Easter

Well, we've spent the day pootling around the site. Replenished the bird feeders, weeded a few weeds, sat in the sun and read for a bit. 

We continue to be optimistic regarding moving in this Autumn, so a sunny day in April was a good time to discover, or imagine, where to sit to take advantage of it. As I said to wifey, we're not short of corners.

Lyn has been working hard this week on preparation for re-pointing the chapel walls, using a hammer drill to scrape out old rotten mortar. It's no small task and she's had aches and pains in places she didn't know she had places. Lots of this:

..so much, in fact, that this was almost inevitable..

Just to put this into context, here's just one of the walls to be pointed, inside and out:

While there's scaffolding at the front of the east wall, I got a couple of aerial shots of the front garden:

The South wall has now been capped and should last another hundred years or so:

In the near future: the concrete slab for the house will be poured; the new steel will be properly fixed to the wall it's supposed to hold up; the old steel will be removed.

All in all we're very happy with progress. 

More later.

Letter box

So we now have a letter box at Mount Pleasant:

Aint she a beauty?

In other news we spent a happy hour standing in this space:

..trying to imagine it as living room, dining room, kitchen. How big? How small? How comfortable? Where to put furniture? How much furniture? Where will the telly go? It's all very exciting, as I believe I've said many times. But it is :)

The above pic was taken from my new camera, which will capture the ongoing build nicely. Here's a pic of the camera, which I had to climb the scaffolding to acquire. Much wobbliness in the legs - I'm not great at heights.

This was the location of the first camera, which captured the bonfire in 2020 and the subsequent clearing. It had to be taken down when the temporary steel went up, now it's actually fastened to the steel as that won't be going anywhere for a little while. Lyn has found a company that will happily fix the new steel to the walls, it's now just a matter of timing.

Here's the view of the town hall from the camera position, with builder Paul lounging in the foreground:

More later, thanks for sticking around

House Factory Visit

We went to visit McVeigh Offsite who are making our SIPs panels. Met Jim, Mark and Michael, had a lovely chat. Some evidence:

It's all coming along nicely. Due to the steel shenanigans, the delivery of these panels is now 15 May, a bit later than we expected. Still on target though, for moving in this autumn.

More soon

owl Owl OWL

This gave us goosebumps. There were owls on site when we bought it, but they quickly got bored with us and left. We installed owl boxes and hoped for the best. Over a year later...

We're so happy 😊 

We're out of the ground

While we're having a break in France, things have moved on nicely despite bad weather. So exciting to see the house's outline. 

Still hating that the old temporary steel is still in place, but hopefully not for long.

More soon

Footings

Nuff said..

Notice the still-in-place temporary steel. It has to come out, and that's no longer easy with these big holes in the ground.

Anyone want several pieces of very good steel, cut into 4 ft chunks?

In other news, a new camera has been built, almost. Be ready for a "For the Geeks" update...

Update

Work continues to complete the steel reinforcement of the front wall. It's proving a challenge to properly fix the steel (straight) to the wall (not straight). When they finally sort it out, the old temporary steel will be removed and we'll have our front door back.

Until the steel is  done we can't dig the footings, as it's in the way.. 

So we took a selfie.

Lyn has a lot of scraping out to do, as all the chapel walls need re-pointing. Mechanical aid was required, so the budget stretched this far...

More news soon