Well that didn’t take long. Day one and the garage block and greenhouse are now a pile of rubble. It’s great progress although I know the replacement extension will take much longer.

Apart from making cups of tea (no sugar de-bunking that stereotype) I concentrated on progressing the elements of the build I’m responsible for. The floor and sliding doors at the moment to be followed by the back door and windows, kitchen, utility room, cloakroom and ensuite bathroom.

Our first hurdle is getting the floor and sliding doors to line up with the rest of the build. The track for sliding doors needs to go in before the floor but can’t be measured until the walls and roof are done. As we’re having polished concrete this could damage the track when they bring in their big polishing machine. The solution is some protective plywood and a finishing strip to match the door frame to bridge the slight gap between the track and the concrete. The doors themselves will then go in after the floor is done so we’ll have to live with some temporary boarding for a while. It shouldn’t be a problem as we won’t knock through into the main house until the extension is secure.

A more serious challenge is the deflection tolerance of the supporting beam above the doors. I had no idea what this was until last Thursday when we visited the door manufacturers to learn more about how the track and the doors work. The track can cope with a 5mm deflection before the doors stop moving because the pressure on them is too great. From our structural calculations it looks like the steel beam above, which is over 7 metres long, has a maximum deflection of nearly 20mm. I’ve gone back to our structural engineer for advice on the solution. We don’t want doors we can’t open!

It’s been invaluable visiting our suppliers to talk to them about how their product works and get the benefit of their experience and knowledge to help us with our build. All of this before we’ve even placed an order. I’ve also put our builder in direct contact with them so that he is 100% clear about all the technical aspects which may get lost in translation by me as a non-expert. We only have one go at this and we want to make sure it lives up to our dream.

Other than that all is progressing well albeit it is only one day. I feel sorry for our builders who have done a great job in the heat and blazing sun. Hopefully they’ll be back tomorrow!

After years of dreaming, planning, researching and visiting suppliers work finally starts in four days on Monday 23 July. When our builder Ken confirmed the start date about three weeks ago we realised we still had a huge amount to do. Hence no blog for the past few weeks!

We’ve had two priorities. First clearing the garages and green house which will be knocked down to make way for the new extension. The red brick 1970s garages and the white framed greenhouse tacked on the back are a bit of an eyesore and we’ll be pleased to see them go. However, they have provided fantastic storage for many years and there’s been a lot to get through. I’m a real hoarder and find it difficult to get rid of anything. It’s doubly difficult when we don’t know yet what we’ll need in our newly configured home. So, although I have thrown some stuff out, it’s not much and we are storing everything else until I have more time to sift through things.

As the weather has been so dry one of the advantages has been using the garden as swing space. The greenhouse is now empty with only the tomato and aubergine plants left to move at the last minute. As it’s been so hot I’m sure they’ll be fine outside. That will probably be the cue for it to turn cold and start raining!

The second priority has been the early building decisions we have to make. We met up with Ken last week to go through the order of works. I was surprised that the site will probably be cleared and ready to start the foundations in a couple of days. Drainage and utilities will have to be run across our lawn as there’s nothing there at the moment. The base for the floor will be a couple of weeks, then the walls and they’ll get to the roof in about five weeks.

We’ve decided on concrete flooring with underfloor heating and sliding doors along the side of the extension looking out onto the garden – where the current greenhouse is. Ken needs to know what he has to lay underneath the concrete floor and to what depth. We also need the precise measurements of the track for the sliding doors so this can be blocked out when the concrete is poured. We want the floor inside to extend outside for a metre and the door track to be set into the floor so it’s all on one level. This needs to be spot on to work. With these questions ringing in our ears we headed off to the Midlands to visit the company we propose using for the floor. Yet more decisions, what type of grey and finish do we want?!

It’s one thing looking in magazines for design ideas and creating mood boards, it’s quite different when you’re trying to pin down the actual product and supplier you want and booking it all in to fit with the build.

We’ve found exhibitions really useful, particularly the Listed Property Owners’ Club annual show. We joined the Club shortly after we bought our house and it has been invaluable with advice on what to do with a listed property. In addition to the show there’s a bi-monthly magazine and helpline which we have made good use of.

The other exhibition which has given us some good ideas and helped us source a number of suppliers is the Homebuilding & Renovating Show run by the publishers of Homebuilding and Renovation Magazine. They hold eight shows a year across the country and we’ve found talking to the exhibitors the most useful thing for us. In Surrey a couple of weeks ago a kitchen supplier explained how important it was to plan in all the utilities now so everything is in the right place when we come to install our dream kitchen. It was obvious as soon as he explained it, we had thought we’d get to the kitchen once the extension was built and not for another three months. We suddenly realised we’d have to come up with the plan pretty quickly. So we’re now talking to kitchen designers and should have the plan in place by the time Ken needs decisions from us on where to put the pipes and ducts which will be part of building the base for the floor.

Another source of information we only discovered a couple of weeks ago from a friend is the National Self Build & Renovation Centre. This is a fixed site exhibition in Swindon just off junction 16 of the M4. It is open Tuesday to Sunday and is free to visit. In addition to numerous suppliers who have stands where you can request information there are two houses you can walk round – one a new build and one a 1920s house where you can see the various stages of renovation and follow progress with an audio guide. It was fascinating.

