You've Been Framed

This week the frame arrived. Despite our request (and payment!) for rigid vehicles it all arrived on arctics which meant unloading in Hartley Down - the main road and...

How can you not like a cheery Welshman in a cheery bright yellow lorry on a dull rainy morning?!

Especially when it says 'Mr & Mrs Goacher' - 'House'!!

....ferrying it all up by tele handler.

That tree needed pruning anyway...

Left a bit.....right a bit.....nearly there.....

Purely a supervisory role you understand..

The bad news was that this meant falling out with some neighbours we'd not yet met, but after a little explanation Joolz ended up making new friends with several of the residents of Hartley Down.

Scrape went the trusses as they squeezed under our Walnut  tree..

Phew what a day's work. S'alright lads...it's a tea break . Welsh cake anyone?!

One garage, plus a roof (well trusses at least)

Wahoo! It's a house Mummy!

'Oooo ooo'...Roxy thought our utility room is a tree to swing on....

OMG.....we have a first floor...well... al fresco...

In just four days, the majority of the structure is complete and something resembling a house is beginning to taking shape.

A luxurious fully kitted out lounge, as you can see. Pull up a chair...

I'm a Lumberjack and I'm Okay!

At the bottom of the plot in our new neighbour, David's garden, there were four HUGE fir trees. We were a little concerned about the amount of evening sun that would be shaded and asked if he wouldn't mind us  performing a little tree butchery, sorry I mean surgery!

'Who's nicked the house?' Scaffolding but no house...wierd?!

With John's help, Rob's chainsaw (again! - huge thanks again) a little brute force, ignorance and luck we managed to cut off the top third or so and create a bonfire worthy of heralding the arrival of the Spanish Armada!

Heeeeeave....Crack.....Timber.......

A big thank you to my Dad again....

Dad nonchanlantly pulling down a tree top...

Julie checking out the view....sorry er preparing the tree  for  chainsaw man...

Facing bricks and a garage floor..

The rain finally stopped for enough time for the bricks to do their magic and we have 3 lovely courses of blue bricks all around the house ready for the scaffolders tomorrow..

Meanwhile...Barry & Jason set out the mesh on the DPM ready for concreting

..and wait for the lorry to arrive...

An extremely late delivery of concrete meant that Roxy, Marcie & I got to watch the concrete being poured for the garage floor.

Mum 'it looks like chocolate jelly!'

Get in there...I was impressed. One smooth garage floor. I'm sure the girls wanted to join Barry, but somehow I figured not the best of ideas! But lets hope the foxes don't venture into it in the evening...could be interesting.

OMG...it's TECHNOpor!

One of the days I really wasn't looking forward to finally arrived.... 28 bags (over 7tons) worth of Technopor arrived in an artic from Germany! Well it wasn't that we didn't want it, it was just the logistics of a huge lorry (they wouldn't supply on a smaller one) which clearly was never going to make it up the small narrow private road to our site.

So......a very unorthodox method ensued. Not entirely my idea, but clearly my inexperience certainly didn't help. However, it is a product with very high green credentials (highly insulative crushed re-cycled glass), negating the need for a concrete infill in the foundations, which has been used in Europe for years, but not in this country very much at all.....and certainly not for small domestic self-builds!! And so.....

A neighbouring wide, quiet (well was before we arrived)...road..

..no fortlift (the far too sensible option) Let's go for the 'make large bags fall over and play catch with  poor Barry's transit option instead'.....Yes 28 bags, 2 at a time....work it out...

 Well it worked amazingly well for 12 trips back and forward to site. Barry and his guys getting superbly efficient at unloading and returning speedily for more until........the bags thought they'd all be better falling over. Uh oh......Thin, loosely tied bags, falling over = mess of small pumice like stones all over the road, van and lorry......(well at least they're relatively light and clean)

The good news is with a bit of hands on help from a large German lorry driver, a suited German Commercial Director and his English colleague, my Dad, me and Barry (what a bizarre bunch of people to be scrabbling around in lorries)....got the last bags on......
.....just....
.....leaving only just the merest hint of light grey dust that we were ever there........ (for about 2hours!)

Possibly they won't suggest this method again!! Yet another notch into the hands of experience for us all!

Barry's digger made a far better job of whisking them off the transit

For speed they never quite made it down near the house...

...but they were beautifully lined up the drive

Phew. Stage 1 of Technopor complete....more to come....

Blockwork

The house finally begins to rise up out of the ground.....

We can finally start to see the shape of the ground floor..

Roxy 'the dog' stands proudly at her front door

Marcie considers if the brickies are up to her high Lego standards?

Gabions - Part 2

Due to overwhelming popularity and success....We love building them so much we got building them cagey walls again...

Only problem was the sun didn't shine this time..   :(

peepo!

If I could just carefully balance this plank....

Phil & Mef kindly added some well needed muscle to the wet proceedings...however.....enough was enough for a rainy Easter Monday!

Seriously serious retaining wall

So this is what a wall's structure looks like when the structural engineer does a drawing for a retaining wall but hasn't seen the (solid chalk white cliffs of Dover) ground conditions! A huge 14m trench is dug by the side of the, to be garage, and steel bars are painstakingly bent (in seriously hot temperatures for late March in a white reflective sun trap) by Jason and Gary.

Marcie oversees by standing sideways?!

The white cliffs of Dover

 Marcie proves that it's tough building by proudly displaying her wounded hand.

This wall ain't going anywhere....

  

              

The blocks for the foundations arrive

The surface water soakaway at the end of the garden

 The surface water drainiage pipes are laid and covered over and the huge soakaway is now filled in. Too late for burying any bodies now. You've all missed ya chance - I'm still here!