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Da bungalow that is, not us mortals. We carry on sweating in our hi vis. We were pleased with how the timing worked out - planning to demolish during cooler months so all the neighbours will be wrapped up warm indoors away from the dust, plus it’s hard work so cooler temperatures help comfort. So much for that plan with our mini heat wave! Steve took pity on me by leaving me recovery time on Monday and Tuesday. Good news from a site clearing and tidying point of view. It gave me time to kick down the last of the ceilings, mostly while the windows were still in, and then for J to pick out all the lathes for safety and for disposal at our nearby recycling centre (I’m old fashioned, I still call it the tip!). Trevor the trailer was bought for £200 just over a year ago to help clear the mountains of brash from clearing the massive overgrown conifers. Skooby the Skoda was bought as a building vehicle for £700. We now realise that they have paid for themselves many times over in saving in skip costs. If I’d known how much we would be saving we might have bought a car with a working heater, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Monday afternoon was window removal time! Ben arrived bang on time and had agreed to help us remove the windows, though he’d never done it before either. I was relying on Steve’s knowledge. Shame he wasn’t there. So da bungalow now has a series of holes where windows were. Each neater than the previous one. If you look at them in chronological order you can see evidence of two keen but clueless numpties first hacking out a huge hole, taking forever, graduating in stages to the last one which was beautifully neatly and quickly and efficiently removed. Yet another example of experience being the thing that one acquires just after needing it. So by Tuesday evening we had a clear site, which is incredibly important on such a tight, narrow plot. And then next morning, Steve returned to the job, so progress exploded again. We stripped the felt and battens off, with muggins of course being the idiot hopping round on the battens for two thirds of the day, with the last third being careful removal of some of the roof timbers. Rather disappointingly, we found woodworm everywhere. So my plan to build my hideaway at the bottom of the garden from reclaimed roof timbers has gone. Some of the timbers came away scarily easily. But those that didn’t put up a hell of a fight - they used huge nails in the 1920s it turns out - and this wasn’t ideal as force had to be used in moderation in case of unseen weakness leading to accident or collapse. We were probably overly careful but better safe than sorry. The next two days are a blur of heaving and bracing and sledgehammering and chainsawing. Thank goodness for a decent twin battery Makita saw - saved us no end of time - and my little one handed chainsaw - AKA Lightsaber - was slower but brilliant in places too. It’s oddly satisfying knocking off the little bits of wood that hold up the soffits and facias and rainwear - sending the whole assembly crashing down in a plume of dust. Even more satisfying to push over the block gable - the thump when it hit the ground was like felling a big tree, primevally enjoyable. We did take a break for a site visit from the ground worker. He asked all the right questions which does give confidence, including asking me to gain permission from our neighbours for him to hand dig one shared corner of our frontage to carefully identify where our neighbours services are. He might even have a use for the roof timber mountain we now have! More skip cost saving. All this is punctuated with other strands of the project. They are vital but hard to find the will to divert onto when mid hammering. In that way J and I are working together fantastically. I haven’t the bandwidth to think - I run to keep up with Steve when he’s there - I run to tidy up when he’s not there to get ready for when he will be - I go home a bit too late each day and after a coffee and a discussion about the day I then bath and by the time we’ve eaten it’s bedtime. Buildhub, apart from my weekly therapy session (oh ok, blog writing) is a distant memory. So J does the thinking, I do the grunting. That’s a little bit of an overstatement as in my head, when I stop to access it, is a 3D model of everything and every junction and material and supplier and missing quote and little red flag of issue that might become critical path and hence needs sorting before it does. I can and do flick into ‘principal designer’ mode when needed. But the day to day scheduling and remembering is falling to J. J has given me a little exercise book and my own grown up ball point pen to keep my to do list in. It’s a bit year 5 but it turns out very effective, as long as J remembers to remind me to look at it. Between us we are working incredibly effectively. Long may it continue.

