Poles apart

Finally received the quotation from Central Networks for our electricity connection yesterday.  Their pole is directly across the road from the barn, so we struggle to see how they've come up with a price of £9,200 !!  I phoned them today to query it.  They explained that they have to upgrade our end of the village to accommodate our power demand, and that they've routed it underground across the road, along the verge then round our driveway to avoid going under the boundary wall.  I said our builder will put the ducts under the wall, so it can come straight through that way.  So now they're going to revise their quote, within the next 15 days, and hopefully reduce it.  I even asked whether it could be overhead from the pole (like our neighbours both sides).  Afetr a discussion with her manager, she said it was possible, but would probably be more expensive and delay the quote as they'd need a site visit.

At least we can see a bit of progress on the barn, as the builders have taken the roof off the old lean-to and taken down a few of the walls - so we can see the buttresses in the open now, and they're still holding up the leaning wall.  Still got to take down the old block wall; if the leaning wall is still in place after that it'll be a relief.

Big Buttresses

The builders have emptied out the old lean-to, taken off the doors that we so carefully crafted from the original barn doors six months ago, and started building the buttresses that we all hope will support the leaning wall once the lean-to has been demolished.

It's early days in this stage of these works, and it's a risky time.  We won't know whether this solution will work until the buttresses are completed and the lean-to removed, so we're all keeping our fingers crossed.

At least the loose stonework on this elevation has given the builders somewhere safe to put their radio ...

Happy anniversary

As we celebrate the anniversary of the auction, the collapsed wall is being rebuilt and the existing stonework is being cleaned down, joints raked out, helifix bars fixed in across cracks and between the two skins of stonework, and all repointed outside and in with lime mortar.

There are 11 builders bags of reclaimed stone on site, ready for use in the new buttresses and raising the walls all round by 500mm.  The hand-made bricks are due to arrive soon, and the oak posts, beams and lintols are being sourced now ready for inclusion as the openings are formed.

We visited a company that does all the air source heating kit last Friday (on our way to our annual get-together in Exeter with our ex ex-pat friends who worked in Nigeria together 30 years ago) and got some great advice about what's good and what's not so good in the renewable energy market.

I also contacted the planners about putting up a garden shed - and was told we need planning permission!  So application no. 4 will go in soon, with plans and all four elevations of our proposed shed.  The good news is that there won't be any extra fee this time, but we will have to go through the usual 8 week consultation period before they can approve our shed ..... !

But we did get one wonderful anniversary present.  Our friend Andrew, now semi-retired and a budding artist in all his spare time, presented us with an original painting of the barn before any work had been done.  He visited the barn a few weeks ago, then worked from photos he'd taken that day plus some of ours from a year ago and came up with a beautiful picture of the derelict barn.  We hope he'll be available in 6 months time to do another one of the completed project, for a 'before and after' set.

Now that's a hole

The builders have been progressing well with the new lean-to, and it's turned in to a mammoth earthmoving exercise.  The drawings didn't give a true impression of just how much digging was needed.  These pictures give some idea ... note the dark brown upper layers (remnants of animal bedding from inside the 'nissen hut') and the orange clay below.

The internet's a nightmare

For the past few weeks Misan's dongle has been misbehaving.  So we signed up to Sky Broadband (had to give up Sky Sports in exchange, but then I'm fed up with Pro Bull Riding and World Darts anyway, so what the heck).  Of course, it took a week or so to get it on, then tonight it won't recognise this blogsite, so I'm now accessing it from my laptop.

Anyway, we need to catch up.  We've sorted out our photos, so here's one of the mesh in the barn before the slab was cast - note the upstand that will hold up the stone walls that have been undermined ....

And here's one of the wall that came down - until then it was holding up one of the roof trusses, so it's as well that the builders quickly put the acrow prop in. 

Our materials were all approved by the planners back in August, and our builder is back on site this week so things are back in full swing.  The foundations for the new lean-to are in, but not without masses of excavation to lower the ground levels at that end of the barn.

We chose our internal joinery (doors, staircase, etc) last weekend, then Misan chose her range cooker this weekend.

And I eventually applied for our electricity connection today.  Just waiting apprehensively for their quotation now, which is inevitably more than you've budgetted for and there's nothing you can do about it.  Power to the people, eh?

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!