The stone arrives, as does a caravan!
Entry posted by curlewhouse
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Well, some interesting developments:
1. We bought a caravan! Even though it's only about 8 miles from where we are temporarily renting (though that "temporary" has ended up into it's 3rd year since we sold our old house!) , it's a pain working on the house then having to hide/ lock everything away each time, before going home, then spend half an hour getting it all out again next day, so we gave notice on our temporary tenancy and are moving onto the site at the end of the month. That should make it far easier to do work on the site.
2. The stone has arrived. It's backed off stone from an old convent school, and we've also got a few interesting bits of stone found on the site which we intend to have inserted into the stone walls, like ones I cut up for the dry stone waller which have fossils in (nothing startling, just marine corals and the like) and one small piece which for various reasons we believe is likely saxon. I also managed to get free of charge 2 genuine old stone gateposts of which I know the provenance - goodness knows how old they are. One of them looks like Stonehenge is probably missing it 
. But I really like the idea that we know the provenance of all of these things, even the roof slates are recycled (they have not arrived yet but are imminent). We are really pleased with the stone, and fortunately amongst it are enough quoins, which is an unexpected bonus,
3. Openreach came out and were helpful. We discussed options and in the end we are going for armoured cable which we are laying as it can be laid simply on the surface, so is going along behind a hedge where it will disappear into the ground of it's own accord. All perfectly acceptable to Openreach due to the low voltages, and actually something they do quite commonly in rural areas where digging would be an issue. The nearest pole is too far away. Only downside is that despite the entire village getting fibre in only about a year ago, they'd want an arm and a leg to get it to us - however, the guy tells me we'll be the only people on the exchange on ADSL so will probably end up with quite a respectable speed anyway for less money, so I'm not too bothered if this turns out to be correct. I know that as houses in the village were moved onto fibre and off the ADSL, those still waiting were noticing speed increases.
4. Electricity board say they'll be progressing things in the next couple of weeks, so I've cracked on with getting their cabinet installed - it's going onto a retaining wall rather than on the house itself (they are perfectly happy about that) so we have a second cabinet alongside for our junctions off for our sub mains to the garage/workshop and the house, as well as putting an external RCD socket on the outside to give us a temporary supply (handy for the caravan!). The retaining wall is built in blockwork, but is getting covered in real stone, so that's definitely not it's final appearance.
5. With deciding to move onto the site, I need to get the utility room and downstairs bathroom (though the caravan has loo and shower of course) sorted ASAP so we can have a washing machine and so on, so instead of doing the insulation, UFH pipes and screeding on the ground floor all at once, I'm going to have to do those two small rooms first (staged finance prevents me doing it all at once just yet), so am looking now at screeding them myself, though will get a firm in to do the main parts of the building later of course. So last night I put the base of the partition wall in to make it more manageable for me to do in 2 smaller lots. As ever, our dog is fascinated by the laser level (that's not it shining in her eyes I should point out!).
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