Building progress is slow

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Well, it's beginning to look like a building, the sub floor was filled with concrete and then the brickwork began. The demolished walls are slowly being transformed into sorted and cleaned bricks and then back into new brick walls. It looks really nice but it is oh so slow. We only have one bricklayer and whilst he is doing a lovely job, we can see time drifting away. Our contractor has so many jobs on at the moment I think we are taking a back seat. It could be worse, at least we have 1 brickie gang on site.

Brick sorting and cleaning is a major task which is largely being undertaken by Richard and friends and family and even I cleaned a few bricks at the weekend (I'm recovering from an op so have a good excuse.....for the moment anyway). They are keeping ahead of the brick laying so obviously that is a good thing, and we are all free which of course is great for the budget. However, it's all dragging on a bit more than we would like. 

Now we are in March and the brickwork is up to window and door level on the first floor and the interior block work is catching up. It's really looking like the building on the plans, although I popped up to the site after work today and noticed that one of the last changes to the plans hadn't been incorporated and so the downstairs WC wall will need to be moved tomorrow. It's an 'Oops', but not a major disaster and has only just been built so should come down quickly. 

We have been following up with some of the paperwork, of which there seems to be an awful lot. We are close to signing for a supplier for the pellet boiler district heating system and MVHR, the first order of windows and doors is close to being signed, a deposit for the slate supplier has been paid, and a holding deposit for the kitchens has been paid. An expensive month all round. At least the nice bit has been choosing the work surface and doors for our kitchen, although that was a bit fraught when you are faced with such an array of choice. Hopefully it will look as nice in real life as it does in my head.

Building decisions

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Today was a busy day. On site we had meeting with the builder, plumber, architect and district heating system engineer. Additionally, Dan the digger and the brickies were also there working away in the background. Lots of questions were answered and a few more were raised with answers yet to be determined. For example, the position of heating pipe runs and heat exchanges for all plots were decided, as well as the position of the water cylinders. We still need to pin down the mechanical ventilation and heat recovery system plans, so that has been left with the heating company for a quote, along with a quote for the fitting of the log burners and also for the pellet silo changes and the solar pv panels - I think he is going to be a busy chap. I just hope he comes up with the right numbers at the bottom of the quotes. This is not as last minute as it sounds as we already have quotes from other companies, but it just made sense for everything to be provided by one (local) company.

 The working drawings are also well underway with a few changes being made due to the badly warped walls being replaced with straight walls. We have also taken this opportunity to make a few minor changes as well. We have been waiting a long time for the barn conversion work to start but this has given us plenty of time to reflect on our original designs especially as we have the plans pinned to the wall around our dining table so we frequently find ourselves gazing contemplatively at our original choices. This week I had fun designing the sauna room so this can now be incorporated into the working drawings. I just hope we don't run out of dosh near the end of the build or it will just be a dream sauna.

Barn Conversion - Building site!

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At last we have a building site where actual building is taking place. A flurry of activity at the beginning of the week with deliveries of blocks, sand and cement, has culminated in the first few blocks being laid. It was interesting to see how the building lines were determined with laser sites and string, but they looked as if they knew what they were doing :)

Meanwhile, the pallets of cleaned bricks are growing and the (first) pile of demolished bricks has diminished. All in all, it is great to see something happening!

Whilst the skilled work is done by the builders (see the blocks for the sub floor in the background?), we have been very fortunate to have family and friends who have volunteered to help clean bricks. Here we have Rob and Val mucking in on a very cold January day. It looks sunny on the photo but they have also had fog, cloud and rain. It's not a lot of fun cleaning bricks, but is much more bearable with company.

Barn Progress

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The courtyard was becoming a quagmire with the digger, dumper and concrete lorries coming and going so a layer of stone has been laid. This instantly brightened the place up and made it look tidy. A bit like when you mow the lawn and the garden looks marvellous. I think all the foundations for plot 1 have been set and are ready for brick laying to the sub floor level so that the concrete floor can be set. In the meantime there is a mountain of bricks to clean so that they can be re-used. This is a bit of a tedious job which I'm secretly pleased that I can't help with due to the daily 9-5! I do miss pretty much everything else so I get a daily report with photo's and videos to keep me up to date. Below is a video landmark moment in the life of barn 2.

 

 

More bricks (less barn)

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More progress with barn 1 means a bigger pile of bricks as the unstable walls fall down. The remaining section of barn (which then turns into barn 2) is largely supported by some breeze block towers on the courtyard side where the walls are very bowed. In the photo above you can see the green area on the wall which is a very inappropriate yet interesting wall garden of ferns and violets.

Footings for new walls

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A progress report. At last a progress report. Over the last couple of weeks a lot has happened. Barn 1 has planning permission for new walls courtyard side to make the barn bigger. Now we have visual evidence of this because the courtyard and interior walls are down and the floors and the footings dug out. Some of the footings have been filled with concrete, with the next load to be delivered on Monday. Hip Hip Hoorah! Somewhat alarmingly the front wall of barn 1 was supposed to be left standing but when the floors were dug out the wall gently toppled away and leaned against the scaffolding. Fortunately the planning officer has inspected and allowed the wall to be demolished and rebuilt with the same bricks. This certainly makes it an easier job for our structural engineer and builder. The one remaining wall for this barn has to stay as it forms the back of next doors garage and I don't think a decision has been made on how to deal with the footings at the base of this wall yet.

It almost seems like an aside to the flurry of activity on barn 1, but the remaining roof tiles on the other barns have also been removed so it's all open air barning now. Our 'barns for conversion' are turning into piles of brick and rubble. We are trying not to worry!

Digging out a tree root

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Dan the digger was tasked with moving the big pile of soil from the road clearing deposited next to the buildings. The ideal place for it all was to infill the big dip at the front of the barns where the additional car park area will be. The first task was to dig out the sycamore tree root. Now this would have been a herculean task to do it by hand so we were immensely relieved to have Dan on the case. Since I was at work Mr Barn videoed it for me. I do love a vid of a digger.......and if you look carefully you will see Dan's dog sitting in the cab.

Just to remind you how humungous the sycamore tree was, here is a time lapse video of the tree being taken down last year. If you think that it was a shame to take the tree down, we know that it was 40 years old because our neighbours remembered planting it........a sycamore can continue growing for 200+ years!