dovegreyreader scribbles

More harbingers..

It was sitting there waiting to be dealt with, and if we want this Dovegrey Cottage project (that's the shed by the way) to be up and running eventually we needed to pay attention to the garden sooner rather than later. So much still to be done indoors but all the 'spoil' from recent building works was starting to naturalize after only one season, but in the wrong place. This entire garden prefers to go off on a frolic of its own and revert to field given the chance, so we aim for a sort of controlled naturalisation.

Much better we decided to make a mess landscape before the garden starts to look a picture and we then can't bear to spoil it.

Plus the theory is it will then have a year to recover.

So we took a punt on the weather, assumed it would be terrible but hoped for the odd sunny day and Bookhound hired himself the ultimate boys' toys for a week... a little JCB and a dumper truck.

From where I was standing things got off to a really auspicious start...
 
Possibly the heaviest hailstorm we have had all winter...

And I was sighing in unison on the dry side of the Bookroom window, as we tried not to think about what the week might hold, or what sort of quagmire was in the making. As it is we have had the opposite problem, the ground so dry that when it came to the final stages with the roller we have had to do some pre-watering. 

This roller proved to be quite a challenge, a mind of its own, a bit like a floor polisher but worse, if you have ever been on the end of one of those, so we have had to keep the deaf Dowager cats out of the way for fear of ...well for fear of you know...flatcats.

As you all know by now this is the 'royal' we.

I just hang out of the windows and watch in amazement, because earth in quantity looks reasonable until you start shifting it, then you realise just how much of it there is down there. And whenever Bookhound does this (because yes, this might be this garden's nth landscaping) I am equally amazed at how he has that designer's eye for how he wants it to end up, and how he gets there in the end.

The surprise is now going to be waiting to see where all the bulbs come up next year.

How to Build an Extension to Your Home :: Part 4

So when you build an extension to your home there are very strict rules about your cavities.
This is the gap between the inner blocks and the outer blocks which has to contain sheets of insulation and then a bit of space and absolutely no detritus.
The building inspector (Lucy) has been to check Bookhound's cavities and declared them quite the nicest and cleanest she had seen that day, in fact better than the nasty, messy cavities of the professional builder she had just been to inspect.
There was much rejoicing chez dovegrey.
Then ye on the seventh day he rested and Bookhound decided to have a break from building and do a week of digging instead, because your extension also needs its services. So it was time to bring back the digger on hire (cue rain) and sort the water supply, the drains and the electric cable all of which resembled an enormous web of tangled Fair Isle knitting, just using pipes instead of wool.
The electrician (known as the sparky) came to add an extra few feet to the electric cable and that was almost very exciting to the tune of an ambulance but thankfully disaster was averted.
I, the great uninformed indoors, declared in a loud and irritated voice that the water had gone off.... something often trips out the electric pump that brings the water up from the bore-hole. So I summoned the Gamekeeper (occasionally useful for his height) to switch it back on again on the main circuit board, not realising that the electrician was outside and had switched it off, and was at that moment holding the live end of the main cable from the National Grid.
It was one of those slow motion, frame by frame, frozen moments in time...
... the Gamekeeper reaching up with his hand on the switch about to flip the electricity on
... Bookhound running (really running, not just pretending) in the back door screaming DON'T TOUCH IT
... the Gamekeeper, despite being a good 3ft taller these days, instantly transported back to his childhood and fortunately obeying his father's edict (it wasn't ever thus)
... and the electrician thankfully living to see another day another dollar.
We took an executive decision not to tell the sparky (getting the lingo here) what had happened because we'd like him to want to come back.
But we all paled silently and visibly at what might have been and had to sit down for a minute.
So after several days of what Bookhound described as playing with very big bits of Meccano, miles of drains and pipes and cable have been joined together and laid, bedded in pea gravel and all buried safely back underground. It's like the London Underground underneath there.

Bookhound has now had his drains inspected by Lucy (who seems to live here at the moment) declaring them the prettiest network of drains she had ever seen and there was yet more rejoicing chez dovegrey.
The next thing we have to think about is windows but I think that might be enough excitement for now.
Oh yes, and today's our 34th wedding anniversary so it's another day of rest before he gets back to his project, and yes he still says it...he would have got less for murder.
And so would I.

How to Build an Extension to Your Home :: Part 3

Thank you for enquiries about progress on the West Wing. I am reliably informed it is the East Wing but currently perhaps resembling Cell Block H.
This was the week of the screed for the base, so more concrete lorries and pumps and it was odds-on that the weather would do this

and our sincere apologies to the unusually large number of cars that chose to travel along the lane that day. 

