Rubbery! Thank you very much!

The good news - five thousand roof tiles arrived. The bad news - they were sent on a 24 tonne Class 2 that couldn't fit up the narrow road. On the basis that the roofer was somewhat in need of them it seemed like the wrong thing to do to send them back. So, what seemed like a great idea at the time was to send them round to our current house and stack them up on the drive and I'd 'just' bring them round a few at a time. Some two dozen car journeys later........

The tiles are made of recycled car tyres although you'd struggle to notice from the ground. Eventually they will bond together to form a continuous membrane over the roof. Although our roofer has never used them before I think he's getting ideas about becoming the local specialist for what appears to be a growing demand product. Apparently they're very easy to lay and there are no breakages and virtually no wastage.

 

 Mark hard at work making our roof watertight and as ever, perched high in the sky...Shame those cloudy skies are looming. Who would've thought slating a roof was a bad idea in June/July......Glorious sunny dry weather surely........2012's Summer clearly never read our schedule.

 Dave exasperated by my endless list writing of materials needed! Dumb blonde.....will she ever understand?!!

What roof?! If I look this way she'll go away!

En Garde!

It transpires that when Joolz said we were going to be doing some fencing it didn't mean that we had to put sieves over our faces and poke each other with swords. What it did mean though was more effort than we could have imagined as nearly all of the post holes presented their own individual challenges. There was huge lumps of flint, tree roots, an iron bar, concrete, more concrete, even more concrete and just to top it all off, concrete reinforced with scaffold poles!

No man goes like a Kango goes!

Scaffold poles, bolted together and set in 18" of concrete - just where the post needed to go - joy!  2 angle grinder discs later....

We called in some BIG tools to help, but nothing other than brute force overcame the iron bar!

"Mummy, if I water the fence like this, will it grow by itself?"

Thanks to the loan of a nail gun from 'Dave the roofer' we managed to catch up a little time  with the finishing touches.

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....