Recent Progress Photos

I promised some photos of the recent work in my last post.  Here's a view of the end of the finished wall, showing the problematic steps and the patio:

The rest of the dry limestone wall is to the left of the steps and goes along the side of the house - it's about 12 metres long.  Note on the right the small brick wall which retains some earth to protect the footing of the high rear wall; the small wall has the remnants of the paving as coping - and a spare seat!

Here's the view along the side of the house, towards the steps and patio.

Top Tip 1: when doing stone walling, avoid curves and corners - I made life very difficult for myself with my design.

(Left) A close up of the steps, showing the alternative lining for them - when I decided that mortared limestone would take up too much of the width of the steps, I used off-cuts of limestone flooring from the church work last year, cut into one inch strips and held together with NHL 3.5

On a sudden whim, on Tuesday I decided that the weather was cool enough to allow me to do lime work outside, so I decided to finish off the wall end to one side of the front gateway; I did the other side properly two years ago and this side has been dry assembled since 2011 - but was now spreading a bit.  This is the halfway stage when I had done the two levels of stone:

Here's the finished article with the corner coping stone attached on Wednesday.  As you might imagine, I had some difficulty doing this wall with the four year old hornbeam hedge in such close proximity!

Top Tip 2: Always finish a wall BEFORE planting a hedge beside it!!

Well, it's Progress, but not much!

I have been busy this year - honestly.  Much of this year's progress is based on the recent acquisition of my own angle grinder as a birthday present!  However, I don't feel I have much to show for my effort because the list of achievments is largely small jobs, or larger jobs which have been going on for too long.

This year so far, other than normal maintenance, I have:

a. Cut several large coping stones in half lengthways in order to make them a sensible size to cap a 4" thick brick wall.
b. Finished the dry stone wall which forms the fascia to the block/brick wall which holds the garden back, as it is higher than the house floor level.
c. Cut and fitted various items of stone flooring to make the wall lining to go beside the steps up to the lawn.
d. Cut and fitted yet more left-over flagstone into suitable sizes in order to act as coping stone on another low brick wall; these will allow people to sit on them fairly comfortably when we hold a barbecue on the patio!
e. Removed the remaining gunk from two doors and the panelling to the kitchen (the wall is 17" thick) using heat gun plus scraper, then a Stanley knife scraper then sander or just sandpaper, in order to enable painting of the surface. This was a nightmare job.
f. Painted both hall doors (to lounge and kitchen) plus the above mentioned panelling to the kitchen plus the inside of the front door, all in Laura Ashley Eau-de-Nil; although I didn't choose the colour, I am very pleased with the choice and the overall effect.
g. Chosen the shade of Earthborn claypaint for the walls of the hall, stairs and landing, as we finally decided that the yellow limewash done in 2011 was a bit too bright.
h. Painted the back and one side of the shed (see earlier) which I did in early March as I couldn't paint last year because it is too close to a lot of undergrowth.
i. Fitted the bath panel properly (at last!!)
j. Cleared the rubbish (an empty one tonne bag, some old bricks, various tubs of stuff and a rotting pallet) from the area beside the back window.
k. Laid some setts at the end of the paving to hold it away from the wall below the back window, as it's a bit high compared to the floor inside, and laid the last of the paving on sand to fill the gap.

The last of the jobs above to be done was the completion of the wall (b. above); having finished it a couple of days ago, I realise how this interesting but tedious job has been hanging over me for 32 months since I laid the foundations.  Perhaps I do feel that I have something to show for my hard work after all!

Now I have to finish plaster repairs in the hall (these are partly done so not listed above), then paint the hall, stairs and landing with the claypaint.  Then there's a widening of the drive, which will provide some earth to do the last of the landscaping in the back garden, to be followed by some more turf which will effectively complete the back.  Finally in the front I need to build one wall end with lime mortar in place of the present dry construction which was temporarily done in 2012. Then it'll be a few internal details like a new wardrobe and clearing the second bedroom, plus finishing the 2011 wardrobe in our bedroom and a lot of decorating!

I'll put some new pictures up when I've been able to buy some batteries for my camera...

Problems with Tree Identification

I have a wrong tree in my front garden.  It is definitely not the one I wanted and I'm really cheesed off with it.  It might be what it says on my planning permission, but it's NOT what I wanted.

My original vision for the front garden was to plant some semi-mature trees at the front which matched the ones in the churchyard opposite.  In 2011, I noticed that these across the road were blooming with lovely white or pale pink blossom; it seemed that there were at least three different sorts of tree and they bloomed in sequence, so that there was blossom on at least one tree there for about eight or nine weeks.

