Christmas shut down

Well, the builders are gone (temporarily) and we’ve had our home back for a couple of weeks. Although all the people we’ve had on site have been lovely it is nice having the space to ourselves for a bit.

The roof was finished on the Tuesday before Christmas which meant the scaffolding could come down the next day. For the first time we were able to see the extension footprint in relation to the rest of the building and the garden. Once the black weather boarding is on it should receed visually even more and look like the farm buildings dotted around the village and surrounding countryside. We’re delighted with the roof, the hand made clay tiles are all unique and some have handprints on from the maker. Not that they’re visible from the ground, but we know they’re there.

The other main piece of work before Christmas was to finish off the concrete floor. The polishers were here for two days but struggled to make any progress with the two machines they had. We agreed they would come back at the beginning of January to try again with a better machine. It’s not a big problem as it’s weather proof and it will be done before Ken and Joe, our main builders, are back on site on 7 January ready to start fitting out the inside. All the under floor insultation and heating is in and the concrete poured which were the big tasks. We took pictures of the layout of the underfloor heating pipes to ensure that when fixing the internal walls and doors we don’t accidentally puncture a pipe! It would be hugely expensive and disruptive to dig up the floor to put that right.

The biggest problem we faced was with the satellite dish which had to be moved to fit the roof tiles in. On the phone to Sky about getting someone to reposition it the earliest they could do was 31 December. A Christmas without telly – a catastrophe. I phoned round for a local TV aerial person and one very kindly came out on a Sunday to adjust it. After a false start a couple of days later when we thought we’d lost the signal again the standard IT department advice of ‘switch it off and switch it on again’ worked and our holiday TV fest was restored.

Our final piece of work on the house was to get the hall ready for Christmas, my one target I was keen we stuck to. I’d sourced a company who could strip the beams without damaging the wood. In a day and a half Beam Clean and Restore used a gentle soda blasting system to take off the years old heavy black paint. It’s a massive improvement, the only downside was the incredible amount of dust the process created which managed to find itself into every nook and cranny across the house. I’m still cleaning it up!

We picked up our curtain poles from the blacksmith and our new curtains and on the Sunday before Christmas worked out how to fit them to our misshapen house. The last set went up on Christmas Eve morning and then we were ready to relax and enjoy the festivities.