Making the most of a long weekend 

It’s easy to forget where one week finishes and the next one starts – and just how much progress our builders are making. Even when we thought they’d finished digging out the foundations for the derelict barn, they started Monday by taking soil off the top of the footprint of the building, and making an enormous pile of stony clay soil in the courtyard. The lorry driver taking it away must have done at least 8 trips on Monday alone – coming back to clear it completely on Friday so we don’t all have to navigate the various vehicles on site around it. 

They’ve also started building up the walls in both the shippon and in the derelict barn – a double-layer of breeze block with insulation in-between. We’ve heard people say that once the walls start going up, everything moves quickly – I guess with so much wall, that first stage takes a bit longer! It’s fascinating watching the builders work – with string in place for a perfectly straight line, and starting with one side of the wall before building up the double layer. There’s so much groundwater in the foundations, it can’t be much fun trying to set bricks in pools of water. It almost looks like we’re building a swimming pool in the derelict barn (if only)! 

Various materials have started arriving on site too – it seems like things only come in large pallets with grab lorries! It’s so impressive the way our team have got timings perfectly – something arrives only to be in place within a day or so. At least it means there aren’t stacks of materials getting in the way. 

We took advantage of the long weekend by fitting in a budget review on Sunday morning – going through all our costs to date vs what we expected. We’ve had a few unexpected price increases for materials, so it’s worth keeping on top of it all, so we know where we need to cut elsewhere. Both our builder and architects are working very hard to find cost efficiencies to offset these, which is amazingly helpful. 

Sunday afternoon we managed to fit in a fairly long walk, which was a nice break and reminder of why we chose to live here! Wild daffodils have been replaced by bluebells and cow parsley, so the hedgerows look very colourful. John has planned a walking marathon route taking in a few local pubs that we’re going to do later in the year, so I need to get some practice in. It’s a good excuse to get out and about more regularly – and stop in at the pub on the way home! 

Our own to-do list doesn’t feel like it’s reducing, however much we work on it. We managed to make a small dent with the long weekend – but the more we’re outside, the more jobs we add as we spot things that need doing! John’s been working hard to clean all the roof tiles – he has about 300 left, plus some spares we’re buying from a farmer down the road to hopefully complete the extension. The courtyard is turning into a giant stack of tiles! We’ve also started planting out some of our young vegetable plants to make room for the seedlings that are stuck in the conservatory with nowhere to go. Last year’s mistakes meant we had poor crops, or lost plants to slugs and mice, so this year we’re trying to learn from these. We’re trying to reclaim another bit of garden from the nettles and weeds. We covered half with a tarpaulin last year to get rid of the weeds and are attempting to grow peas and mangetout there this year (with a view to building a proper bed if it works). The other half is now getting the tarpaulin treatment to see if the weeds go – fingers crossed!