(There’s way too much verbage here - sorry - but it reflects the deep spring clean my head needed. Will try to make time for a demolition summary in another post which would be far more useful for others). Each Monday morning, since we started demolition on the 17th of March, at stupid o’clock, I shuffle round the kitchen getting breakfast ready trying to assess how my body is doing, physically. Well, sort of. What actually happens is I slowly get my knees and my back working while bemoaning my stupidity and sheer arrogance in thinking I can do this, convinced that my I am starting the week more tired than the previous Monday. In some ways, almost certainly mentally rather than physically, having a break really takes it out of me. That Monday restart is just simply tough. I could tell myself that this should be the last week of demolition. That this is the last push of the hardest bit of the build. But inside I know that it’s getting towards the end of one phase of a long line of phases each of which I’ll be convinced at the time is the hardest one. But two hours later, at 07:35, I’m on site boiling a kettle waiting for Steve to arrive and my head is in gear and my fatigue is mostly forgotten. My 20 minute meditation, aka the drive to the site, has done its job. I do know I can do this. Anyway, I s’pose I should write a few words about da bungalow. Today, the kitchen gets it! All that’s left now is most of the kitchen walls, composition uncertain, and the dunny. The end of the kitchen nearest the road is, we thought, mostly masonry. The other end is now naked studwork. We left the studwork last week as we suspected it was needed to help the 6m long part timber frame kitchen wall stay up, which is surprising given that this studwork waggles like mad when nudged. So the first task was to take some of the weight off of the 6m wall. We didn’t dare hack the plaster off as we had elsewhere, leaving clean-ish metal mesh to peel off for recycling. Instead we peeled both plaster and mesh together, piling in a heap for me to process later. That worked to start with, but as we made our way along the wall it became clear that there was progressively less strength left in the studs. In the end the wall plate that ran through to the single skin masonry section gave just enough strength to allow us to dismantle the wall in a controlled manner. At one point we did stop and consider just pushing down the middle section, but that could have destabilised adjacent sections and also given the likely state of the soleplate it could have kicked out at the bottom. With next door’s wall only 1,030mm away that felt too close, even with heras fencing between. So we carried on slowly peeling and it became evident that in that middle section, all that remained intact was the two layers of render, topped by a wall plate. Truly scary. Another thing not to share with the neighbours. That done we could then take down the studwork. It was by then wobbly enough to push over safely onto the floor, and a couple of well placed cuts meant it would fall the right way, so push we did. Timber frames falling like that just don’t give that satisfying thump that masonry does, but it does still leave a lot of clearing up of timbers bristling with nail heads. The nail points are, at Steve’s insistence, all hammered over safe. In fact it’s been drummed into me so hard over the last 5 weeks that I now referring to it as ‘Steve-ing the nails’. The wood mountain grows and we learn that the wood man is maxed out and won’t be returning. Would have helped had he told me that last week but that’s life. Back to faceache it is (other social networks are available, but few are as annoying). As we work our way along the kitchen wall towards the road we find a mixture of stuff. Odd bits of plasterboard. Glass fibre insulation as well as the nasty snowy type stuff we’ve had in many other places. Pieces of wood and brick and block and tile just shoved in to repair holes in the render. Satisfied that the remaining masonry end walls (a ‘C’ shape) are safe and stable, we stop for the night. Next day we have rain first thing - the first on the project so far. So we bravely don our hats and coats and bugger off to Cafe Nero to drink coffee and plan. That turns out to be fabulously timely. I have picked up bits and pieces over the years and I’ve recently read tons about building stuff but putting it together in the right order takes Steve’s experience and caffeine. We’ve now got our slightly unusual foundation design, and that enables us to talk over who should do what, when and how. Annoyingly, Steve, with his wealth of experience and such a brilliant, caring and dutiful attitude, would be the perfect ground worker to safely and cost effectively pull our foundations. But he’s semi retired and he hasn’t got the right PI cover and all that. Our party wall agreements (which I was pleased to get as at one point it felt like it might cost us lots and lots of time, money and angst) and our warranty provider (thank you Protek) require fully insured, experienced professional contractors to be used