Stairway to… the games room

An exciting moment this week when our external stairs were installed up to the games room! We chose steel stairs over wooden ones because we wanted them to last – and we have enough to do without adding ‘treating wooden stairs’ to our annual job list. There are two flights – one from the farmhouse and one from the yard that visitors in the old barn (three-bed) and cow shed (one-bed) can use. They’ve been designed to regulations to make it easier for less abled visitors to use them (with a landing partway up and a certain width).

They look great at a distance, but frustratingly the finish isn’t as we’d hoped – some of the treads haven’t been cut to size properly and they have jagged edges; the drainpipe gap has been put in the wrong place; and the steps to the farmhouse are too deep and go into the ground. Not something people staying would probably notice but the sort of thing we’d notice every time. I don’t think we can put the gabions (crates of stones) in place to support the orchard wall until the stairs have been finished so I hope the steel fabricators can fix them quickly – we’re getting close to summer and we’re desperate to have the farmhouse available to rent by then.

Our builders have been keeping busy too – they’ve been prepping the yard ready for concreting, with huge lengths of shuttering installed in various places to break up the area into more manageable ‘pours’. It’s a pretty complicated task as they have to think about the gradient of the concrete and sloping it in such a way that rainwater heads away from the buildings and into the drainage system. Not easy at the best of times, and especially not on a hill…

They’ve re-laid the internal entry into the old barn and added a damp proof membrane and insulation. At some point someone installed a proper floor but they just added this onto the old floor and raised the height – the entry was left at the old level so the door could open, with a step once you’re in the building.

Our site manager has also grouted the gap between our new kitchen work surface and the stone wall. This was the topic of much discussion at our last site meeting – should it be mortar-colour to match the walls, or should it be black to match the surface (a harder job given no two blacks ever match!) He’s done such a good job though, it looks amazing.

And the second load of soil arrived, most of which our site manager has spread on the back garden of the old barn and again on our back garden. He’s left some for our wildflower patch that we still need to plant – there’s never enough time in the day! Hopefully John will get time to start laying grass seed this week while the weather is nice.

We had our monthly site meeting as well this week, and it does feel like the end is getting closer (of phase one at least). There’s still plenty to discuss and decisions to be made, even though they’re now more about the finish than the structural aspects of the build. Our builders also give us a look ahead to the coming month, so we know roughly what to expect.

One of those items is booking the next set of tradespeople to come back on site when we’re ready with anything we need to do first (order materials, decorate etc) – this time it’s the electricians who are waiting to come back to do the ‘second fix’ electrics in the new barn (communal games room, garage and laundry), and to finish our new house. We’ve booked them for the week after bank holiday, which means we have a self-imposed deadline to get as much painting done as possible before then so we don’t need to paint around the fittings (spotlights in particular). We managed to prime the garage ceiling and both laundries over the weekend, and started edging the ceiling – hopefully we can get the ceilings done during the week and start on the walls next weekend.

One of the jobs they’ve been waiting for us to do is to rearrange the bulbs on our reclaimed beam in our lounge. We knew it would take a little while for us to configure them the way we wanted them so the electricians temporarily clipped the wires up and left it for us to clip in. The height of the beam meant we needed to borrow our builder’s super-high ladder so it’s taken a bit of time to get round to it, and we need the electricians to move a couple of bulb holders so not quite as we want it yet. Still, it’s nice to see our ideas coming together slowly but surely!

Finally, we put a third coat of paint on the garage walls to cover up the plaster and concrete splashes left when the ceiling and floor were being added. It’s amazing just how dirty the walls had got – it looks so much fresher and clean again. Breeze blocks require so much paint, annoyingly we ran out just before we finished – another job that can’t quite be ticked off the job list yet…