Let's Start Again

Well, after much hassle, we now have permission to rebuild the service wing (photo right), and so the fun starts again, very soon.  The story on the conservatory has fully justified my caution in an earlier blog when I said that I was not counting chickens as far as the council went.  I WAS RIGHT!  We had originally proposed rebuilding the service wing and adding a similar size extension on the large blank brick wall (photo below), but this was refused as it "would harm the symmetry of the pair of listed buildings".  (The service wing of the other half of the semi can been seen in the left hand photo in the distance.)  At a meeting in June, the Conservation Officer (CO) actually suggested what we could do instead of the original proposal - an oak conservatory.  Although it wasn't really what we wanted, it seemed a good compromise, so that is what we applied for; unfortunately the dear person has now gone back to her original comments about the conservatory harming the symmetry.  So the meeting was utterly pointless and has cost us time and money for no good reason.

When I saw the CO's objections posted on line, I suggested to my architect that we should withdraw the application for Planning Permission (PP) and modify the one for Listed Building Consent (LB), as the work would not now require PP.  However, although the application was revised to delete the conservatory, we now have both LBC and PP for just the service wing - even though we don't need PP at all.  The subtle point here is that the archaeological requirements were only specified on the PP application, so if that had been withdrawn as I suggested, we would not have had to pay for any more archaeology.  I'm actually in favour of history and archaeology but they are a bit expensive!

Anyway, we shall get on with the new project as quickly as we can, as winter is approaching and we want to have it fully functional well before it gets cold. Talking of temperature, we've noticed that the house maintains a pretty constant temperature at all times, between 16 and 17.5 deg C, even when the outside temperature fell overnight to 7.5 deg C.  I reckon this is pretty good with no heating on at all, especially as this was noticed before I plugged up the draught holes around the new windows.

Following some comments from within the family ("how can you have a new toy and not play with it?"), I finally lit the woodburning stove (right) for the first time the other day.  The process was very simple and the stove worked as advertised; it is wonderful to see a real flame in the kitchen, and the heat from the stove is most noticeable.  I think the size (4.5kW) is about right, apart from the fact that, being small, it needs fairly frequent attention.  I lit it, stoked it up and went to my doctor's appointment; when I returned 90 minutes later, the fire was burnt out (but I was kept waiting for 30 minutes and then the doctor was particularly talkative!). 

The following day I tried the new "decorative arch" open fire in the lounge (left) for the first time. Unfortunately Jane was late home and so didn't see it until it was just a few embers, although I kept it going for four hours.  Like the woodburning stove, it burned a lot of the stuff that I had kept from the house renovation, such as the very old roof battens.  These were so old that they had not been treated - you mustn't use any painted wood (a lot of mine was lead painted) or treated wood (e.g. cut ends of battens or joists, or pallets) whose vapours could damage the very expensive flue.).  I suspect that the acquisition of suitable wood will become a major topic of daily life for me.


Anyway, whilst writing the above my groundworker called by, to see how things were going.  So we agreed to start next week and now I just need to make sure that we can do the demolition this weekend, get the archaeologist to turn up next Tuesday morning and also submit a Building Control application.  Back to the grindstone!