for the foundations. So it isn’t a good idea for me and Steve to do them, even though we’d probably do it more carefully and with less noise and disruption than a ground crew. Sigh. It feels like the litigious nature of our world is killing common sense. In theory the party wall awards required specialist demolition contractors to be used. We did get two quotes, each of which were going to send in a nice big machine with bloody great jaws to eat da bungalow and cause mayhem, and in my view, likely do damage to our neighbours. But we managed to get site insurance (thank you for real this time, Protek) which specifically covered demolition. But if we weren’t bloody minded enough to test and challenge then we could easily have gone with it and ‘done it properly’. Bigger sigh. OK, rant over (for now). The rain stopped and it’s back to site, having lost a couple of hours. We keep telling ourselves that we are not in a rush and it’s not sensible to set targets so of course Steve and I rush to recover the time and hit target for the day - the rest of the kitchen. We first hit single skin red brick, then round the corner, a red brick outer skin and under the internal stud skin, some very old painted plaster from the original outhouse. From the broken earthenware pipes I’ve found digging near there I now believe that this bit was originally the privy. Nearest to the road, so as far from the living rooms as possible, with sections of lead water pipe built in, it conjures up an image of such a different way of life. We find a ‘T’ joint in the lead pipe, simply sweated together - a wonderful illustration of what 100 years have done in plumbing technology terms. By home time we have a short lower section of red brick wall and a twin skinned block section of wall left, both stable but still irritatingly short of the target we didn’t set ourselves. Next day even though we want to finish the kitchen first it’s better to get the dunny down whilst there are two of us. It’s the last chance for a collapse to damage next door so I need Steve on site to blame in case anything happens. The potty is carefully pulled out (will be reinstalled in the house as temporary welfare suite - i.e. a pan, a bucket and for special occasions, a loo roll). The metal lathe and plaster remains only on the inside so is dispatched fairly quickly. Some hammering from a very mobile (but safe) bandstand removes the mostly masonry wall with the window and another sellable catnic is discovered. We now have a trio of them to clean up and sell on faceache. Thence the last studwork to drop. Just like one end of the kitchen, a couple of thought through cuts and a push and it’s down. Just like that. We tidy up, and quickly knock down the last little bit of kitchen wall thats next to a neighbour, and we stand back and contemplate for a mo what isn’t there any more. Steve won’t be back for nearly two weeks, and I think he’s a bit disappointed that he leaves one little corner still standing but he points out that even I can’t cock up taking that down. Personally I think he underestimated my talent in that. So Maundy Thursday sees me bashing plaster off of metal mesh, to get it ready for recycling, and generally clearing up and loading up for a tip run. And something very odd happens. I’m working at the front of the site, nodding at passers by, smiling with my eyes at them (isn’t it weird how a smile gets through a dust mask), when a chap from over the road I’ve not met before comes over. Richard introduces himself and I brace for what I know is coming, as in fairness the dust and noise can’t have been nice for the street. And he hits me with it, and I am taken aback but I try not to show it. He tells me how well we have done and how little disruption, mess and bother there has been. He’s impressed. Wow. Chuffed. We have quite a chat (after all, he will be one of our neighbours and it beats hammering mesh with a spade) and he leaves me rather buoyed up to say the least. Then a chap from three doors down comes and has a chat, just for the neighbourliness of it, and it reinforces how nice a community our new pad will be in. And then (how do I ever get anything done?) Monica stops to say hello and tells me that our demolition ‘is a work of art’. She walks past regularly (I have said hi to her a good few times) and she’s been watching and she is hugely complimentary. If the god of fat, little bald fellas had carefully planned a reward at the end of the demo phase she couldn’t have done better. Tip run done, I then felt I could reward myself by taking down that last corner. Rather than do it top down I stripped out the inner skin (more bloody snowy insulation) and one side to leave a bit of wall to go down with a satisfying thump. Next door have a couple of young lads, the oldest being 9. It struck me that at that age I would have loved pushing a wall down - so a quick convo with his mum, a hastily fitted hard hat and oversize gloves and with mum filming we rock the wall till I can let him give the last push - his grin was a fitting final smile for da bungalow to provide. Bye bye bungalow.

