It's a ROOF! Sort of...

Having cleared our diaries completely for the week, we were on site on Monday before 8am for the Polish team to arrive and start on our roof. We were beyond excited! They were rather dour...  I asked them if I could make them tea or coffee and they said "We have kettle". So I didn't. Our lovely crane driver arrived and we were OFF!

What we hadn't realised was that every piece of oak would have to be cut to size on site. It was a slow process and there was much sucking of teeth and shaking of heads by the leader of the Poles (LOP). Frustrating? Oh yes... there's a limit to how long you can stand and watch a piece of wood being measured before feeling you're in the way. So at 10am we went back to the rental cottage and sat twiddling our thumbs until after lunch.

Much to our relief, things had progressed a bit...

And things continued to progress as the day went on. By the end of Wednesday it looked like a roof.

At the back the roof extends to make a little porch. 

As because it's integral to the roof, it needs to be tiled with the rest of the roof. 

LOP said that they couldn't put the porch in without the crane. The crane can't get there with the scaffolding in place, but the scaffolding needs to stay in place to allow the roof to be tiled. So, stalemate - LOP can't put the porch in with the scaffolding there, but BOB can't tile the roof without the scaffolding. 

Much sucking of teeth.

BOB (still brilliant) suggested that as he had three strong lads, surely they could all just lift it into place? LOP sucked his teeth. Can BOB fix it? Yes he can... we started watching then, again, decided us looking on wasn't helping and took Mopsi for a walk. A short walk. By the time we came back the porch was in place. Sorted! We love BOB.

Whilst all the roof stuff was going on, we played with the veggie patch. We could actually help a bit with this - starting by marking it out with string (we did that bit) and blue paint (which BOB did)...

We'd ordered sleepers last week and the lovely builders quickly put them into place. They're a lot flatter, straighter and more matching than if Guy and I had done it...

On Thursday Storm Doris hit us. Our building team were still up on the roof, building up the edges of the side walls of the house to meet the rafters, and they said the scaffolding boards were lifting with the wind. Eeek!  LOP and his boys had tarpaulins to put over the roof but the general consensus was that doing this in the teeth of Storm Doris was A Bad Idea, so we postponed it...

On Friday the weather was glorious, so I got all artistic with the blue sky and the rafters.

This is one of the posts of the back porch. I just want to hug it.

OK, I'll be honest, I have hugged it.

And there were offcuts. So now we have a giant game of Jenga*

Because the weather was better, the tarpaulins could go on... we now have a snug and toasty roof. Even if it is two coloured...

* Thank you, yes, I do know that Jenga should have three blocks in each layer. I know this because when I tried to pull a block out the whole thing fell over. It's ok, I'll sort it...

Purchases of the week:

Tiles for the bathroom and en suite. Just the two sample tiles so far. No need to go mad, eh?
12 more sleepers - some for the veg patch, some for elsewhere in the garden.
Sample oils for the oak - to test out the colour.

We've also decided that as we are currently thinking, breathing, eating and sleeping The Renovation, we should do something totally different on Sundays to take our mind off things.

We've decided we're going to sleep.

Brace yourselves folks, it was a busy one....

In a nutshell, this week went something like this:

Monday - electrics to barn started, side wall stone goes up, fireplace discovered in bedrooms. Small! Tuesday - Aga engineer visit, date decided for around 2nd May, porch walls started, side walls finished, measured out for veggie patch. Wednesday- Raining. Steps at back started… Tidying up ready for deliveries. Discovered Aga won’t do hot water.  Oops. Thursday - Veggie plot timbers delivered at 7am, Crane and forklift driver arrived at 7.10am, oak delivered at 8am, all finished by 9.45… oil for oak delivered, cesspit not emptied. Sarah had a haircut, Guy went to the dentist and visited the Aga shop to point out they might have mentioned about the lack of hot water as it affects what kind of boiler we have etc etc. Friday - Cesspit emptied, posh filter tap arrived, crane arrived, walls being built, steps at the back solid but not stoned yet, porch walls finished.

End of blog.

What do you mean, you want DETAIL? Good grief...

OK, here's a pic of the VERY small fireplace in the bedroom. It's cute!

We've decided to keep it uncovered but not usable, but it will be a cute feature. Or it will be a cute feature until we decide that's the only wall the bed can go on at which point it will become an expensive hole.

It was a simply gorgeous day so while I was up on the scaffolding I took a picture of the slightly rickety chimney. BOB says it's safe...

