What a week! Things are rapidly falling into place and everyone on site has been working so hard. After just over a year since the second half of the farmhouse roof was installed with solar tiles; and seven months since the New Barn solar tiles were installed, we finally had them connected up and generating electricity. It’s been a painful experience for several reasons – seemingly the process just isn’t designed for new builds. It took us months to get approval from the part of National Grid that looks after our local electricity network – despite paying to upgrade the transformer on our part of the electricity network, we’re still limited to the amount of solar electricity we can export back to the grid. The regulations changed just as we were mid-process which meant waiting for a new inverter to be approved – adding a few months. We’re still not quite sure whether the delays were caused by National Grid, or British Gas (who took over a month to upgrade one of our electricity supplies to accommodate the solar), or our solar tile company. It’s certainly been longer than we ever expected – incredibly frustrating as it continued but it’s made this step seem even sweeter than it would have done.
If you’re ever thinking of getting solar on your roof – our recommendation is to allow plenty of time, and try not to do it while you’re doing building work! We took a huge gamble installing the solar before we had official approval from National Grid. The alternatives would have been to install a non-solar roof and pay extra to have it taken off (and wasted) once we had approval; or even worse, holding up the entire build until we had approval. Both would have cost us a ridiculous amount of time and money – we’re very lucky our decision paid off.
Most of the focus has been on the New Barn (the communal barn with laundry, garage and games room). The laundry worktop was installed on Tuesday and the plumbers then arrived to plumb in the sink with the under-sink water heater, and get the space ready for the white goods to go in. Although we’re not fitting out our laundry yet, the plumbers will install a washer and a dryer temporarily so we can handle all the washing without our house turning into a non-stop laundry.
The games room has come on leaps and bounds too. The stairs have been reinstalled after having been removed to replace the treads (which had been cut inconsistently and wonky last time) and the handrail to the shorter stair (it had been designed too long for the space). They’ve also added a cover between the stairs and the wall, as the gap left was too big to be approved by building control (it has to be less than 10cm in case someone gets a foot stuck). The stairs look so much better than before – still not quite perfect but good enough to create a really smart entrance to the games room.
The kitchenette worktop was also installed on Tuesday with the sink and water heater plumbed in subsequently. And the glass balustrades have been installed in front of the bi-fold doors. We wanted to have uninterrupted views across and up the valley from the room so didn’t want a window frame getting in the way. The only option was a bifold – and as a balcony was not permitted by planning (it would have spoilt the ‘barn’ feel), we opted for glass balustrades to stop people being able to fall out of the doors! They were so heavy it took three of our builders to carry them across to the games room – but they really do look amazing and finish the room off perfectly.
Our builders also managed to install the rainwater goods (gutters and drainpipes) on the three-bed barn and then along the shippon. They’d been waiting for John to paint the fascia boards on the three-bed and for us to paint the second coat of the render to avoid splashing the downpipes. They very kindly also installed the water butts at the same time – which somehow are already half-full! As we plan to add lots of pots along the front of the shippon, we wanted to have plenty of water available. As a few jobs are queued up waiting for us to finish painting, I spent part of the weekend painting the wooden door and window frames in the shippon (both our house and the one-bed) so that the windowpane next to the door can be installed in the one-bed; and then painting the render around the windows and doors, the latter so that mastic can be applied to seal them in. I’m not sure when they’ll be done but it’s a weight lifted to know people aren’t waiting for me anymore.
And Dave the stonemason – who built our New Barn – finished repointing the road side wall of the shippon. He’s done a fantastic job and it looks absolutely incredible. And more importantly – you can’t take any of the stones out of the wall!
John has also worked really hard this week. We’ve continued moving things from the farmhouse – this week he moved his grandfather clock, which as a family heirloom has a lot of sentimental value. It took a lot of research and time to take it apart and move it piece by piece, and then reconstruct it in our new home, all while trying not to get in view of my laptop camera while I was working!
Our focus has been on getting the farmhouse ready so we can add more photos to our listing – which means moving out, cleaning and then furnishing each room. It’s taking a lot longer than we expected as everything requires a number of steps done in a certain order. This week John cleaned and furnished the dining room, which now looks amazing with a long dining table and chairs that all needed to be assembled. And having cleared and pressure washed the farmhouse back terrace previously, this week he painted the first coat of paint on the concrete walls. It’s made such a difference – it now looks clean and bright and somewhere you’d want to sit out! Hopefully he can finish the second coat next week…
John has been working with Cottages.com to get our listing updated with the correct calendar (last week it only allowed week-long bookings starting from a Friday), and with new photos. It’s been an interesting experience – we can make any changes to our listing ourselves but it needs to be approved by a person first. I’m sure there’s a good reason for this, but so far all they’ve done is add more time and decide that a room titled ‘twin/double’ is actually a triple room… Anyway – in the spirit of adding photos we mostly moved out of the conservatory this weekend too. Given I had been using it as a greenhouse it’s a much bigger job than it sounds. I spent Saturday afternoon/evening moving all my chilli and avocado plants out, pruning them and removing the slugs that had taken up residence inside the pots, and then feeding them and moving them to the three-bed barn temporarily.
We also spent Sunday cleaning up the kitchen garden, the squash bed and the greenhouse so I could get the other seedlings out of the conservatory. We’ve lost so many plants to slugs, snails and mice – and now the birds are eating all the soft fruit they can reach. John weeded all the beds and I started getting the seedlings out – reverting to slug pellets as our latest solution (we’ve tried coffee grounds, eggshells and salt already this year to no avail). This meant we also had to put the veg bed frames up – which we had left until now because they needed repairing and we haven’t had time. Clearly a bad idea, as both had been taken over by grass and weeds and needed reclaiming before we repaired them. At least everything is now up and in place – and hopefully not too late in the season that something might actually grow…
Ley Farm Cottages 