After what feels like forever we finally started real works. We’ve done lots to the plot, tree clearance, root removal, digging out beds, planting, etc. but little to da bungalow itself. We held off stripping out ‘til we were sure the project was viable, which was über cautious but that’s us. Selection of timber frame supplier wasn’t straightforward. It came down to a local-ish company (ETE) who supply a panelised frame for manual erection on site or stick built on site under the supervision of an SE. Most frame companies require crane assembly, which we can’t have due to overhead wires. But once we felt we were in the right place, planning, party wall agreements, demolition survey, site insurance, timber frame supplier, the main peeps to help us build, etc. then we got down to it. That initially meant selling/giving away the kitchen, a fireplace, the conservatory, the UPVC windows and door, an electric fire and even a garage. I had intended to do more stripping out before the cavalry arrived, but there was always a more important task: digging test holes for the structural engineer (needed for the foundation design, so vital); getting the gas meter removed/capped off and the pipe cut of at the verge annoyingly costing £1,700 (not safe to have gas on site in the way, so vital); replacing fence panels including digging out big roots (to keep the neighbours on side, so vital); erecting a shed, with of course a base (to keep those working on site happy, so vital); moving the water supply (to avoid it being trashed by the groundworks, so vital); digging in (by hand) the 10m of electric duct, casting a concrete base for and installing a huge, but apparently necessary, meter kiosk to comply with the DNO requirements, enabling them to charge us £9,500 - ouch - so vital); dismantling the garage (which was in the way and we wanted it to be reused, so vital); and finally, dismantling the conservatory (which was also in the way and we wanted it reused, so, you guessed it, vital). Turns out breaking up concrete by hand is exhausting, but oddly therapeutic, even if you do bend your ancient trusty steel spade. I wonder, have I got so used to digging foundation test holes and digging soakaway test pits and digging out roots and digging in pipes and ducts that I’m actually going to miss digging? Scarily possible! Who needs a mechanical digger when you’ve a mattock from Amazon and a new steel spade from Toolstation? But then the real works start. 34 years ago we built our current house helped massively by Steve the builder, who was a bit older than us. This time round it’s a repeat, as the same Steve is helping us and given that I’m nicely in my 60s and oddly, Steve is still older, it means that none of us are in the first flush of youth. So my theory was that Steve was the brains and I would be the brawn. Wrong. Steve is both it turns out. Monday saw us stripping off roof tiles and after a day on the battens I was wiped. Tuesday saw me on the battens again for half a day stripping the rest of the tiles and then, just to vary things, I then spent some time on the battens stripping off the felt on one face so we could get the chimney down and kick down some ceilings (overboarded lathe and plaster). Whilst we were out on the tiles UK Power Networks, our DNO, dug up the road and put in our underground electric feed. And a quick bit of begging over the phone got the meter moved that afternoon, so we had site power again. Bliss in a coffee cup. So by the end of Tuesday I was pleased with progress but exhausted. On Wednesday we started stripping out walls and we discovered that there was a lot more plasterboard than I first thought. Damn. Pronto plasterboard skip ordered, we estimated that we’d need a 4 yard skip, so to be safe a 6 yard skip was ordered. Which meant we needed easy barrow access so we removed a window and cut a new front door. Wednesday night I went home totally exhausted and less than pleased due to all the newly discovered plasterboard. That night I came to terms with my limitations, so I messaged Steve to suggest he do a 4 day week to give me time to tidy up and recover. He agreed and offered to buy me a pipe and some slippers. (Pic of new door) The skip arrived promptly arrived at 07:30 next morning. There then followed a rabid day of plasterboard removal. Incredible how effective a spade can be indoors when instructions are given to the novice. By the end of the day we’d nearly filled the skip and had just a hallway ceiling left covered in the dreaded plasterboard. I could hardly raise my arms. One of Steve’s endearing features is his sense of humour. One of his most irritating features is his sense of humour. So as I’m on a step up, gritting my teeth and willing my arms up again and again yet another joke prompts the giggles. That was it, hopeless. My giggling got him giggling and progress paused. Priceless. But determination sustained and the skip was filled. Thank goodness for over-ordering. I went home a zombie, but with less energy. Friday and Saturday were tip runs and tidying up, and now on Sunday I sit quietly reflecting on a week that was unbelievably productive, thanks to Steve’s experience. But oh my, it starts again tomorrow. I have no idea if anyone will find these ramblings of interest, but they are, much like digging, remarkably therapeutic too!