The Aga engineer visited on Tuesday and spoke to BOB which was a relief as it all got a bit technical. The upshot is that when I arranged the installation date for 2nd May I was asked 'are you sure the builder will be ready?' I said 'yes' very definitely - we know BOB and they don't. Because the quantity surveyor wanted to know if we could run two small radiators off the Aga I queried this when arranging the installation. 'Your Aga won't do any hot water'.  WHAT???? SERIOUSLY??? This is News To Us and means that we have basically just ordered the world's most expensive cooker. Guy and I had a serious conversation about whether we still wanted it, then realised that it would probably still do all the other stuff an Aga does like air the house, dry and iron clothes, warm us up, make seriously good casseroles and fruit cake and generally make the whole house breathe. And reduce the heating bills. So we decided to go ahead, although Guy then popped into the Aga shop in Cardiff after his dentist appointment (you wouldn't believe how organised our diaries are right now) and gently pointed out they should have mentioned it and also to just check that it would still feel like an Aga. It did, and Aga agreed they should have mentioned the lack of hot water - they're giving us a free plinth for the Aga by way of an apology. Fair enoughski.

Work was started on the porch walls at the front (oak porch, small stone wall at bottom) and also on the small patio wall. Everyone that comes on site admires the beautiful curved wall that is going to be behind the larger extension. We really will have to do tours when the extension is in the way of seeing it...

On Wednesday afternoon I had a call from WOF (Welsh Oak Frame) who said that all of our oak (roof and two extensions) would be arriving at 8am on Thursday morning and was that ok? Oh yes! I then had a phone call from Pontrilas Sawmills who I had ordered sleepers from for the veggie patch who asked if they could deliver on Thursday morning and, if so, how early? We agreed 7am... As we're not actually living there, Guy and I made sure we were on site by 6.40 just in case... It was still dark. Sure enough the sleepers turned up at 7am on the dot..

And the crane/forklift driver (Robin) turned up at 7.10...  He helped unload, bless him, and the sawmills lorry disappeared just as the oak arrived. The lorry was too large to get up the drive, so the driver stopped in the lane and Robin whizzed up and down on his 3 wheeled forklift unloading. His forklift was amazing - it's one of those that can go forward, back and sideways. Brilliant!

All of the oak was parked on the hardcore at the side of the house (another forethought by BOB)...

This is Mopsi sitting in front of the SIPs for the music room. A SIP is a Structural Insulated Panel and it means the room will go up really quickly. That's a music room just waiting right there...

And those are Roof Bits. Technical term, obvs... We think the smaller one is an end of the music room, and the larger ones are for the extension on the other side. We think. Luckily it's not us that has to put it all together. Each piece is labelled F1 or F2 or similar. Apart from some other SIPs that say 'Bowden Head'. Nope, no idea...

On Friday the crane arrived and the forklift left. We now have a HUGE crane parked ready to start putting the roof on at 8am on Monday.

Will we sleep at all tonight? Probably not - we're like kids at Christmas!!

Only one more sleep before the roof gets started....

Spot The Difference!

This week there's a Spot The Difference competition...

From this:

To this:

You can't count the mist or the extra scaffolding...

Answer: There's an extra window at the front of the house, no lintels over the old windows and some very lovely student digs style hessian curtains. It's just gorgeous. Each time we think there can't be anything else to knock out, more stone and brick heads down to the garden.

Ah, the garden. Hmmm...

As you can see we now have a sea of mud plus earth mountains on the far side. The idea is that all the topsoil is scraped off, the subsoil from elsewhere is put down, the topsoil is put back and it all looks the same as it did before but about a foot higher. We will be buying agricultural quantities of grass seed before very long...

The orange has now all gone from the house (hooray) and we've spoken to the paint people about how to repair the stone and repaint. Not yet though.

And we are doing some rebuilding (yay). The back roof of the house was in two parts, and now the side wall is being rebuilt to make one roof at the back. 

There isn't really a red line on the roof - that's just my Helpful Way Of Explaining.

So here is the new roofline:

Also covered in lovely hessian. We have a lot of hessian. It's a good job the side walls are being done now - the new roof arrives A WEEK TOMORROW!! We are ridiculously excited, and it's come round really quickly...

So what else this week? A new low wall around the patio (currently another mud bath) was started on the far side of the extension slab.

And we welcomed our first tenant into the barn. We left some fig rolls out. On Saturday morning one of the fig rolls was out on the wood shelf, so we moved it and put it out for the birds. On Sunday morning there was another fig roll in exactly the same place. Obviously some poor little mouse had spent Friday night hauling a huge fig roll out of the packet and having a nibble on the edges. 

Can you imagine his shock and horror when he found it had gone and had to start again? Bless him... we let him have the second one and the rest of the packet. We bought the builders new biscuits and a secure tub to put them in...

Sarah's Occasional Tip Of The Week: if you have Velcro on your jacket cuffs, don't wipe your dripping nose on your sleeve. It's like sandpaper. Just saying.

Purchases of the week:

30 red bricks from Gallops Salvage Yard near Crickhowell. Our new favourite place. The bricks are for reveals around the new front window. It's going to be painted, but it's BOB's attention to detail that means it will look the same as the other windows when it's painted.

6 spotlights. We would have bought 8 but Homebase, bless 'em, limit their stock to 3 per store so we've already done two visits.

Hammerite paint - in a yuk shade of beige. There was a very interesting wall plaque in the outside wall which has now been cleaned up and removed. Our plan is to repaint it and put it into the new chimney.

