Building progress

Well, actually there is no building progress. We are still working through the planning pre commencement conditions and had a fun hour trying out brick samples with our builder and architect, also discussing tile samples. We have planning approval for Staffordshire Blue tiles on the current planning, but the previous planning was for pantiles instead. There is actually a mix of roof coverings on the barns at the moment - staffordshire blues, clay pantiles, roofing felt tiles, and in some cases nothing at all. So a lot of ummming and ahhhhing later and we have completely changed our minds from wanting orangey clay pantiles to now preferring staffordshire blues. We have also done quite a bit of extensive research by driving around the local villages taking surreptitious photo's of other peoples barns. Apologies to anyone who had dodgy looking people taking sneaky photo's of your property, it may have been us :) Now we have to see if we can afford real staffordshire blues or to have some concrete look alikes instead. Obviously we would like the real thing, but you can only spend your money once and I'd like to be able to have a kitchen and bathroom as well as tiles on the roof.

Today has been a bird and weed prevention day. For bird prevention the current project is too make screens for the missing barn doors and windows to deter swallows from making them their home. They haven't arrived yet, but it must be very soon. Last year they arrived just about now. We also have to make sure there aren't any robins, sparrows, wrens or any feathered friends building new nests. We have taken down all the old ones so it should be easy to see when they start building new nests, and is just a matter of being vigilant. On a weed prevention front we didn't think to spray weedkiller on the nettles last year until they were man sized and of course it was too late by then and the only course of action was extreme strimming. This year I've tried to get the little blighters early with a good spray around with something really nasty. It's a good job I'm not trying to grow any vegetables or fruit this year or we might just poison ourselves.

Swallow prevention screens

It was a nice sunny afternoon so I thought I would take some photo's of the barns before any building begins. I'm so looking forward to having a few photo's of work underway, but patience is definitely a necessity not a virtue in the barn conversion world. I might have gone a bit overboard with the sepia filter but it sort fit my thoughts of how the barns look before building and perhaps photo's taken after the building has finished will be all bright and shiny and colourful.

Just a bit of a hint that building will start at some point.......soon.

Now the fun begins........

......well at least it will when we've passed the planning conditions. Unfortunately, one of the conditions is to have a bat and bird survey......in May. What a pain in the proverbial. We had a bat and bird survey last year but it was on 19th April and is therefore no good according to Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, so another bat emergence survey has been booked. Another planning condition was from the Coal Authority. Apparently, their records indicated a seam of coal 2 metres thick only 5 metres deep and directly beneath the barns. We tried not to panic but the cost of drilling, the potential cost of filling a mining void and the uncertainty of it all caused more than a few anxious moments.

Drilling was organised pretty quickly and whoop-de-do we have no coal mines and in fact minimal coal layers were found and only one hole at 30m deep was required. Big collective sigh of relief (including from our bank balance too). Having said that it still cost £2k. How much would it have cost if a mine had been found? Doesn't bear thinking about, so we won't. 

The next huge hurdle was to get finance. Only one building society, the Ecology Society, would contemplate giving us a mortgage for our project. All other building societies shied away because we have 3 properties in total and not just a single domestic building, even though we only want to mortgage our own property. Anyway, we thought it was all in place pending the decision on planning until unexpectedly I was made redundant in September last year. Horror of horrors, this meant that we couldn't get a mortgage until I got another job and passed the probationary period, all within the mortgage application window. OMG what a mess. I kept having a Kevin McClould 'Grand Designs' soundtrack running through my head................you know, the bit where they cut to the adverts and he says things like "Will the project fail?...With no finance, no planning, and the possibility of a mine below these barns, is there any hope of these barns ever being completed?".  Fortunately, I got another job pretty quickly (with a 3 month probationary period) and some redundancy pay to add to the building fund, so it was all starting to look up until the Ecology sent an email in Feb to say that we had exceeded our application period and they would give us to the end of the month to finish off our application after which we would have to re-apply. However, after the end of February due to the popularity of  self build mortgages they wouldn't be able to offer a mortgage on a conversion. Basically, if we didn't get our planning and employment sorted out, we were without a mortgage. Stress alert. Stress alert. Well, after some urgent phone calls to Amber Valley planning and a probationary period completed, we managed to get the planning approval and then after a valuation on the property we received a mortgage offer letter. Phee-eeew. We are not out of the woods yet, as we now have a raft of mortgage conditions to meet as well as planning ones, but at least it looks more promising than it did in Feb! 

Some of the planning (and mortgage) conditions:-

• mining survey
• bat and bird survey
• planning consent to building materials (bricks, tiles, windows)
• planning consent to landscaping
• bird and bat replacement housing (bird boxes, bat boxes)
• life insurance
• site insurance
• legal searches - rights of way, water, electricity, boundaries
• redemption of an endowment policy to provide additional funds
• passing places and road repairs on the access lane

It goes on and on........seemingly endlessly. We are getting samples of bricks and tiles sent for matching to the originals and estimates for windows, wood pellet boilers, mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems, bathrooms, kitchens.........etc. There is such a lot to think about, so never a dull moment. What will we do with ourselves if we ever get it all finished? 

We had a busy hour one morning hefting a load of brick samples around the buildings and taking photo's to try and match up the bricks. We don't want to use reclaimed bricks for the patching up if we can avoid it as they are relatively expensive and don't have any guarantees regarding frost proofing or salt leaching. Hence the samples from brick manufacturers using traditional methods.  

