Monday 29th June, 2009

We have a bit of a hole!! Peter has been rather busy with the digger and scooped out what seems like 1000's of tons of earth. This is how it looked towards the end of last week...

And this is what it looks like after today...! Hannah is standing on the concrete floor of the old back outbuilding.

There has been much more earth taken out of the bank than we anticipated as Steve needs a fair width for the retaining wall and some drainage behind it so it looks loads worse! There goes our hope that we wouldn't upset the look of the bank but Steve assures me it will all be neat again and look great. We certaininly hope so!

One rather solid blip was encountered today - lots and lots of bedrock. It fact it appears that almost all of the outbuilding was built on it. Unfortunately that means a bit of heavy machinery tomorrow to break it up so we can have some foundations and floor at the height we need. First dip into the contingency pot. :-( As you can see from this shot, the outbuilding concrete floor was laid straight onto the gritstone. What we thought was a cut stone step was in fact a small section of a HUGE boulder!

Wednesday 24th June, 2009

After a modest start on Monday and Tuesday, things have really kicked off today! Or maybe I should say kicked down!! This is what the outbuilding at the front looked like on Sunday - lovely isn't it?!

And this is what it all looks like today after some heavy machinery and heavy man power have been hard at work..!

Looks like a bomb just went off! We're also finding lots of interesting pottery and bottles which we'll definitely use/display somewhere in the extension when it's finished. I'll photograph them sometime over the next week and include them on here. More tomorrow. :-)

Sunday 21st June, 2009

Well, the wall was finished in the week and looks great. The wallers did an excellent job and will be back to do phase 2 in a week hopefully. This is what it now looks like:

Ali and I have just spent the whole weekend clearing out the Outbuildings. It's been flippin' hard work as we had a lot of stuff. Many kind thanks go to Paul and Sarah for letting us borrow some of their space to store some boxes. I promise they won't be there for more than a year! ;-)

Anyway, this is the shot I took of the Outbuildings before they go tomorrow - yep, the builders turn up tomorrow!!

Tuesday 16th June, 2009

Very unlikely that we'll be updating this every day but while it's new...why not!

Our drystone wallers have got on really well today and guess what..? We have a wall!

It looks a bit on the slant in this shot but it's just down to the wide angle lens - I blame the photographer! They're doing a great job and at the rate they're going they'll have all the coping stones on tomorrow and finished!

Monday 15th June, 2009

Well, 'proper' work actually started today. :-) By that I mean we had someone here doing some work that we had to pay for!

So after a number of hard slogged hours of moving earth on the new bit of the garden (and uncovering lots of interesting artifacts which I'll cover another day), I've given in to the experts to come and take down the dry stone wall and rebuild it on our new boundary at the back. This is what the new bit of land looked like a few day's ago...

And this is what it looks like after the dry stone walling chaps have been here today..!

The shot above just shows the HUGE boulder we have uncovered at the top of the new part of the garden. More of that to come soon. What a great start!! :-)