But happily for the travelers from Hotel Endsleigh,we were able to tell them they were definitely on the wrong road for Padstow so probably saved them miles.
Mr Think of Everything had thought of everything and proudly waved his home made floor leveler in our direction

before demonstrating its effectiveness,

and now he's onto the serious stuff like walls, and see that gap on the right?
That was a late onset door decision that has necessitated another four forms and £25 to the planning department, and we await the letter asking us if we object, but are hoping for what's called 'the nod'.

Oh yes, and he's managing one or two cups of builder's tea.

 

Bookhound the Builder...

Can he fix it?
Yes he can... I wouldn't want you thinking Bookhound's perfect or anything, we do both have our moments, but not only can he cut the crusts off cucumber sandwiches, he can draw plans and build things too, and he hasn't actually done this whole building from scratch thing on his own before, but we decided it was surely only like making a quilt really, except out of blocks... sort of.
So our planning permission went through unopposed, because mysteriously we were the only people the planning department wrote to asking if we objected to this building going on in our vicinity.
This may have been because we are the only people living in our vicinity, and we decided not to be NIMBYs, we didn't mind at all... let us not stand in the way of these nice people building in our back yard we said. It's going to be a small extension at the far end of the house that will solve some damp issues, inevitable in an old stone built cottage and also make that end of the house more self-contained with a kitchen of its own and the potential for ...for lots of things.
It goes in the local paper too and you'd be utterly amazed at the number of people who obviously read the planning applications because it's been non-stop around town these last few weeks,
'What are you building now then?'
'Isn't that house big enough already?'
By some miracle Bookhound had the footings dug and ready for inspection within twenty-four hours, much to the planning officer's amazement, er... ahem... and then it was time for the concrete to fill them. Never knowingly under-dug here when it comes to something that's involved playing with a digger for a week, the trenches were just slightly deeper than required and thus could happily take the weight of a multi-story car park should the need ever arise.

Oh dear, concrete.
After a fairly lengthy debate when we weighed up costings and what would be involved in mixing up 3.6 cubic metres ourselves (that's the royal 'ourselves') versus getting a lorry load in, it was eventually a no contest.
I bought Bookhound a brand new shiny orange gift of a cement mixer and said get on with it. This perhaps akin to him buying me some cotton seed and saying make your own fabric.

So of course I didn't say that, I don't want him crocked half way through all this after all, who would do the shopping and cut the crusts off the sandwiches then?
But the logistics of getting this stuff around the back of the house were very unstraightforward and we've done this before so we know what happens. The rotating lorry arrives, dumps several tons of liquid cement with a penchant for setting rock solid quite fast, dumps it miles away from where you need it and you then run like things possessed with wheelbarrows full and against the clock.
So being older and four building extensions wiser, Bookhound rang around, had reps to visit and it was agreed that a man with a pumping lorry would also be required. This all has to be synchronised because they happened to be coming from opposite ends of the county and we're working to a tight budget, so you don't want to be paying the pump man £80 an hour to be pumping fresh air while your cement lorry ambles along four hours late thinking it'll come to you drekkly via a drop in Bideford.
So it was all set up and by yet another minor miracle and a few phone calls diverting the absent lorry from Bideford, it all worked like a dream after a complex manoeuvre and docking out in the lane akin to something going on with the Mir space station.

Except more like a very fast moving nightmare for poor Bookhound, as the pump man languidly pointed the spewing hose pipe and stood and watched him shovel, and the lorry man stayed right out of the way on the lane drinking our coffee and taking in the lovely view.

Just a few dodgy wellie-top moments when a minute longer and Bookhound would have had that real-life Pompeii experience.

And then the small problem of what to do with the spare 0.4 cu metres of concrete because they insisted on delivering 4 when we only needed 3.6. We toyed, only toyed mind you, with the idea of a greenhouse base somewhere, but a base it would have remained having waved goodbye to three greenhouses since we've lived here. I took pictures and cheered from the sidelines whilst glaring at the pump man...who didn't get a Kit Kat with his coffee despite hinting that he'd like one.
Anyway now Bookhound's onto the building and it has corners and little sides and things and I go out every day and utter words of encouragement along the lines of

'Oh that's nice'

or

' Doesn't it look lovely'

about a row of breeze blocks, because after all he has admired my quilts in the making for years, but that's all next week 's instalment.
Clever Bookhound.