When I found a landscape designer there were only two things I wanted: one was a good looking plan to get past the council tree officer and the planning department, and the other was the identification of some suitable tree species.  The first was achieved but, on the second, one of the three is wrong.  Now, you might say that two out of three is not bad, but when I pay someone a decent sum of money to give you expert advice, I expect that advice to be RIGHT.  That is what being an expert means, isn't it?

One of the trees was a cherry, and I opted to go for a Japanese Cherry as I knew these have abundant blossom - you know, the sort of thing that is covered in lovely pink-white blossom and always appears in films and photos of Japan.  Another was something odd and it turned out to be an Amelanchier (right) which is a North American berry tree; it had blossom and a few berries last year which would be edible if the birds didn't get them first.


The third tree was to match a tree which, to my eyes, was a sort of apple: it had apple blossom, apple tree leaves and little fruit which looked like the basis of an apple but never grew bigger than pea-size.  My landscaper took one look when I pointed it out 25 yards away and said "that's a sorbus" and so that was what we went for.  She said that in "olden times" a sorbus was believed to keep witches away and that is why they were often planted in churchyards.  I realise now that her knowledge of a superstition was used in her mind to justify her identification, which seems the wrong way round when you think about it.

Last year I was a bit puzzled as my new tree (left, ignore the hornbeam hedge in front) was the same shape as the one in the churchyard  but had some odd leaves (more like elm?) with no sign of blossom at all.  I put this down to the fact that it was only planted in November 2011 and I was just pleased that all the trees had survived the winter. 

However, this year it is quite clear - it is definitely NOT the same species.  I sent a photo (right) to the nursery who sold and planted the the trees and they think the one in the churchyard is a Morus (Mulberry) but I can't find a photo of one of these on-line which looks like the one over the road, so that might be incorrect as well.

Since I know that I described the blossom on the one in the churchyard in some detail to my so-called "expert", I am really severely dischuffed about the entire affair.


However,  I also planted a malus (crab apple) at the rear of the front garden in front of my new wall, and it is flowering very nicely. This photo is from last year, and it is even better this year - I will put up a photo when I finish the pointing on my wall.

Reflections on the Last Two Years

Now that I have a bit more time for activities other than building work, I've been thinking about what has been acheived in the last two years and two months.  Specifically, I've been thinking about two aspects of the work, namely the things I've done which have really pleased me, and the things that I would rather had been done differently.

Under the latter heading come a few things which still bug me:

• The attitude of the Conservation Officer - this relationship seemed to have gone wrong near the start, but I still don't really know why, other than because (just possibly) the CO really IS an unhelpful person.
• The fact that Highways at the County Council told me that I could not widen the existing gateway to make a single driveway entrance for both houses as it was too close to a junction, but then (after I had made an entrance in the old wall) they allowed my new neighbour to make a new entrance even closer to the junction!
• A newly laid slate has slipped from the roof to the gutter, but the roofer has yet to come and fix it.
• The new kitchen sash window is four over four, not two over two as the rest of the windows.
• There is still no vent to the kitchen...
• Thames Water fitted an external meter in the pavement and this has been found to be a joint supply. Now we have to get an internal meter fitted, but that would have been so much easier if done before the new kitchen was fitted, as I intended.
• My new loft hatch is not quite square, because the joists were not parallel!
• The new extension is not exactly as intended - the roof is higher, the chimney lower and the plasterer gave me incorrect answers to two clear questions, with the result that the internal work I did is not perfect; one window cill has thicker render than he said, so it's almost level with the top of the lower window frame, and a plastered stud wall is thinner than the rendered blocks that it rests on.

Looking at the good side, there are lots of things which make me smile:

• The stone wall where I filled in the bottom of the old doorway
• The wall which I lime-plastered myself (the stone wall which is the join between the old house and new-build extension)
• The new 6' stone wall beside the front door, and the attached gates
• The new sash window which cost just £95 from a reclamation yard
• The front room floor where I replaced bits of joists and re-laid most of the boards plus some reclaimed ones
• The stud wardrobe frontage which I built for the master bedroom
• The wood-burning stove in the kitchen, in the alcove which I "found" by removing the old tiled fireplace
• The recently fitted secondary glazing (we are cosy, and it is quieter now)
• The limecrete/black limestone floor in the kitchen (laid by Chris, Shane and me)
• The black limestone floor in the new extension which I laid entirely by myself (on concrete...)
• The extension roof on which I laid over half the slates in just over a day on my own, much to Chris's surprise
• The casement window in the new extension which I salvaged from the old extension and did a major repair job
• The 1800+ Imperial bricks from the old extension which Jane and I salvaged and were re-used in the new extension (I only had to buy about 200 more)
• All the other little bits and pieces from the old building which I laboriously removed, kept and re-used
• Buying my own mixer, instead of hiring one
• Deciding that I would manage the entire process myself, instead of paying a builder to project manage it

Actually, the whole place makes me smile - it just feels so safe, solid and secure, just as a home should feel.

