Nightmare on the High Street

Finally work has re-started on our extension. It’s been a nerve-racking couple of weeks, nothing to do with Halloween and all to do with massive lorries trying to access our site, a 90 degree turn off the village high street.

Consultation on our listed building application to raise the roof by another 300mm closed on 26 October with no objections. Although the formal decision from the Council isn’t due until 21 November we have decided to go ahead anyway. We believe it’s a small risk it will be rejected and we want the roof on before Christmas and the increasingly bad weather affects the build.

So the roof steel was delivered last Tuesday along with the wood for the rafters. Unfortunately the crane wasn’t strong enough to lift the 13m long, 3.5 tonne steel into position. Instead it was left balancing at the bottom of the two gable ends, tantalisingly short of the top.

This is the biggest steel our builders have handled and for the rest of the week they were contacting numerous crane companies to find one that could both access our site and lift the beam into position. On the sixth attempt a crane arrived this afternoon and, thankfully, job done.

Unfortunately I missed all the excitement as I was fixing poppies to a massive camouflage net which will drape our church tower this weekend for our village’s WWI remembrance event. Thankfully M was working at home today and nipped out to take pictures.

It will now be a rush to get the roof on before the frame for the sliding doors is fitted the week beginning 26 November with the flooring company arriving on site on 6 December. It’s advisable to get the roof finished before this work starts to avoid damage from falling roof tiles. Our builder Ken reckoned it would take about four weeks to finish the roof but I’m not sure that allows for his son taking a three week trip to the Far East. He has two days to get the carpentry done before he takes the plane to Hong Kong!

In other village activity I carved my first pumpkin for Halloween and made pumpkin pie. Nice, but I think I’ll do soup next year. The sweets went down well with the kids although with some left over it has not helped the diet.