It seems like we have slow weeks and busy weeks at the moment! We’ve managed to make a bit more progress this week – both in our house plans and in the garden. The first success was receiving the results of South West Water’s pre-planning survey. They’ve confirmed that they’re able to connect us to the mains water, providing both a map of the proposed work and a quote for the work. Our primary concern was whether there would be enough capacity to add three new properties to the supply, so this was a big relief.
Our second exciting step was to go to a local kitchen showroom and start thinking about what the kitchens will look like. Although we’ll be using two of the properties as holiday lets and expecting most visitors to eat out for a fair part of their stay, we want to make sure they’re comfortable enough for anyone and have suitable equipment. We’re also trying to strike a balance between sympathetic and modern design, but that’s hard wearing and easy to clean. It’s also easy to get carried away when there are no prices attached to the various cupboard doors, drawers, bin cupboards and handles on display!! Our strategy is to start with what we think the best options are, and then work backwards if that’s above our budget. With building costs and materials going up so much at the moment, we don’t want to overstretch ourselves and end up running out of money too soon.
These two positive steps were tempered slightly with news from the council about our listed cottage application that we submitted just over 3 weeks ago. A processing error meant the council had missed our application – which could cause us a big problem with timings as we were aiming to get our application approved before submitting our bat licence request (if we include all our building plans together we only need to pay for one licence). Our architect has been liaising with the council to find a solution that doesn’t add 3 weeks to our timeline – while the council have been incredibly supportive, the upshot is that we need to simplify our application to maximise the chance of it going through on time, and submit an additional application later down the line. It’s a frustrating situation but these things happen and we’re just grateful for everyone pulling together to help.
We’ve managed to spend the entire weekend in the garden, breaking the back of the digging in preparation for our next raised bed. This one has been much harder than the first one we started in the new year, as there was a lot more soil to shift, and was (so it felt) even stonier. We’d used the space last year for a trial squash and potato bank, and decided this time to make it into a proper raised bed so it doesn’t look as tatty. The seed potatoes are looking ready to plant and so we’re on a bit of a deadline to get it finished soon, so we were pretty pleased when we managed to get most of the digging done. There’s still some levelling and final prep to do, but it feels far more achievable now!
And with the lighter and warmer evenings, we’ve started to finish Sunday evening with a drink in our wood, overlooking our spring bulbs and the view across the Yarty Valley. Most of our daffodils are still going strong (despite what seems like endless deadheading!) and the tulips are starting to come up too, adding a splash of colour in random places. It’s really strange how these bulbs are so much later than all the others in the garden – the rest of our daffodils are finished now; and irises are starting to come up in the front whereas there’s not much sign here of them yet. Maybe it’s because we planted them so late…
Ley Farm Cottages 