We got footings.....

Footings are all ready, hardcore delivered (40 tonnes of it) driveway is driveable although a little small which is an issue that will be addressed in good time. Building inspector coming tomorrow lunch time, footings pegged out tomorrow night and concrete being delivered on thursday morning... I hate fighting with the blog to position my pictures so......im sure you can work out whats what from here. If not....oh well

 

With a little help from a friend....

Arriving on site, how cool is that arriving on a Sunday lunchtime.

The lengths people will go to, stealing a tree....

Finally some flat ground and clearly marked out

garage.

A day with the spade...

So on a cold chilly Sunday Kieran met the builder to measure footings, a short while later Sue set to work clearing some land...

1st a tree was started on..

Then she made a start on the footings..

Being a boy played around with a chainsaw and discovered the most expensive ladder ever to climb a tree... Yep check again it is me in the bucket, whilst Sue was busy digging away.

When I'd finished playing the fool Sue had made outstanding progress on the garden, then it got a little dark and we went home.....& all in one day. So it looks like we could be on course for a builder on site in 7 days time & boy we are excited. Sue may get some assistance and ask someone to help finish her groundwork tomorrow and there may be a delivery of hardcore to replace some of the approx 200 tonnes that Sue's shifted today.

A Chilly Sunday in the garden

The grass died as we wanted it to anyway, as is clearly visable the alive and the dead as perfectly pointed out by "The hand"

Garage marked out, we had a wander around inside but I was informed that we had to exit by the side door when we left........ It was "The Hand" in the top picture that told me that.

Were on.....

..the councils website, on the building regulations applications section so its all getting a little more real by the day now. I found this picture too today which is great and the field is on it too so thought it worthy of a post. Can you see us, well not us but the field? If you click it it'll go to a viewable size

BIG NEWS !

Today we have instructed a builder, footings and ground work to be done in the week starting 31st Jan and builder on site starting week of 7th Feb !! Well thats what we have planned with him anyway, sometime between now and then we need to go and mark out the exact location of the footings ready for diggers.

Parish Council

Well we have been to our 2nd Parish Council meeting (one every 2 months) a surprising lack of guests, the local residents cant be as concerned about the Parish percentage of the council tax rising / falling or staying as it is as we are (!), us in the know know the answers. Of the 6 Parishes there are 216 houses which was an interesting fact and 13 seats on the combined Parish Council of which it's looking like the current takers of 8 of the seats are looking for Sue & I to occupy some of them.... I informed them we are not residents yet & so arnt available for selection.... they said dont worry the voting doesnt take place until May.....we laughed and left promptly.

Plans arrived

We received the revised house extension plans yesterday so they are nearing finalising, we popped to site today to make sure the grass is going yellow, another week and it will be totally dead hopefully. Thats it really to report, busy day tomorrow so wont get chance to do anything I dont think but we will see. Failing that we have another parish council meeting at the school on Monday evening. Hopefully at the one after this they will be discussing our planning application if all goes well. Yeah exciting times.

Council letter received today

Today we have received the awaited letter from the Council that lets us build a garage as of from now ! Well a call to them and then we can start work on a builders note and they will give the builder details on the footings. Basically the letter is all to do with building regulations so we will have inspections as the garage goes up. Just need to confirm a builder and a start date for the work now.

Garage built today

in the kitchen... slow news day but these are the bricks, roof tile and door options.

Decisions Decisions

Just been out to get these:

Samples of garage door colour, we dont need to decide anytime soon luckily. Garage door is 3 weeks delivery from date of order.

Large plans arrived today

For the 1st time since the project started we have had large plans delivered ! Today we feel like developers & Sue is going to get us a card roll to store them in as we are expecting more...

Kill the grass !

Well thats the plan, today we went armed with killer and covered all the new driveway area and garage space to kill the grass. It was done in the field before it was ploughed so I guess its a good idea, then when the soil is moved it wont be a huge green mound of grass it'll be a huge mound dead grass and soil, well thats the plan....we'll give it a few days until we go back and check the grass's heart rate.

an evening planning the extension layout...

....was what Sue & Kieran were mainly doing last night, moving walls on the plans, moving doors, changing the shapes and making space to fit a toilet downstairs. Then I used a very advanced piece of software to implement the changes on the plans ready for the architect, so he can change as we want.  That software was named "paint" for anyone that was wondering. Now im working and when I finish here im off to price up an electric roller shutter door thats 5.18 mt's wide !!

The beautiful view over the Cheshire countryside

This is the view from the back of the houses over the field, just waiting for the spring and weather to dry out a bit then we will have a nice fresh field 3.5 acres of new grass.. Karli will love it when we tell him!!

In the last 24 hours.....

....... we have made further progress. We have received a written quote from a builder for the garage, just awaiting a further quote from him for an internal wall to give a cavity as the plans are only for single brick, architects dont realise people with cars want to have warm cars and be warm in the garage. !

Thursdays update

Just thought i'd pop down to the "site" to get some slightly newer photo's before work starts. Looking a lot smarter and lighter now that big tree has gone from the front of the houses. At the top we can now see the "DLB 1904" which gives the houses some character & looks cool.










This is where the new driveway will be to the right of the picture and the garage will be the far side of the electricity pole on the far side of the garden. if you look carefully youll see the small wooden posts marking out the front corners of the garage.

The start of 2011 !!

Well here we are 2011 and were ready to start work, naturally a garage 1st or a building to house cars, 54sqmt building to be exact, watch this space as we try to keep pace with progress and this blog ! Kieran decided if Steve can have a house build blog then Kieran can too.. the only difference is that Steve has more time.