I won’t be providing audio updates but I will continue blogging. Next update after project day 1 on Monday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open gardens on Sunday was good although it was grey and windy, the worst the weather has been for weeks. Despite that and competing with Father’s Day, we had more than 80 visitors and raised £800 to be split between the local hospice and the church hall restoration fund. All in all a good village day with great community spirit. Thankfully the focus on the garden will be less intense from here on in!

The garden was our focus when we first moved in more than 10 years ago. We hadn’t planned on buying a Grade II listed property in a conservation area and it was going to take us time to work out what we wanted to do with the house. The garden, however, was massively overgrown with trees, brambles and bushes that hadn’t been tackled for some time. So that’s where we started our project.

We wanted to turn the front from a car park with chippings and pampas grass into a traditional cottage garden complete with picket fence. Our first lesson on the hurdles we were going to face renovating and improving our home was the need for full scale planning permission and listed building consent for the fence. It seemed a bit over the top,  particularly when they asked for a scale drawing which meant a postage stamp size of what looked like a row of tiny match sticks on an A4 piece of paper. It did the trick however, met the requirements and we received the go ahead. It was an interesting lesson on what is needed to make changes – follow the process. It also helped having a picture from the late 1800s showing that a picket fence was in keeping with the period property. We were to use this picture later in our application to renovate the old house.

 

 

Once permission was granted we needed to remove a mountain of chippings and dig up the tarmac underneath with the help of a local farmer and a neighbour with a trailer to take it away. We were also keen to plant a horse chestnut, a tree often found in front of blacksmiths perhaps because it provides shade, and restore what was there until the mid-1900s. Although this will take decades to reach full height and really achieve it’s full glory, it’s part of what we see as being guardians and restoring not just the property but also it’s surroundings for future generations. Many of the plants however are much quicker and this year the front garden really came into its own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I’ve left work, had a holiday, enjoyed a few dinners and lunches with friends and now it’s time to get blogging! Learning how to manage my own blog site will be a journey in itself alongside managing ‘the project’ which, after all, is the main reason I left work.

The first step in ‘the project’ is to build a new extension at the back of the property to house the kitchen, utility room and downstairs toilet. This will join on to the 2002 extension which includes our bedroom upstairs and dining room downstairs. We’ll also be getting an ensuite ending the journey through the house to the bathroom at the other end of the building! The aim is to have this done by Christmas. Then we will move onto restoring the old house in stages during the course of next year.

It’s taken a few years just to get to this point and I’ll cover the story so far in blogs over the next few weeks as the real work won’t be starting until July. The priority over the last week has been to get the right builder. We have gone local with people we know have done good work and received two quotes. One was more expensive and busy, a good sign but we felt he was too busy to fit us. We had to chase him several times for the quote and he still hasn’t come back with details of earlier work we can look at. The other builder, Ken, proactively provided us with previous clients to talk to and sent us pictures of his existing project which is very similar to ours. We spoke to one of his clients who praised his work and has used him three times. On Friday we visited him on site to see the quality of his work and it looked excellent. We also like that he only does one project at a time so he will really focus on us and what we need until he’s done.

So, after our visit, on Friday we pushed the button and hired our builder. Very exciting and it makes it all seem very real after many years of planning. It also means we’re going to have to get a move on with clearing the garage which is going to be knocked down to make way for the new extension. Other tips I picked up to help find a good builder included asking your designer/architect or the local building inspector, checking out boards, trade associations, recommendations and avoiding going for the low price. A really good piece of advice is not to pay up front, they don’t pay their suppliers or workers up front so if you have to it might mean they are in trouble. We focused on taking references and looking at the work they have done for others. We’re comfortable we’ve made the right choice.

In the meantime, have I been missing work? Surprisingly not given how much time I spent at work. I enjoyed what I did and really liked the people I worked with. Now I have more time to spend on the other things that I was squeezing into the odd spare moment late at night, on the train or when we had a rare free weekend.

The most immediate project taking up most of my time is organising open gardens in our village next Sunday, 17 June. Alongside finalising the gardens that are going to open, sorting the publicity, setting up road signs at key points and pulling together the volunteers to help on the day I’ve have had a massive blitz on the weeds in our own garden. They been left blissfully undisturbed for months and as we’ll be opening our garden they have to go. With all the kneeling, squatting and digging I should certainly be getting fitter. Spending more time in the garden is part of the dream and the picture shows the satisfying results of a weed free bed.

We do have one unwelcome visitor I fear will still be around for open gardens. For the first time this year a squirrel has decided to use our lawn as his larder. The beautifully mown strips have little brown holes where he has dug up his hidden walnuts. He doesn’t even bother taking the shells with him. From the fresh holes each morning it looks like the cupboard is not yet bare.

 

 

 

After a lifetime in full-time, paid employment I’m about to embark on my dream to develop and renovate our 16th century home in Bedfordshire. It is a timber frame, wattle and daub, thatched former smithy and we fell in love with it. After 30 years of very little work it is now ready for a major overhaul. The journey begins!