Building a new house

The weather has been very mixed this month, with some heavy rain preparing us for the worst of the winter to come. We've had a few spells of blue sky, but mostly the days have been changeable, with the kind of showers and sunny intervals traditionally associated with April. The leaves are coming off the trees in great numbers, and the average temperatures are falling. we have had a few days of digger-landscaping, none more spectacular than the one which involved removing the root-ball of the lime tree we felled before the build started we are slowly starting to organise the garden spaces, and I have constructed a couple of raised beds and installed 3 poles which will support espalier fruit trees to be planted over the winter three weeks ago our air source heat pump failed and had to be replaced under guarantee - apparently the original was one of a rogue batch which Mitsubishi acknowledged was defective we went to Scotland with friends for the third week of October and were delight...

Over the last few days we have noticed that the maize crop has been disappearing from a lot of the fields in the vicinity, and this morning I had an inkling that today could be our day. So in the early morning light I took a couple of snaps to remind us of how enclosed part of our garden had become over the summer. And then, late this afternoon, we heard the noise of machinery in the field, and a glance from our upstairs window revealed three tractor/trailer combinations, together with the cutting machine, badged as the Forage Cruiser, at the gate to the Hendrerwydd lane. We admit to considerable apprehension as the beast approached our fence, but we need not have feared. Expertly driven, it took a swathe of corn, including the line of plants which had grown immediately next to the fence. No damage to the fence! The driver was equally careful in removing the crop to either side of our projecting garden: In a first for this blog, here is a little clip of the beast on the move: Soon, the...

We are getting very used to living here now, and are enjoying doing so very much. Not everything is finished (when is a house ever 'finished'?)  and we have a race against time with the Building Control Regulations, but our builder's concentration is obviously on other jobs at the moment. I have put bathroom cupboards up in Man Utd, Man City and Celtic (deep breath needed when drilling through the tiles); and built and painted curved shelves to fit in the cloaks cupboard and, hopefully, solve all of our shoe storage issues. Pat came briefly ten days ago and marked out the rough position of the path from the gate to the front porch. This will be resin-bound, whereas the rest of the front area will be loose gravel. Nothing further to report yet, though. We had a delivery of 'railway sleepers' with which I will build a couple of raised beds for veg and fruit production. No need to go the gym having moved them from the front boundary. I used a couple of hundred metres o...

We have just got back from a very enjoyable 4-part trip to France, first watching our oldest grandson compete for England U18s in a Touch Rugby tournament in Vichy, then joining younger son and his family staying in the Ardeche, then visiting friends in Les Baux de Provence and lastly trying to make the long drive home enjoyable by spending a couple of days in Alsace. While we've been away the team have completed the stone flagging down the side of the house. What now remains is to finish the large area in front of the house which will be a combination of a resin-bonded path and loose gravel. We assume this will have to wait until the front stone walls are built. Rob the electrician has also been busy, fitting external lights and power points, including the two 16A circuits to the front and back gardens which are fitted with waterproof, campsite-style sockets. We will use these variously for outdoor equipment, greenhouse power, etc. He has also fitted the front porch lights which u...

This has been a week of more slabbing, cobbling and jointing; then trench-digging, concreting and  wall-building. There has also been a good deal of soil-levelling, crushed-stone-spreading and wacker-plating. Pat came back from holiday on Wednesday and seemed to approve of what his team had achieved. almost incidentally, the cladding of the inside of the porch was finished jointing compound was used to grout the stone and cobbles at the front ..... ..... and at the side (fallen chair shows we have the occasional windy day) slabbing continued across the back of the house and soon we had a foundation strip of concrete ..... ..... and then a retaining wall with some nicely graded soil ready for planting

Well, Steph may have been to Greece for his holiday, but he was only away for a week, and returned to our two-day record-breaking heatwave when, on Monday and Tuesday, it was not possible to lay slabs as the mortar would have gone off too quickly. So a little cobbling was done on Monday, together with more marking out with Pat (who has now gone with his family to Cyprus) and Tuesday was a day off. We had 37 degrees of heat and established that a house that has been built to be well insulated to keep the heat in in winter will also largely keep the heat out in summer if you keep the doors and windows shut. We have the summer advantage that there is very little glass on the south elevation as our views are to the north. Wednesday brought the flaggers out in force, and Dewi the joiner turned up to continue the cladding of the front porch. We went out for an hour in the afternoon and returned just as a Gon Granite left - they had taken the initiative to come into the unlocked house to fit ...