The week starts with the removal of the external walls on the rear half of da bungalow. That’s the fun bit. I’m armed with two chainsaws and a reciprocating saw (aka sabre saw, for some reason). I bought the sabre saw as Steve the builder recommended one for demolition. When I bought it I knew it would be useful, but I knew my trusty chainsaws would get more done quicker and easier. It’s not easy working with someone who’s right every damn time. Sigh. So the chainsaws remain at rest while we quickly get into a rhythm of joist then upright removal, working our way along the frame till the only part of the rear half standing is the chimney and it’s wings (and our neighbours wall are still untouched ….yay!!). The pile of wood at the front of the plot is now clearly tidal. We cut wood, the tide flows. The ‘wood man’ comes, the tide ebbs. The cycle disguises the sheer volume of wood we are handling. It constitutes an awful lot of skip savings. Next day it’s straight back to heavy spade work for me, knocking of plaster and trying to leave the metal lathe mesh stuff reasonably clean to make later processing for recycling easier. In the process I discover previously a hidden window and a door - it would be fascinating to understand the history, the sequence of events and the reasons, but we can only guess. Steve is straight into heavy hammer work taking down the chimney and wing walls, and he discovers thermalite block so that chimney isn’t original either. Most interesting. Nobody tells you about the dust when you talk about demolition. I thought I’d done dusty jobs before but not like this. It’s like you bath in it. Everything on site is coated and one touch leaves my hands feeling almost ‘smooth’ in a strange kind of way. The dust masks that started off annoying are now comforting, I now start the day clean shaven to help them work better. But they discourage hydration as lifting the mask up to drink means putting a sweat soaked mask back on one’s face. Less than ideal. Warm dry weather makes it worse, and when a stiff breeze gets up it really is the limit. My goggles fully protect my eyes from dust. Unfortunately they also protect my eyes from seeing anything, as they mist up in seconds each time they are cleaned. I sprayed them with de-icer and that did help - it trebled the time it took them to mist up - sadly that still only made about two minutes. So, back to specs type protection it is. The high velocity flying bits are deflected but the fine dust floats round and gently crusts, aided by the breeze which isn’t enough to cool me but is easily enough to ensure dust gets everywhere quickly. Skooby (trusty steed, or cheap ancient Skoda on her last legs bought for the build, depending on one’s point of view) now has a light gray interior. Not just from my clothes, though that would be enough, but also from the stuff piled in her for the tip runs. And the litres of moisturiser I get through is crazy - we never budgeted for that - the dust dries the skin like mad. But, one just carries on. So having removed the back half the question is what to do next. Steve is logical and methodical. So he advocates carrying on removing the rearmost and working our way forwards. That means the dunny. But I still have a bladder, and age dictates that that bladder is attended to regularly. And I’m tight and we’ve nowhere sensibly to put a rented thunderbox anyway. So the score on that one ends up as Common sense: 0; G’s bladder: 1. So, after adding some diagonal bracing ‘just in case’ we bypass the loo and work forward. Yet another carefully considered risk assessment debate ensues. These consist of Steve standing and looking for a bit while I remain silent. He then says what we are doing next and I say yes Steve. Simples. In this instance we are going to remove the lintel above the old front door as otherwise when we remove the studwork near it there might be instability, as one end rests on a tiny masonry pillar held up only by studs. It takes an hour to drop the blockwork above and the large catnic lintel we discover. More to clean up and sell, if only I could lift it. Then, finally, it’s back to studwork removal time. The ‘wood man’ has been again so the wood tide is thankful out, so there’s space to put the wood mountain. Another excellent four days, so much so that we all take the Friday off. It turns out that being at home on a day off is emotionally, much easier than visiting site. A few jobs need doing around the house which helps, but it’s basically ok. It tells me that I could never live on site and have any peace of mind. I already spend a lot of time thinking things through/worrying myself into a fizz when I should be sleeping, and I think that would be massively greater if we lived either in site or very close nearby. The 20 minutes in Skooby as she grumbles along is vital to prepare for the day and then later, to help me start to decompress. It’s easy to think about one’s muscles needing rest, but not so easy to think about one’s head, but I’m trying, and it seems that that drive, and a soak in a scummy bath, is as vital as talking the day over with J. It’s like mentally putting one’s tools away, clean and tidy. Cooking helps too… Saturday it’s time to get all the lead, the house wiring, and (as it turns out) 80kg of gas boiler to the scrap yard - no wonder the boiler was so hard to lift!

I hadn't realised that my last entry was in Nov last year. Where has the time gone. As with many self builds, particularly those on a DIY basis we have been very subject to weather slowing things down, not that it could be much slower. But, in fact compared with last year we have done loads. The NOT wall (the side of the barn that was open) is now a wall. This wall is 16m long, with 4 lots of French door gaps. double skin block with 150 cavity and 4 heavy lintels. It then turns the corner to head south. We also had a big overgrown bank which we dug out and cleared. Then out next door farmer came and took away all our soil spoil which we didn't need for some holes in his field. About 40 ton we think. And in the process flattened the bank. I then planted a hedge and seeded the bank. Inside what was the barn we have started digging down, in total it needs to go down 500mm so this is just a start The back bank needed digging back to allow for the digger for drains when we get to that stage. And finally in March we've started taking some of the remaining roof off, to be the stables roof in due course Hard to believe this has gone from bog to beach in a couple of months. Once the roof is dismantled then we can start with the trenches for phase 2 of the build. Thanks for reading. See you next time,.

