The internet is wonderful

You might think that not much would happen when the builder goes away for a 2 week holiday, and we both go to Nigeria for me to work and Misan to recover from the move (and to visit family, of course).

Well I've just logged on to the council's website from the hotel room and noticed that they've approved our latest planning application - number 3 3/4 (which included the rebuilding of the bit of collapsed wall, and the proposed buttresses against the leaning wall).  That's great news, and means we can now proceed legitimately with construction (assuming our materials have also been approved).  We'll have to wait to see the decision notice to see if the materials approval is included, and whether they've added any further conditions - we hope not.

Looking forward to getting back next week and resuming construction. 

Moving on

Apologies to all our readers!  We've not been too lazy to blog recently - far from it, life's been hectic as we've moved from our Warwick home into a rented house whilst the barn gets converted, and since the move last weekend we've not had internet at home so couldn't blog even if we'd had the time.

So what's been happening?  Well, we rented a big semi on Fri 30 July, spent the weekend cleaning it and packing, completed our house sale on Mon 2 Aug and moved out.  Traumatic or what!  The 'kids' came home that weekend and helped - just as well - and our friend Kulu flew in from Canada to visit and ended up in marigolds doing a great job degreasing the kitchen at the rented place.  Boxes everywhere, garden full of stuff from 2 sheds and garage, no TV signal, no internet, boiler not working (so no hot water) .... but we're gradually getting ship-shape and even had a successful garage sale to declutter further.

Meanwhile, the barn.  Got our address confirmed by the 'Street Numbering and Naming Authority' (yes, there is one) - we can call it The Barn (original, eh?).  But haven't had our latest planning application (number three and a half - the raised floor level and revised truss shape) approved yet, and haven't had a response on our materials samples.  But that hasn't stopped the builder from ploughing on with Phase 1.  He started by lowering and widening the access, encountering an unexpected cable in the process which turned out to be the phone line to our neighbours' cottages plus the big Priory down the road.  Although we didn't cut through it, BT did apparently repair it overnight as some phones had been cut off.

Then our builder started on the trenches inside the barn for the deep foundations.  He dug down to about 2m, needed to go further, so got a bigger digger and got the 5 cross trenches in last week.  Then this week he was lowering the soil levels inside and one of the walls started to move!  They quickly shored up the beam over the barn door and one of the trusses, then carefully took down that section of the existing stone wall.  The engineer came out, the planners were consulted, and they've agreed that we can rebuild that part in the original style and also suggested a solution for the leaning wall using stone buttresses.  The planners even indicated that if we got revised drawings submitted within a week, they'd consider it as part of the pending planning application.  So I reckon we're now on application no. three and three quarters!  The decision on that is due before 23 August, meanwhile we're prompting them for approval of the materials so we can order our stone and bricks.

Could that be things starting to swing in our favour?  Careful!  We set our washing machine on last night for a final wash just before we jet off to Nigeria for a short while, only to find the landlord's plumbing dumped loads of the drained water onto the utility floor - and soaked the bases of loads of the boxes that we didn't intend to unpack until we move to Chacombe!  So we moved about a dozen boxes outside, repacked 4 or 5 into new boxes, dried out the floor and put them back.  The landlord got an earful from Misan this morning.  Isn't life fun!