Building work – entering month 8

We entered our 8^th month of building work this week- and what a week of progress! The windows and french doors were installed in the shippon and the one-bed now has a temporary front door to keep the building a bit more watertight. Although the window frames are mostly covered in protective film, you can see glimpses of the green metal colour we chose, which looks great against the clean orange roof tiles. And the carpenters have made a very good start on the stud walls inside our new house – they’ve completed the long roadside wall and our bedroom wall, and made a start on the bathroom and spare room walls. It’s getting a bit easier to visualise what the rooms will look like so we’re starting to think about how we’ll lay the furniture out. It’s particularly helpful in the rooms that are constrained in terms of size, shape and light (the consequence of converting a curtilage listed building means we’ve not been able to put extra windows in or move walls or the roof). 

It seems like a long time ago already, but it was only Monday that the electricians arrived to connect the electricity supply up in the farmhouse top floor, bathroom and ensuite. It makes such a difference having light again – we’ve been able to paint late into the evening, and it’s great not to have to shower by torchlight now the mornings are getting darker. We love the way the light fittings work in the spaces – although we’re going to raise the ones in the landing slightly, and we’ve only been able to hang four out of the six lights on the ‘industrial spider’ light while we try and get hold of a couple more ceiling hooks (the pitched roof means we can’t spread the light ‘legs’ out equally across the ceiling). 

The carpet fitter replaced the carpets in the two bedrooms on Wednesday, as well as new vinyl in the top floor shower room. And – after we broke our hoover by hoovering up plaster dust – our site manager spent a day clearing all the protective sheets and mess left behind. It looks so much better – and it’s so nice to not be living in sheets and dust. We also managed to get a bit more painting done – the bathroom and ensuite ceilings are finished, and we’ve stained most of the beams in the bedrooms (save one that needs wooden plugs to cover the screws). In a great example of being so focused on the job in hand that you don’t see the bigger picture – once finished I noticed more beams on the landing that I’d completely missed – so we can’t tick that job off yet. Our aim is to complete the bedrooms, then the shower room, and then finally the landing, while also finishing the snagging from the bathroom and ensuite – such as tiling above the showers where the ceiling is a bit higher than it was previously, and painting over the plastering drips. 

Our new kitchen arrived on Wednesday! We took possession of c.40 boxes and sorted through them on Saturday to make sure we’d received everything we were expecting (we’ve not checked the quality yet in case unpacking them results in damage before they’re installed). We only had one item for someone else – an easy mistake to make as it’s the same product just a different colour. At least we’re not planning to install anytime soon. 

The scaffolding has been taken down along the front of the shippon and used to raise the level of the scaffolding on the garage building so the stonemasons can reach the top of the first floor. They’ve since installed the lintels and the steels (which they moved by hand!!) – it’s impressive to see how fast it’s coming on. 

As we get closer to the National Grid connection and upgrade date, our builders have started digging up the yard to lay the ducting for the electrical supply cables to each property. It’s quite complicated to sort out the different layers throughout the yard and make sure the electrical cables and drainage are at the appropriate depths. At our site meeting this week we talked about where to position these and how the yard levels need to change to allow a secondary drainage channel to run in front of the shippon for extra storm water protection. We’re also trying to create a small sunken garden for the one-bed so visitors have some private space – John has been liaising with the Conservation Officer and Planning team to establish what we can do, and what requires more planning permission (hopefully all of the former and none of the latter!). We’re trying to keep as much of the old yard surface as possible – re-laying the whole space would cost so much and we also can’t find a suitable material that retains an agricultural feel. 

One of the ducts will run under the path between the orchard and the farmhouse so we’ve spent the weekend clearing the path of plants and moving collapsed arches over the pathway to make the job easier. We’re aiming to replace the gravel with a brick path so have asked our site manager to put all the gravel in a dumpy bag for now, so we can redistribute it elsewhere. It’ll be lovely to start removing the gravel from the site and stop it getting walked into the house and get caught under your feet!