This seemed to be the week for outside jobs. Our builders continued to work on the drainage for the site – finishing off the rainwater drain they dug last week with a manhole cover and filling in the gaps around it. They’ve put shuttering down ready for the next load of concrete to level it all off. They’ve also dug and installed the sewage drains – which run out from each of the buildings and go under the barn, and down to the location for our underground treatment plant. The original proposal was to take the waste pipes out of the front of each of the buildings and then dig a trench around between the barn and down to the plant – but this would have been complicated and expensive and would require incredibly deep trenches to account for the hill’s natural slope, so we chose the simpler option of going through the barn instead.
The clean water from the treatment plant will end up being piped through our wood and then down through our neighbour’s field into the water course at the bottom of the hill. We do have a small stream that we thought we could discharge into – however as it tends to dry up in the summer for a month or two, we didn’t want to risk it as environmental standards require any sewage treatment plants to discharge into a flowing water course. The field belongs to the farmers down the road, who are being very accommodating and letting us install the pipe even though it’ll make a mess of their field until the grass grows back. Last week they ‘walked the route’ with our builders and with John to make sure everyone’s happy with what’s being proposed. We really are lucky with our neighbours and how patient they’re being with us!
Talking of neighbours and inconveniencing them – this week Openreach also came to switch the broadband lines of our closest neighbours from the old pole to the new pole (this is part of the work required to bury our electrical supply underground as the angles of the remaining overhead cables meant our neighbour’s pole had to be moved a few feet). We weren’t expecting them until 23rd December so this was a bonus – although the old pole is still there as another contractor needs to come out and remove it. We’re one step further though.
British Gas were on site for a day to connect up the new electricity supplies to the barns, following National Grid’s work the other week to get the electricity to the meters. At least – we think they did – the engineer arrived and looked very busy, but we’ve not received any confirmation of the work being complete. Maybe we just need to wait for the bills to arrive…
Our garage/communal building continues to progress – since the roof beams were put on last week and covered with tarpaulin, our builders have been able to get on with work on the first floor. They’ve already built the bat loft (one of the conditions of our build was to install three bat lofts – we have one in the farmhouse, one in the one-bed, and one in the garage building) complete with a reasonably-big hole for the bats to use, and started adding insulation in the roof. The stone masons have now completely finished one of the gable end walls so only have the other end to do – they definitely deserve some time off after this project!
And then in our new house – we have a real front door instead of the insulation sheets our builders have been using for the last few weeks! They’ve done a magnificent job in painting it and putting it together (although it’ll need another coat of paint at some point and the glazing is still to arrive). We ended up having to put a new planning application to change the front door from a glazed one (that had gone into our original application and that we hadn’t noticed) to a wooden one – this is still with the council to approve but we just couldn’t wait any longer to make the building watertight and felt confident enough after exchanging emails that they’d approve a wooden one (although not a composite one which would have needed less maintenance). We’re keeping our fingers tightly crossed that they do indeed approve it…
The plasterers have also been hard at work, now that the front door is on. They started with the ensuite and bathroom – these were the two priority rooms as the tiler is booked for the start of December and we need time to go in and paint first. Our bedroom has also been finished, and they’ve made a start on the spare room. We have a temporary heating system in place to try and dry out the floor after our floods – the heating’s been on almost constantly for the last week or so. Not a good time to switch to a half-hourly priced electricity tariff – we’ve been watching the costs rack up as a result, especially in peak pricing hours. The sacrifices one makes to avoid further delays to the project…
We’ve spent most of our weekend (and another random day off) outside continuing with our garden path. We nearly got it finished too, before daylight disappeared on Sunday evening. It took us a lot longer to prep the ground for the second stretch, as our builders had only dug up and removed the gravel from the orchard up to the electricity meter box (another outcome of burying the electrical cables). So we spent all of Thursday clearing the remaining gravel and soil, and using it to fill up an old trough at the front gate that we plan to use as a planter. We also encountered surface-level magnolia roots and the concrete base that the house was built on, which meant replanning the path level – already complicated seeing as though it winds its way up the hill with flower beds of all different levels on both sides. It ended up being a pretty dissatisfying day – so the progress we made over the weekend was even sweeter – despite the frost on Saturday and the drizzle on Sunday. We’ve got a small space left by the front door to brick, and then it’s tidying up the edges that need bricks cut to shape, and tidying up the side that goes off into the kitchen garden. The longer-term plan is to replace all the gravel in there too, but that’s a long way into the future!
We managed to find time to look at paint samples for our kitchen area and bathrooms; the former which we stuck up in the space itself to check the lighting, and the latter we ended up just comparing against the tiles as we realised there’s no natural light in either the bathroom or ensuite, and there aren’t any lights installed yet. It’s funny just how long you can discuss paint samples that look almost exactly alike…
Ley Farm Cottages 