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Well, look at the place now!

Two months in and the site is now just about ready for the SIPS panels arriving next week.  More scaffolding has been put up, and 40 tons (two lorry loads) of Type 1 MOT (which I've learned is a sort of tarmac) have been ordered to cover the entire front garden - which should mean the end of the mud!  In the past seven days we've had no fewer than four grab lorries come to collect mountains of debris and waste ... at £220 a time.  Our calculations hadn't factored in quite this much for rubbish extraction, but it would have been a huge amount more had we demolished the whole house.

Along the front boundary we've had to lose a laburnum tree to make for easier access, together with a load of brambles and ivy. (The Planning Permission requires us to leave the two field maples, which we wouldn't want to lose anyway.)  It looks quite bare now.  Alan and Pat have also dug up the old drains under the driveway and front garden and replaced all the old pipes.  Unfortunately some damage was caused to the electric cable (thankfully no-one was hurt).  The cost of emergency repairs was the exact same amount, on the very same day, as a bonus cheque and presentation awarded to Adrian for his outstanding contribution at work.  Very proud, but boo hoo!

 

In this wet autumnal weather we have finally laid a plastic track along the length of the garden to cover up the mud.  The cats like to use it too!  And last weekend Adrian constructed a very useful porch between the Garden Room and the awning to provide dry access between the two.  He's made a start on tiling the Garden Room roof and added some guttering which is a big help in all the rain. 

We've had to delay the delivery of the windows by a couple of weeks but thankfully it's OK to store them at the manufacturers for a while.  Roof tiles have been ordered, plus soffits and fascias.  Fingers crossed we're on track to be weather-tight by Christmas.

In the caravan we've struggled these past two days with smelly drains (couldn't blame the stink on Adrian as he was in Sweden!) but have now treated this and will give them a good flush out over the weekend. I've also had to repeat my 'lemon trick' to descale the kitchen and bathroom taps (half a lemon pushed on the end of the tap overnight - completely works!) to stop them spraying all over the place.  I'm now off to empty the caravan toilet (10.00pm at night!) in case anyone needs it overnight.  Head torch at the ready ... oh the joys of caravanning!  (Will definitely continue to take advantage of my friend's kind offer of using her bathroom while she's away on holiday this week.)

A bit of history

Look what newspaper was recently uncovered  in the hallway during the demolition stage (Worthing Herald, 1 December 1967) ...

 And some lovely wall paper was revealed in the kitchen!

I wonder who were the characters who lived in Bridleways then?  What would they make of their old home now?!!!

Toilet update ...

It may seem as though I'm obsessed with the house toilet arrangement - you'd be right! Things have gone from bad to worse as we spent a night with no window at all, and now there's a plastic sheet over the window, but a missing wall!  Plenty of fresh air, but not much privacy for the time being.  OK for those of us who can whistle!

On a more creative note, we've now chosen our roof tiles after much deliberation.  A combination of three colours for the roof itself, the hanging wall tiles, and the patterned club tiles.  Hopefully the effect will be a nice 'Sussex' one.

Birthday Bash

When Emma told us a few weeks ago that she wanted her 10th birthday party in the Garden Room, so her friends could see where she was living, it was lovely and sunny.  Of course, we said, what a nice idea!  Thursday 9th October dawned wet and windy with mud and puddles everywhere.  Thankfully the sun came out at lunchtime and five of Emma's friends came after school to enjoy a Tajdar take-away and a movie.  And luckily the garden had dried up enough for everyone to attack a sweet-filled piñata which provided the obligatory sugar rush.

Anyone needing the toilet had to be accompanied back into the 'house', where they found Emma's old bedroom with the wall paper peeling off the damp walls.  "It looks much smaller than I remember", one friend commented.  "Where's all your stuff?!", another asked.

Adrian surpassed himself and managed to fashion a fabulous Hogwarts creation, made entirely of shop-bought cake and confectionary!  Perfect for Harry-Potter-mad Emma.