Planning at last....

Whoop Whoop we finally have planning permission (again). It's taken a bit of verbal prodding to encourage the planning department to finish the job, but we actually now have a green for go. We have quite a few conditions to meet before we can actually start work, including a mining survey and yet another bat survey. The mining investigation is required by the coal authority as the area is riddled with mines, including some unrecorded ones at shallow depth. Damn those miners. The batty bat survey has us banging our heads against a wall as we had a survey last year by a bat expert who said that over the course of his three surveys at the barns since 2005, he has not found any evidence of roosting bats and the barns have become so increasingly decrepit that even bats wouldn't want to live in them anyway because they are so draughty. Bah and double Bah. However, despite all the conditions, we have actually been allowed to make all the changes we requested which is a very welcome positive note. 

Still no planning........

I think we're in a different time zone where       t i m e          g o e s         v e r y       s l o w l y. 

There has been a bit of movement as the planning department are pushing back on the  coal authority consultation. The story goes that for the first planning permission obtained  no mining assessment was required. When the planning permission was renewed, the coal authority wanted a mining assessment, but waived this due to the previous non requirement. They put a condition on a subsequent planning renewal to force a mining assessment, so now they want us to have one. It doesn't seem to matter that there is no change to the footprint of the building and the buildings themselves will barely change too. However, we believe the planning officer is not happy with this and has been trying to get it overturned on our behalf. Fingers crossed that we won't have to pay for bore hole investigation..........and that we get a (favourable) planning decision very soon.

No planning yet.....

 ........apparently due to Derbyshire Wildlife Trust not responding to their consultation letter. You would think that the independent bat and bird survey we paid for would provide the info they need.  We've had a slightly cynical thought that it's possibly a tactical delaying ploy on behalf of the planning department, but it's difficult to complain in case you p**s the planner off. Sigh. 

storage container delivery

We have some physical progress because we now have a storage container on site. What fun we will have filling it with all our stuff! Seriously though, it's a big relief to have a storage solution that won't cost an arm and a leg. Behind the scenes, a lot of progress has been made on firming up the budget with estimates from suppliers of MVHR, solar PV, pellet boilers, windows, tiles, kitchens, and building work (weather tight, 1st and 2nd fix), not to mention the issue of financing the whole damn thing. We have had some good fortune about the possibility of getting cable broadband as it can be done by the buiilder when the sewage drains are installed down the lane. Hoorah. It's all busy, busy!

Planning news

At last we have some planning news. Not planning consent just yet, but at least the planner has been on site with our architect who answered his queries as they went round. Happily, he hasn't found anything that he has taken an immediate objection to and is going to follow up this visit with a comparison with the original planning consent. However, he has asked for a further 2 week extension which is actually nearly 3 weeks so we are looking at the end of October for a decision. Why does everything take so long? 

Grand Designs Live

We didn't bump into Kevin or any of the other TV presenters although you would have thought they would have been at the door to meet and greet. I mean, how rude.  Anyway, armed with our free tickets (yes, I did say free - the subscription to Self Build and Design magazine has paid for itself with all the free tickets we have had), we headed into battle with the crowds. Our first mission was to make an appointment with an expert for a free 30 minute consultation. We saw David Bryden for project manager advice and he was excellent. He didn't spend the time trying to sell us his service, but listened to our story and gave some really useful advice. I hate it when the "expert" is obviously touting for work, and not really interested in what you have actually said. The window man we saw was really helpful too. We are pretty sure that the local supplier used by our builder is the same company so it was great to see and touch the windows. We were really surprised at how PVC windows could actually look like wooden windows. We were thinking that it was a bit of a shame that we would probably have to go for plastic windows to cut down on costs, but now we are not bothered about it, so that was another result for Grand Design Live.

We talked to solar pv people, biomass boiler people, sauna people (how I'd love a sauna), home cinema people and well, generally ended up with information overload. Most of the stands are sending more information so we will hit a deluge of email shortly. All in all, it was a very useful trip, although we didn't  have time (or energy) to look at kitchens or bathrooms.

Digging for gold

From this......

No, I meant digging for bricks. We still have no news on the planning decision so are continuing with clearing the site. This might imply that I have been doing the ground clearing but this would be a bit of an exaggeration, although I do get down and dirty on occasion! I usually provide support service such as lunch, trips to the tip and being in charge of domestic duties.

.......to this.

This week the focus has moved to the bonfire site which used to be the muck heap when the barns were a livery stable, and before that a general farm shed. This conclusion was reached in a 'time team' sort of way by the debris removed from the pile. Underneath all the nettles, ash and horse manure was the roof of the building, loads of concrete, assorted farm debris and a lot of bricks. The manure and ash have been dug out and piled at the bottom of the garden waiting for a time when we can build some raised vegetable beds. The rest of the pile was split into a giant heap of rubble, a smaller heap of bricks to recycle, and a selection of bins and trugs with assorted plastic bags, twine, engine parts, glass and rubber hoses. I had a go at cleaning up some of the bricks by hacking at the mortar with an old axe, and found that as the bricks got cleaner, I definitely got much dirtier. There's a load of them and I think  it will take me for ever.  Incidentally, this part of the building will eventually be the garage. Sometimes it's hard to remember why we are doing all this......