Front Lawn and Driveway

After all that's been done on this house in less than two years, you wouldn't think that I could have a problem over something as simple as cutting the grass.  The problem is storage - there is nowhere to keep a lawnmower, so until there is I don't want to buy one.  I used to have a sickle (inherited with the property) which kept things under control last year but somewhere this has been lost; I think I hid it so that my grandson could not hurt himself (or us!) with it, and now I cannot find it.  This was useful at keeping the weeds down, but is a bit labour intensive really.  Slowly this year the grass has grown to represent a moderate hay crop in some places; since the lawn I seeded in March has grown wonderfully, I'm puzzled as to why the old lawn has grown so slowly. 

Anyway, the solution was quite simple in the end - I borrowed my son's mower! This seems a small payment for the babysitting that I do (even though I do enjoy looking after my grandson).  His lawn is less than half the size of mine, so the mower had a good workout.

Of course, having done that task and made it look very nice indeed, only a day later Colin, my friendly groundworker, came and drove his digger over it.  Reason? At last my neighbour is having his driveway done, so very soon he will be able to enter the front garden through his own gateway and park on his own drive for the first time. On the right is a shot of the work in progress, with the mown lawn being abused and the first pile of three being prepared for the grab lorry.

The photo below shows the almost finished task, which has a lot more driveway than mine.  The old gap in the wall is on the left; I had my eye on the stone from the new gap but sadly his part of the front wall had been rebuilt at some time in the recent past using C*M*NT mortar, so it took a pneumatic drill to prise it all apart.  [I'm sorry that I just cannot bring myself to spell the C-word with regard to its use on period property.]  The result is that many of the stones are broken and unusable.  In comparison, my bit of wall came apart very easily last year - see this previous entry.  I'm not sure that it had any mortar at all apart from some recent c*m*nt pointing which was not very deep (or useful, of course).

There was a small problem yesterday when one of Colin's workers pierced the neighbour's water supply with the pneumatic drill - I think Colin was quite embarrassed by that! Fortunately it was on the right side of the meter only 18" away, and a groundworker has all the necessary bits and knowledge to fix that very quickly; no harm done.

Walls, Weather and the Olympic Torch

Since I last posted more than two weeks ago, I really have been trying to stop getting annoyed with the weather and just get on with the various walls which I need to build.  However, I have to report, just in case it's not obvious or you're lucky enough to not have been in the UK recently, that progress on walls has been frustratingly slow because since then I've only done about three days work thanks to our "summer".

One achievement is that I have done a good bit of work on the second wall end in the front gateway of the driveway.  This was an essential precursor to doing the main wall beside the house as it needed to have first choice of the available stone in order to match the rest of the wall.  It isn't finished or perfect but I am quite satisfied with it.  Its public position means that it gets more attention than I might like and it will still need more work such as setting the coping stone.  The weather has been so bad that I've not even taken a photo yet, but will do so soon.

Such is the rarity of decent weather that I recently had to choose between using a fine day to maximum benefit by doing more walling or going and see the Olympic torch which passed nearby.  In fact, we were living in London not far from Tower Bridge when the Olympics were "won" in 2005 and we decided then that it would be a good idea to have moved out of London before the event happened.  Somehow one knows that the public disruption will be quite intolerable for those residents who have a reasonable desire to actually work almost as normal.  You won't be surprised that such is my level of enthusiasm for the Olympics that the wall won and I spent a productive and tiring afternoon doing half a course of the wall beside the front door.   

OK, yes the Olympic torch passing is a once in a lifetime event, but there are many other things I wish that I had done in my life, and I have learned to have few regrets.  One thing that I do still regret was when Concorde was returned to service (in 2002 I think) after the Paris accident; passenger numbers were low so they were offering a day trip to New York (with one way on Concorde) for £1,000 but, even though I could have afforded it, I persuaded myself that there would be other opportunities.  Of course, when they suddenly pulled the plug less than two years later, there were no good deals then!

