Ground Floor

So it's Wednesday, the crane arrived Monday and leaves today, and progress has been nothing short of meteoric.

I've just returned from my usual lunch-time stroll to site, and the first floor is well underway. I'm told the house will be roofed and parapeted by Monday. We are beside ourselves with happy.

In the last photo above you can see the pieces of cardboard, representing our large items of furniture, which we've been using to plan where everything will go. As mentioned, this is the whole ground floor as it will be - there'll be no more walls or partitions, so living room/dining room/kitchen are all here. The staircase and downstairs loo will be behind the partition to the right. Must say, that French window is going to be impressive.

Meanwhile, instead of watching all this happen, my very grown up and responsible mrs has been pointing the remaining chapel walls..

The scraped, and the scraped not

More soon :-)

Digging

Half the house arrived yesterday on pallets. The rest will arrive Tuesday and be craned into place by a crack team of experts from McVeigh Offsite.

By Friday a house will stand where we always hoped it would. Cannot wait.

We're digging and sowing seeds all over the place. Mostly wildflowers, which will probably flower next year. It's hard work for a desk jockey, but good for my beleaguered back muscles.

The tilled, and tilled not

We had hoped to finish and sow seeds in this section adjacent to the road, but sitting here now, with a pint and a broken body, I realise it's good to know one's limits.

More soon

Progress

So progress is being made all over the shop. We now have the scaffolding inplace, inside which the house will be constructed in just two weeks time

Also the permanent steel is now the only steel, having been properly bonded to the front wall..

..and the old steel has been put to good use..

I had a little walk around at first floor level

We're now able to check out what will be the views from bedroom windows. Particularly the main bedroom, which will look out of the three windows towards Kinder Scout and Chinley Churn.

The trusty cameras are still busy time-lapsing the project from two angles, and I spend whole evenings cutting out the parts where nothing changes, preparing a nice movie for when it's all done. 

There's now a working platform to help with construction of the upper section of the house..

Lyn found some video she took in the very very early days. Shocking to think how much growth there was actually inside the chapel.

More later..

Sills

Quick pic of our newly installed sills on the North wall:

This wall has had minimal attention (aside from new sills) from our crack team of fixers, aka "The Pointer Sisters". Lyn is currently 75% finished on the South wall, and when the scaffolding is down I'll post a pic. I have to say it looks triffic already.

You can see here that the ground level on the North side has been raised to a few cm short of its finished level. 

It's all so exciting.

BTW the £1 million prize for our 20th subscriber goes to... @PattyDoran xx

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Slab

Concrete pour for the main slab was today..

Up close, the house looks too big now. We think it will change again when the walls go up. Otherwise, anyone for a badminton court?

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