(Nearly) fixing toilets… and build progress

Our builders are continuing to make good progress. While our stonemason continues to build up the stone walls of our garage building (which is looking fantastic), our site manager has been busy building the front wall of the shippon. He only started this week and already he’s pretty much completed the wall for the one-bed cottage. We did have a bit of a surprise on Wednesday evening when John noticed the front doorway had been turned into a window, but that was quickly rectified on Thursday morning. 

The first stud walls have gone into our three-bed barn, making our first two rooms! It’s exciting to be able to walk into them – even though this barn is going to be finished in a later phase. We’re aiming to get all the main groundwork and disruptive work done before we start having visitors, including putting the heating into all the buildings, so we’ll build up the rooms and floors and then leave it so it’s ready to continue when we’re able to do so. 

Our builders have also started on the roof of the barn, taking tiles off in order to put the new roof lights in. It’s genuinely amazing how quickly they work – one day we’re talking about having to change the positions to avoid existing beams, and the next day the tiles are off and the first roof light is in.  

One of our other successes this week was the council’s conservation officer signing off some of our planning conditions. These are requirements that we need to comply with as part of our planning approval – and cover things like materials and building design. Because our site is curtilage listed, the conservation officer is keen to ensure we maintain an agricultural feel in keeping with the original buildings and local environment – and she has asked to approve all external materials used in the build and the style – such as the stonework, the types of roof lights, the external air vents etc. Last week we mentioned that John has taken over managing these because it’s taking up too much of our architect’s time, so it’s great news that the conservation officer has finally made a start on formally approving the items we’ve submitted. We still have a couple more conditions outstanding, but these are ones we’ve either not sent the information through for yet, or ones we’ve only just submitted. Still – it’s reassuring to know we can now carry on with the build without the risk of the council deciding they don’t like what we’re doing and trying to make us change it! 

It’s not all been plain sailing this week though. Our plans were derailed when our bathroom toilet finally gave up – with limited time and friends staying next weekend, repairing it turned into a priority. After watching a couple of YouTube videos on how to complete what looked like a simple job to replace the flush mechanism, we attempted it – and quickly remembered the joys of living in an old house. Not only was the toilet broken, it turns out the isolator valve was also broken, and in replacing that, the ancient plastic water inlet pipe also snapped off, leaving us with a third part to repair. The fittings between the toilet cistern and bowl were so rusted and damaged that the metal literally fell away in my hands, so we also had to replace those. Cue three separate trips to B&Q to get various different fittings (as each one broke) – and our new-found appreciation for PTFE tape! We still haven’t quite managed to stop it dripping through the bottom, so that’s our Monday evening sorted too. Fingers crossed… 

In an attempt to control our ever-increasing pest problem, we spent an evening putting slug nematodes onto all the vegetable beds. We’ve lost so many flowers and vegetables to slugs this year, it’s been really demoralising. Hopefully this will save us having to do midnight slug hunts. And we still haven’t managed to solve our mouse problem. After spending last weekend planting up our beetroot seedlings, it was frustrating to find that the mice have had a field day(s) and eaten the lot (second year in a row too)! We thought we’d been managing the population well enough but apparently not… We read about coffee grounds being a good deterrent and managed to pick some up from a nearby Greggs – it can’t do any harm at least.