Mud mud glorious mud

It's thick wet sticky clay and it's difficult to see how this is going to change until a fair way through next year - it's a bit too late for grass seed to germinate.  The space at the east side of the house where the vegetable garden will be is even worse.  And of course half our furniture is in the stable block and needs, fairly soon, to be brought into the house.  Sky hooks? Zipwire?  I expect a solution will propose itself to us in the next couple of weeks. 
Meanwhile the closer bits to the house are coming on well - the front drive is pretty much ready for its topcoat of gravel, and here is the terrace retaining wall nearly built.  The patio flagstones are, in a seasonal manner, 'behind you' in this pic and ready to be laid when the wall is finished.  We are told that the structural engineer happened to be in the area and drove up the road looking for the house he'd worked on but could only see what was obviously a barn conversion in progress... This has good and bad points - it's great that it fits that well into its location already, but it is NOT an imitation barn - for sure it has barn proportions but it's quite clearly modern to look at.  And I'm a a bit worried that he didn't recognise the house whose drawings he'd been working on...

On the left is the splendid pantry shelving as previously advertised, and these are the stair treads in fat beautiful oak.  The bamboo floor in the bathrooms is in place as is getting on for half of the oak flooring downstairs. More coats of paint have gone on everywhere including the garage, although there is some doubt as to whether the main wall colour is actually Chalk White, Chalky White or Pseudo Chalky Chalky white.  Or something.

Dehumidified!

The good news is that the floor screed has apparently dried out enough and they have started to lay the oak flooring downstairs.  And they've painted the garage.  And apparently the carpenters are so chuffed with the pantry shelving they're going to take pics of it for their own website, but as I haven't got a current pic of it I can't post one here for you.  But at least you know about the flooring now! 

Doors and floors

With only three weeks to go (maybe) the finishing touches are starting to appear. Here's the pantry door -  complete with porthole. It's in the pantry rather than in the door frame, but you get the idea.

Still waiting for the floor to finish drying downstairs, but work is under way on laying the floor upstairs.

...and the stone tiling in the utility room downstairs.

It'll all be over by Christmas - Official!!

14 December is the new completion date.  Which has a day's contingency in it...  We will hand in our notice to Bev accordingly.  And hope....
Meanwhile, today's report:
Ground Control - James the Digger, his dad and their No2 Connor (left) - are hard at work facing the gabions after we spent an hour or so working out how to circle the square this morning - the ones they've filled so far look gorgeous - but will my grand plan of a deconstructed stone and flint wall work?  We will know soon!  Inside, the pantry shelving is all built, the hearth stone is down and the oak flooring has been delivered.  The screed is down to 6% moisture, it has to be below 5% before they can fit the flooring - this is planned for late next week so hopefully it should be ok.

The decorators have put quite a lot more paint on the walls.  More bits are appearing slowly in the bathrooms. 
Guttering is going up and looks splendid - although the boys are cursing us as it's stainless steel and instead of clipping together like any gutter I've ever installed, it's riveted and then sealed.  Some of which obviously has to happen in situ.  And finally, out the front, the drive is getting the MOT roadstone layer (technical update for John) en route to the top coat.  

Hey Baby I'm your Telephone Man

You will recall earlier posts on the subject of utility angst.  The latest chapter came when we needed to move the phone line from the site van into the house. ..

You will recall (of course you will!) the pics showing a nice trench from the pole towards the house.  It was neatly lined with the trunking supplied, and a wire run through it to use as a threader for the right wire at the right moment.  So all the Telephone Man had to do was pull the existing line through the new route and connect it in the box on the side of the house.  Simple, eh?
And indeed he did.
And all was good.
...
But but but and again but.... part way through the following morning, the telephone number changed.  All of Ray the Builder's suppliers now had a line that when they called it said 'number unavailable', or, as there's no mobile signal, got his voicemail.  Doh!

You might like to guess how many more calls Alan made to BT trying to resolve this, but we lost count so we can't tell if you're right or not.  It became clear somewhere along the way that a ticket had been raised to put the number right, but repeatedly it didn't happen.

Then on Monday Alan spoke to someone who said 'Oh, but that's not a problem, I can put it right from here...yep, that's done, it will be on the overnight computer run'.  I had to administer smelling salts and pick him up off the floor.

And indeed in the morning, 309 had been restored to its rightful place and the (phone) bells rang out with the good news.

...It makes you wonder how much too much we're paying for utilities for getting it so wrong so often...

Dangle Barn

To fit in with the house's "barn" style the oak posts are mounted on top of short stone pillars. For reasons that remain obscure they built the house before installing the pillars. (I think it's called top-down design.)

So the house is being held up with acro props while they insert the the  pillars underneath.

Plans for the chinchilla farm come on apace...

...here's the team assembling the cages...



 


OK, it's really the gabion wall being put together.  No chinchillas will be hurt in the making of this house.

Amongst the many things happening on site today the decorators have been putting more paint on the walls, Sean is building the pantry shelving, Steve is putting the oak angle braces in outside - and here you can see the Rectory Hill gridlock as the Type 1 roadstone (I think that's what it is, John!) is delivered to be the base for the driveway.

Tomorrow we may well bring to you the latest episode in the Continuing BT Saga.  I think we've not mentioned it recently, so I suggest that the more nervous among our readers look away from tomorrow's posting, or at least view it from behind the sofa...