Holes

Lots happening below ground for the past week with diggers on site for the drainage trenches and foundations. As we’re a wee distance from the high street our arrangements for services are a little more complicated

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Quite a big mess

It’s fair to say the site now looks like a proper building site. Ground works have started and the first job was to strip back the top soil and lay temporary hardcore everywhere so the machinery doesn’t sink in the resultant mud. The rule of thumb appears to be “why lay one ton of hardcore when you can use three” so our idyllic bit of field is now sporting a new look

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Loose ends

If you’re a fan of Channel 4’s Grand Designs as we are, you will after a while begin to spot some common show themes:

things always start well but by the second ad-break someone has picked up a life threatening disease / got pregnant / ground to a halt by Covid or been made redundant;
they always run out of money;
things miraculously come good in the last 10 minutes, and most importantly of all;
it’s all going to go very wrong if you don’t have a good independent Project Manager.

Wait … hang on a minute … but we don’t have a project manager?

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28th June

Well that took longer than expected. While negotiations are not completely finished, we have very nearly agreed build costs for our new house and this week signed a letter of intent which will allow ground works to start in two weeks (eek!)

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The five stages

Value engineering continues.

The team have been brilliant, working flat out to drive down costs with cunning plans and practical suggestions. Some are no-brainers, others require some serious thought to make certain we won’t regret it later while a few have been vetoed to preserve our goal for this project.

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Do not adjust your set, normal programming will resume soon

Just a quick message to say, no we’re not dead and the project is still progressing. We are waiting for the Builder to get back to us with a quotation, a process that has been a bit delayed by easter, suppliers and life in general. Hopefully not too much longer before we can agree the contract and actually start building!

The city is paved with seagulls

Thanks to our brilliant removal people Monday went remarkably smoothly and after 20 years we are now back living in the centre of Bath. It’s very exciting to be back with unlimited access to cake shops but even more importantly we can now move ahead with the build stage.

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