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Well, at last we have finished our renovation and have had an offer that we have accepted. It took longer to get here than we ever thought, over 17months, but I think it was worth it. After Christmas and our little party, we had the estate agent in who had already sold one of the neighbours houses and before we knew it, the photographer was there and the next day it was online! we still had a few snags to sort out but we soon had those done, apart from the wooden mantle for the lounge fireplace, which we hadn't found yet. After a couple of weeks, we had a good offer and so we are now in the hands of the solicitors. I am hopeful to have it all completed by end of April. Our buyer was in the middle of selling her place to a first time buyer so I am keeping my fingers crossed that there are not too many problems. We did say we didn't want a chain, prefering a FTB or cash buyer. So here are a few of the photographs of our amazing house, together with the origonal shots, if I have them. The dining room. The lounge. Our lovely bathroom - Am very pleased with this The back bedroom. I am so proud of what we have acheived. it was our first big renovation and we had to take on many challenges that we had not done before. But apart from the builder (who did the structural work on the side gable wall and removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room) and the plasterers, we did the lot ourselves! Poor OH has still not recovered, although his knees are much better now that he is no longer crawling round the floor doing plumbing/electrics/boarding etc. Whenever I mention another nice place I have seen on Rightmove that needs renovating, he turns a strange colour of pale and goes to lie down. I think I shall have to wait for a little while before looking too seriously. I hope you have enjoyed sharing this experience/blog with us and maybe have learnt some things on the way; I know I certainly have. I shall be sad to see the house go - it has always felt a friendly /warm house, even in the middle of winter. But onwards and upwards! Maybe we will eventually find a plot and can build our own house or, if not, a renovation for us rather than for profit. And whatever, I shall make sure there is a blog on Buildhub! Cheers, The Mitchells.

....because we have clay, and lots of it. A soil test was carried out on the site today as MBC need to know what they're building on to do their sums for the foundation. I used a firm called Mini Soil Surveys (South West), run by a chap called Martin Shirley. My selection of which firm to use was detailed and exacting - they were the cheapest. Or should I say, least expensive. Actually, I had no idea what was involved in this other than punching a few holes in the ground and looking at which flavour of mud comes out of it. That's broadly it, but in a much more sophisticated manner and it took a fair amount of time, too, starting at 9.30 and finishing some time around 2.30 in the afternoon, which was much longer than I anticipated. I rang 4 different companies, both in Dorset and a little further afield, with prices ranging from about £1,400 (inc VAT) up to about £3,000. A mini drilling rig (my terminology is probably entirely wrong here, so please excuse my ignorance) gets trundled onto the site and 3 locations, roughly triangulated on the extreme points of where the new build will be, are chosen. At each site, 3 sample cores at increasing depths are taken and then bagged up for lab tests, if thought necessary. Unfortunately, mine are due to a lot of clay coming out in the samples. The main reason for the lab analyses is to find out whether the clay/soil is shrinkable because this could have a major effect on what gets built on it. It will take about 10 days for the lab tests and report to be done, so I just need to wait this out and then let MBC know the results. It's not essential for the client to be there, but Martin was keen for me to attend if possible as, in his experience, other things often come to light that may be relevant to other plans for a site apart from the main build. Although it was a little repetitive towards the end, I did find it interesting and it brought up another job that is time critical and needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. The urgent task is to deal with a large amount of hedgerow that runs around the existing bungalow and to do it before it all gets going and growing in the spring. I had already planned to get the majority of this chopped down (hopefully next weekend) before birds start nesting, but I need to get another long row, an inner hedge between the bungalow and the hedge that separates the site from the lane, as this can have a significant and negative affect on the clay soil there. It seems that the water demand of hawthorn hedges is enormous and especially so in spring when they get going after their winter dormancy, and by virtue of absorbing so much water from the soil, it causes the clay to shrink massively and the whole lot becomes difficult to build on. Having to put in piles is a possibility. Once the diggers are on site, I can get all the roots grubbed out then. The arboricultural report that was done for our planning submission had recommended retaining the inner hedge to act as sacrificial root protection for the outer hedge during construction, but it looks like it will instead need to go and I'll have to get some other sort of root protection in place to satisfy the PP requirements, but I don't think this is particularly tricky to deal with and it's a better course of action than leaving it and having to put piles in. The final point that came up was something that has no bearing on the house, but possibly could on my sewage plant and rainwater reservoir. Between 2m and 3m depth, the sample had lots of sparkly crystals in it which are some form of sulphate crystals. Very pretty and all that, but it seems that these, when water gets to them, can attack and weaken concrete. Both the sewage plant and rainwater reservoir will be anchored into the ground with concrete at just about that depth so I need to make sure that I specify sulphate resistant concrete to make sure that the tanks stay where they are put for the long term. It's a simple and insignificant difference in cost on the concrete spec, but one that I wouldn't have known to do without the survey. Another day, another load of new stuff learned.

It's starting to feel like the finish line is in sight now. Since my last entry, I've largely finished the interior including all the flooring, the doors, most of the kitchen, the windowsills, and the huge and daunting task of the bathroom (big thanks to @Nickfromwales for answering my hundreds of questions on that one!). I got a plumber in to install my UVC (sorry Nick, forgot to get a photo of that). I've also done a bit more of the cladding, but the exterior work has been on the back burner. I've also gone back to work full time since my last blog post, which is why everything has slowed down so much. Still managing to get a bit done in the evenings and at weekends. You'll notice some furniture has appeared, some of this was given to me by a neighour and was very handy for storing all my tools etc; the bed and sofa were in storage with family and eventually I exhausted their goodwill and had to take delivery of them! The shower has had a couple of test runs, and SWMBO reports that it is very nice indeed. The plan is to be open for business in April, which should be tight but doable. I expect that at that stage I'll still have some outside jobs left to finish but the inside is only a few days away from completion now. Sorry for the crappy image quality- will have to do a bit better when the time comes to do the proper marketing shots