Digging foundations

Most of the focus this week has been on starting the foundations for our ancillary garage/laundry building. Having removed the walls and cleared the rubble last week, our builders spent the warmer days digging out deep foundations for each of the load-bearing walls. The pile of soil in the courtyard has got a lot bigger as a result! The cement mixer lorry came very early on Thursday morning to fill them with concrete ready for the breeze blocks to go in, although over the weekend they’ve managed to fill with water, so we’re not sure if that will need to be pumped out first or not – we’re hoping this doesn’t cause any delays if so. 

The rest of the work has been in the shippon, which is a bit further ahead than the ancillary building. We had one of our contractors on site building up the walls for the extension, and tidying up the remaining stone where we took down the end wall (which now has a very neat finish). Our builders have also taken the drain pipe further out beyond the wall now to try and get more of the rainwater away from the foundations.  

It certainly feels like it’s getting busier on site – materials arriving and being taken away, and more people working. Thursday was especially busy as our main building contractor and architect both came by to discuss some outstanding issues with the bathroom layouts. It’s pretty hard to keep up with progress some days – we try and walk around most evenings to see what’s changed, and it’s not always easy to spot everything! 

We took this weekend’s visitors to a local attraction just over the county border in Somerset. A bit more of an unusual one – at Stoke Wood Alpacas you can walk or feed their herd of alpacas! We opted for the latter, so we were given concentrated grass pellets to feed them with, which the alpacas loved! They weren’t quite as fond of being petted though… we were only there about half an hour but it was nice to do something different. 

All we need now is a bit of warmer weather – between the greenhouse, cold frame and conservatory, we have so many plants ready to go out. Maybe a job for next weekend!