Unfortunately, all of the slippy mud led to me taking a nasty tumble the next day as I trekked up to the house for my first toilet trip of the morning.  I landed flat in the mud, in my pyjamas, and felt a right wally even though no-one would have seen.  It really shook me and I lay there for what felt like ages until I could ascertain whether anything was broken.  I was able to get up, covered in chalky mud, and a bit shaky, but seemingly OK.  As the day wore on, however, I stiffened up and became increasingly sore.  By bedtime my left hip was very creaky and my neck tender.  I'm still hobbling about like an old woman and hoping to feel better soon.  The irony is that, the day before, we had started laying some plastic paving track along the length of the garden to provide a much-needed non-slip pathway through the mud, and at the time of falling I was just thinking to myself how good the first new section of pathway worked, when BOOM, the remaining bit of mud caught me out! 

The rain is still falling, as I write, and I think we had better be prepared for plenty more wet weather.  It is October after all! (Adrian has managed to construct a raised floor inside the awning - made out of timber and boards reclaimed from the dismantled roof - so that everything is off the floor and all rain water can now pass underneath.  Much better. He has also stiffened up the boards under our caravan bed which were just ever so slightly sagging, but were very noticeable with poorly hips.)

Fingers crossed for dry weather as we await delivery of our SIPS panels in a few weeks ...

View from the top

We had the chance to walk around the scaffolding at the weekend, and check out the would-be views from our respective bedrooms.  Exciting to start 'dreaming' of our plans ...

The only way is up ...

The long run of fine weather has finally come to an end.  Last night we were woken at 4.00am by a huge thunderstorm.  (That's the last time I ever get up for a wee in the garden under an umbrella!)  I had to get up to check that Adrian's awning alterations had fixed the previously very saggy roof, which collected copious amounts of rainwater during the daytime.  The temporary roof put up over the house toilet was also bulging down with gallons of rainwater, which needed pushing off with a broom in the morning, much to Hannah's amusement.

During the last of the sunny days I was amused to hear Adrian congratulating me on making the most of our "passive solar gain" when I suggested opening the caravan curtains to heat us up through the windows.

Emma and I enjoyed lovely hot soaky baths and hairwashes on Sunday night when our neighbours at the end of the garden (nearest the caravan) kindly invited us to use their bathroom.  Adrian and Hannah opted to stick with the caravan shower (!??).

We now have the satellite dish back up and running, after not watching live TV since the beginning of August.  (Adrian found an amazing App on his phone which pinpointed exactly how to target our nearest satellite.)  I'm thrilled to be rediscovering Downton Abbey, Bake-Off (just in time for the final) and Strictly.  Adrian has straight away got back into Formula One, Match of the Day, and round-the-clock Grand Designs, Restoration Man, Build Your House for 100K etc, etc. I won't bore you with the girls' choices!   But I'm also aware that, for all of us, two months without constant TV has not been nearly as difficult as one would have imagined.

We had a slight electrical glitch at the weekend (just as the weather broke) when I accidentally overloaded the caravan circuit in my mad-dash attempts at cleaning up everywhere before Adrian returned from a(nother) week in Japan.  I'd put the caravan heater on, and the garden room heater, and the hot water, and plugged in the hoover ... when all of a sudden, nothing.  No heat, no hot water, no sockets.  I texted Adrian, just landed back at Heathrow, with a 'warning' that he might need to fix some things as soon as he got home!  The problem stumped him that evening and we all went to bed freezing cold with extra duvets, socks and jumpers.  The next day, luckily, my clever engineer husband identified a burnt out wire in the electrical unit and was able to replace it and make everything safe again (fingers crossed).  I'm now under strict instruction to limit the amount of electrical things I have on at any one time, and we now use gas a little more than we used to for heating and hot water.

Hannah and Emma are still being real troupers about our camping 'hardships'.  They confessed to me last night their latest 'game' after I've put them to bed at night.  Apparently they both lie in their parallel beds on their tummies, holding hands across the aisle, and then see who can turn over and pull the other out of bed. I have a feeling Hannah might mostly win this game?  Once I've gone out to the Garden Room I'm oblivious to all this merriment!  I can't be too cross when it's lovely that they can giggle together instead of bicker.

I'll finish with a couple of pictures which illustrate the level to which the house is now stripped almost as bare as it will be before new construction begins.  Alan tells me he is beginning to sleep easier at night now that he feels on track for preparing the outer walls for the upstairs panels to come.  A very exact science.  Fingers crossed!