Week 13. Or at least, my body thinks it’s week 13, whereas the calendar says it’s week 3. It’s really odd looking back on the demolition. Starting to strip tiles off seems so much longer ago than 20 days. Most odd. The week started with a tidy up day, as Steve wasn’t there. Almost all of the wiring for da bungalow ran through the loft, and was set to be in the way so out came my new and wonderfully sharp side cutters. About 5 minutes in they went back in my pocket and were replaced by a cordless angle grinder with a thin metal cutting blade. Super quick especially when a bunch of wires were involved. Habits and techniques quickly and unconsciously form through trial and error or, more often on this project, by watching Steve. He’s had best part of five decades building and I’m lucky to be able to tap into that. More luck comes in the form of a guy scrounging firewood at the tip. Phone numbers exchanged (goodness that sounds dodgy!) and a promise to let him know what we have available. It transpired that the ground worker didn’t have a use for our roof timbers so in two runs the wood man has removed about 5 cubic yards and wants all but the nailiest bits. More skip savings and he seems to understand that for it to work he has to turn up when agreed and load up without help. Marvellous. So on Tuesday we started stripping off the internal plaster. The external walls are 4” x 2” stud with metal lathe either side then pebble dash outside and a weak cement render inside with a skim. Between the studs is a patchy application of white fluffy insulation, which had settled significantly, or was completely absent where they missed sections. A fantastic illustration of the cowboy insulators of yesteryear. The plan was to knock off the internal plaster, then peel off the wire to grab and bag the fluff section by section, then thump the pebble dash off from inside. We had visions of the whole neighbourhood being covered in wind blown non bio degradable fluff for decades to come. We soon discovered that the tool of choice was yet again, my trusty spade, backed up by my SDS with a funny crushing bit. Hours of hacking leaves the wire mesh clean enough to go in metal recycling. The render was then barrowed to the growing aggregate pile in the back garden to be used to build up the solid floor. Peeling off the metal lathe involved much yanking with a nailbar and we generated an enormous pile of plastic bags of captured fluff, the only non recyclable bit. Quite pleasing. The frightening bit was knocking off the pebble dash. Too easy. It came off in huge bits with very little effort. It happened so quickly that once we’d cleared that up we had time to start cutting down some stud work. We started with the end wall. A couple of high level cuts and a gentle push and down it fell into the garden, in two sections, with a small plume of wood dust from the disintegrating rotten sole plate. If our neighbours see these bits they’ll be scared stiff at the likely condition of their near identical bungalow, built as a pair roughly a hundred years ago. The chimney and masonry wall in the centre of the bungalow forms a stable support to the side walls as we’d left the joists connected for safety, so we started cutting out an upright and a joist at a time. These walls are only a meter from our neighbour’s walls, so I stood for a good few minutes having a bit of a wobble before doing the first one. It finally occurred to me that the years I’ve spent cutting trees down (an odd hobby but a satisfying one) were of use. Just think of the studs like little trees. Worked a treat. So on Wednesday we went home pleased with progress. I was alone on site Thursday and Friday so it was tip runs to get rid of the fluff bag and wire mountains, and lots more hours of spade work stripping plaster. When on Friday I realised how dusty the site (and our neighbours front patio) had become I quickly deployed the hose to damp the floors down which improved the feel of the shell significantly. I had a day off Saturday, and J and I visited site for J to tend plants and see progress first hand. Oddly, I found not working really difficult. I really needed the weekend off, especially my shoulders, but my head felt I should get in there. As both J and Steve remind me constantly, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and there’s always tomorrow. But stopping before exhaustion is, I find, very difficult. My body clock has shifted completely now. I wake before 06:00 and lay there thinking stuff through as there’s no way I can get back to sleep even though I’m still tired. We’re still chasing quotes on many things, and it seems in a lot of areas our need for early quotes simply doesn’t fit the industry. We are asking too early, though of course we want the info for both budgetary reassurance or to be able to plan nicely in advance. However getting numbers requires the work to be imminent, it appears. This is even the case with our BCO. He wants all changes from the architect drawn building regs plans authorised by a grown up. Acceptable grown ups include architects and SEs. A good example is the attic. We do not want eve vents, we want just ridge vents and a roof sealed by OSB (sort of sarking). Our architect refused to remove the eve vents as that’s what he’s always done, so we are fortunate that our SE is happy with our alternative plan. All I have to do is draw it up and submit it to Bob, our SE, for approval. I know that’s vital work but as it doesn’t involve a spade it somehow feels less so. Yet another odd thing.