One day....

..... this will all be glass

Update

No pictures today, but we have re-established communication. The builder, the roofer, the joiners and the glass-roof people have all been talking and know what they all want to do. Which is probably run away and leave us, but they're going to get on with it.
So hopefully, the joiners will come and remove the tiny veluxi tomorrow and re-arrange the joists into a sensible fashion, then the roofers will hopefully come on friday and put the slates on. Then the builders might come back next week and get the floor in.

Fingers crossed....

Rooftops and fireplaces

Its been a weekend of deliberation, but we're getting somewhere.
We've chosen our kitchen supplier AND the kitchen to supply. Next job is to choose the floor tiles.

After lots of frantic phone calls, we have a glass-roof ordered. Apparently we can't have a "conservatory-style" roof due to there being valley gutters on both sides. But we didn't want a conservatory-style roof, so thats ok. We're basically going to get 4 large panes of energy-efficient double-glazed glass to sit on the rafters. Which is what we wanted all along. And we don't need planning permission as the general public won't be able to see them.

No major developments outside to show you, only a re-routed gutter and drainpipe.

But, given that I had to come home early today to see the roof designer, I made the most of the afternoon and started in the dining room, from this:



Via an awful lot of soot to this:



Leaving us with this:



Which is possibly going to have a gas real-flame stove type thing.
And in case you're wondering, up the chimney looks like this:

And the walls came tumbling down....

This is where the door, window and kitchen sink used to be.

So its washing up in the bath from now on....

Its all going a bit mad...

Our dear builders are charging head-long into the build. Which is good. Or it should be. Unfortunatly, there's been a bit of a breakdown in communication, with them fitting the wrong size veluxes (veluxi?).

The whole point of the extension was to open up the kitchen and get as much light in as possible. But would you look at this:



How small are they?!!! So we're now waiting to hear from the glass-roof company who were the backup plan. Its going to slow the whole roof up...

But that doesn't matter, because they're not going to be able to knock the wall down yet (despite starting) as we didn't know when the electricity meter would need moving, so we'll have to wait a couple of weeks for that I think.

Leaving us sans-cuisine for some time yet...

Nothing obvious...

But the drainage seems to be complete and the floor sort of replaced. We've also gained a stack of shiny new velux windows sitting in the dining room and have designed the new front door and window. Oh, and we found out that our kitchen sink is being removed tomorrow, so its washing up in the bathroom from now on :-(

A roof an' all

Sorry blog-fans, its been a while. Partly because our dear builders cut the phone line on thursday when taking down the last bit of the garage roof, and partly because there hasn't been a lot of visible progress to show you. But now the pointing is all done, and the front wall looks great for it, and we've got the beginnings of a roof


What's quite interesting now is looking inside at the leftover garage wall which is having the new roof put on top if it. I'm assuming the timber is leverl, which means the wall isn't....

Ooh, doors and windows

Making good progress after yesterday's rain. We've now got stone door and window frames.



And on the inside:



And the still-troublesome stone:



It shouldn't have any smooth surfaces on it, but obviously is a lot of hassle to replace, so it's being "faced". Badly. :-(

The builders are going to concentrate on re-pointing the existing walls now. They needed it anyway, but it should help the new stone blend in with the old. And we've got a man coming to see us to on monday to design our window and door. What do you think of something like this?:

You leave them a week...

...and look what happens.

We returned home from the sunny south of France (pictures online here) to find not inconsiderable progress has been made. Although there is an issue with some of the stone-choice to be discussed tomorrow morning. And they still haven't connected the bathroom drain to anything....