It will be painted in a yuk shade of beige then we'll paint it a more interesting colour. Ooh, what to use? Altogether now.... 

RONSEAL WILLOW!!!

Going up.....

It's rained. It got soggy. And then it got muddy and dirty. Like you wouldn't believe.

We have a concrete base for the large oak frame extension - it even has the beginnings of a fireplace in it. We can practically imagine sitting in front of the log fire...

It's beautiful, clean concrete. This is Thursday.

By Friday it looked like this...

However, there is a VERY good reason for this - and here he is:

HOORAY! Phil the Paint has been working hard with his sandblaster (hence all the muck on the ground) and the orange paint has been flying off. Literally flying off - it goes everywhere!

We now have a two-tone house.  We don't think it will catch on...

Guy bought me an early Valentine's present...

A septic tank. Gee thanks.  A large hole was dug and it was happily concreted in...

We had a visit from Welsh Oak Frame (WOF) on Thursday who came to measure up and make sure everything was in order for the roof to be delivered on 20th February. Just TWO WEEKS AWAY WOO HOO. To say we're excited is somewhat of an understatement... Anyway, WOF was very happy with BOB's walls and they happily chatted technical scaffolding terms together. We stood between the two of them like spectators at a tennis match looking at WOF then BOB then WOF then BOB. And we understood none of it... By a stroke of luck the scaffolder took this precise moment to turn up for a chat with BOB and was roped in to discuss the finer details. Which meant that we got scaffolding earlier than we thought:

Today we spent a happy (?) day putting together shelving in the new barn. We bought the 'simply clicks together' sort. PAH! Yes, it does 'simply click together'. With the aid of a lump hammer, spanner, pliers, two pairs of hands and a fair bit of cursing.

We celebrated by having a cold lunch in the cold barn. We froze.

Purchases of the week:

Bricks. We bought 360 facing bricks, 165 plinth stretchers and 14 plinth corners. We know more about brick plinths than we ever thought we would.
A septic tank. Not romantic, but we'll be pleased when the drainage works.
More concrete, firstly to make the lovely extension base which promptly got covered in black gunk, then to cosy said septic tank in.
Our joint body weight in chocolate from Vienna. Seriously.
Three spotlights. We need 7, we're buying in stages from Homebase because each time they give us £10 back...

Vienna... with added Alp

Last weekend we took a break from the building work and went back to lovely Vienna for the weekend to see the museum exhibit prepared by Gerhard with the items from the Third Man.

On Saturday morning we headed to the Naschmarkt (a giant flea market) just down the road from our hotel. We were looking for a door knocker. And we found one! I'd love to say I bartered in German but I didn't - I just waved less Euros than the marked price at the man on the stall and he nodded. That seemed to seal the deal, so we are now the proud owners of a Viennese door knocker.

It's lovely! We told BOB about it when we got back and he said 'No pressure then'... Obviously we'd like a front door to put it on...

We also visited the Miniatur Tirolerland (we struggled to pronounce this - seriously - try it after a few gins...)  This is a giant train set depicting areas of the Tirol. It's fab!

Very witty, very clever, and an absolute delight. If you can pronounce it...

After lunch it was off to the Third Man Museum to meet Gerhard and Karin. We were spoilt rotten, being given tea and cake in the VIP area, which nicely matched my scarf...

Gerhard showed us the display made with Joy's memorabilia, and it was fantastic - she would be so proud. Or actually she might be slightly embarrassed! We LOVED it!

Here's Gerhard and Guy in the area dedicated to Joy. If you look very carefully you can see Guy on the small video screen between them...

The video shows Guy on the Antiques Roadshow. After Gerhard had gone back to the shop part, we did hang around to see if anybody spotted Guy 'from the telly'.

They didn't.

On Sunday the plan was that Gerhard and Karin would take us down the Danube to Melk to see a beautiful abbey, but it was very foggy, so plan B was brought into action - up an Alp instead. Oh My Goodness - what an amazing day!

We went up in a cable car (EEK! Guy is now doing well with heights - each time we go to Austria we go up in something HIGH, last time the ferris wheel, this time a cable car) and we got out of the fog to the most glorious sunshine.

We found a suitable new house:

We walked up the Alp...

Just look at that sky!

And we posed for Gerhard taking the pictures - this is Karin looking as beautiful as ever...

We were all wearing walking boots - or wellies in my case. In fact, that's the same wellies, hat and scarf that I wear at home on site. You've guessed it - most of our stuff is still in storage! There were, however, lots of people using snow shoes which seemed a little superfluous as it really wasn't very powdery or deep. Perfect for walking on though!

We had lunch at a cabin high up on the Alp...

And posed for more photos - such an amazing backdrop.

We had a totally brilliant day. It was slightly surreal to be back on site on Tuesday knowing that we had been so far up an Alp on Sunday!

Back to the normal blog on Sunday. It's going to be messy...