo ewe kan zee howw big zee playrum iz.

The brickies then had to move all the bricks & blocks from the ground up to this 2nd lift and have set-up ready to start laying again on Monday. Tony says it took them all day to move the large amount of matérial and make those neat little piles of bricks. They have the JCB/forklift to lift up to the deck since hod-carrying up ladders is frowned upon in this day and age. Even by Lithuanians...

7th May 2010 - Going up

The walls are being built up and up. We're well on the way to seeing the shapes of the bedrooms, and especially the playroom above the garage which seems like it will be an awesome space. The guys have been doing plenty of blockwork and now the 2nd load of bricks have arrived the outer skin is going round nicely too.

The fork-lift is on-site - please may I have my own JCB for Christmas? Quick quiz: what does JCB stand for?

Here's what she looks like at the moment:

And here's one showing how her balcony is coming along:

27th April 2010 - Steels, stumps, lintels & joists

It's coming along nicely, isn't it. The tree stumps finally went today - the photo shows about 1/4 of the stumps that have been lingering on site for 2 months now, and now they are away :-)

The lintels are all fitted in place now, and the steels & joists are all on site and going in this week.

Scott is back too, finishing the back garden too - soakaways are being dug, the back garden water system has been set in, and the new top soil is due this week too, ready for seeding shortly.

Meanwhile, the brickies continue to build onwards and upwards.

21st April - This is what she looks like from the rear

And here is a snap of her rear.

16th April 2010 - Almost ready for the scaffolding

Here we are - 16th April - still on time and on target - kudos to Tony, Adrian and the subbies and Gregg (and me) and the weather gods for keeping everything tickety-boo. The walls are constructed almost up to first lift. Scaffolding should be coming early next week, the steels, joists, lintels etc. are on order, and I think the groundworkers are coming back next week with truck loads of top soil & grass seed to finish off the back gardens. I like saying gardens (plural) - it gives the feeling of the size - croquet court zone, orchard zone, lawn zone. Talking of which, the plum trees that my mum gave me 2 houses ago which have now been transplanted twice in their 10 year lives are now in blossom (see photo) which is great news. If they give us fruit this year, that's great, although just the fact that they are still with us and blossomming (how many Ms???) is more than I hoped for.

It's looking big again - oo-er Mrs.

Plum blossom in the spring-time - the start of a Japanese garden perhaps....

9th April 2010 - Bricks, bricks, bricks

Hoo-ra and up she rises, even if it's not earlie in the morning.

The brickies started on the Tuesday after Easter, and the walls are now rising around us. Most of the window formers are in, and basically you can really begin to see what it's going to look like now. The colours are nice - Capital Brown Multi goes nicely with the Parham Red.