Finally, I should record the first anniversary of our actual move into this property.  This causes me firstly to ask where the year has actually gone?  There still seems so much to do and, as far as I am concerned, relatively little seems to have been accomplished of what I expected to do (but when I say this, Jane says that I shouldn't be so hard on myself).  I know I can't blame it all on the weather.  Once you are actually living in your house, the priorities all change and I have deliberately told myself that I am retired so what is the hurry?  I still refuse to have a huge list of tasks as that would be too depressing, but I do try to decide at the start of each week exactly what I'd like to achieve in that week; however, that brings me back to the vagaries of the current weather...

Why do the British always talk about the weather?

It's a British stereotype, isn't it?  Put a group of Brits in any social setting and the standard way to break the ice is to start a conversation about the weather.  Being British, the odds are that the conversation will not actually progress much past the weather.  If the group were French, American, Israeli or African, the odds are that you wouldn't leave until you had shared your life stories and been invited to stay should you ever pass near their home.  (I met a couple from Hawaii recently who gave me their card and said that I must drop by if I ever go to Hawaii!  Being Americans, I reckon they meant it, but I doubt that I will take them up on it.)  But we just talk about the weather.  Nice day, isn't it?  Hasn't it rained a lot recently?  Last night was a bit parky.  What's the forecast for tomorrow?

I think a lot of it is that we are just not used to sharing personal information verbally.  This seems odd, considering that most people seem to be happy to share all sorts of stuff with complete strangers on the internet (which I personally reckon is pretty unwise).  The weather is always unpredictable and seems a safe topic of conversation; when I was younger we were not allowed at family mealtimes to talk about cars, work, school, sport, religion or politics, which pretty well left the weather as the only topic!

So why am I writing about talking about the weather?  Well, I have lots of work that I'd like to do outside and haven't been able to because of the weather we've been having.  Right now I have stone walls to build, concrete and paving slabs to lay, plaster to mix (for inside) and things to sand and paint.  I can't really even tidy up the extension as most of it has to go in the shed which is on the far side of a sea of mud (which is where a lawn might be next year).  I made a start yesterday (Friday) by finishing one end of my low wall beside the drive and starting the foundations for the wall beside the front door, but there's a long way to go.

I now realise just how good the weather was last year, as I was able to take my pick of jobs according to priority, not according to the weather, and could do lots of messy jobs like sanding doors outside in the sun.  The only good side of it is that the grass seed which I sowed in hope during March has come up well - the irony is that I decided not to lay turf as I thought that the hosepipe ban would mean that it would dry up...

Scaffolding, and the Driveway again

As I write, it has all gone quiet outside.  The scaffolders are here removing the scaffolding, but I think after 30 minutes work they have decided it's lunchtime so they have downed tools.  Mind you, these are probably the same wussy ones who didn't put it up (see "The Rebuild Continues") for fear of a bit of rain, so I shouldn't be surprised.  Why turn up at 12.30 and then stop for lunch 30 minutes later? Why not have lunch first and then

The Enchanted Forest is no more

The Enchanted Forest is no more - well, it's now just a few overgrown trees with a slightly mysterious shade underneath.  Now it is no longer be possible to hide in the undergrowth which gave this blog its name (see the very first entry last year). I've been putting off the moment for a long time, but this week it was time to do the driveway, together with cutting a gap in the low stone wall and installation of a dropped kerb.  I have been gradually cutting things back in a surreptitious way, but now the public can suddenly see a spacious garden where previously (for over twenty years) they had only seen overgrown shrubs and trees, with lots of ivy and litter.

I had engaged a contractor to clear this overgrown stuff (old photo, left) - especially as it contained lots of brambles which I hate as they seem to hate me first.  However, the contractor failed to appear on Saturday morning, with some excuse about not usually working Saturdays, despite this being the agreement only a week previously; more likely they had too much alcohol on Friday night.  With work on the driveway due to start on Monday I reverted to Plan B and did it myself, thus saving a good deal of money.  However, although successful, I was totally shackered (shattered and knackered) by the end of the day.  The result is a huge clear area (as seen in the top photo) where there used to be hawthorn, brambles, yew and a proliferation of some unidentified shrub, although there were a few bits left which I intended to do on Monday while Colin, my driveway contractor, was doing the dropped kerb.

On Monday I arrived at the house at 8.00am to find that there was already a huge pile of yew branches on the lawn as Colin had already started, having arrived at 7.15 with his own digger and dump truck.  Colin is an absolute whiz on his digger and Ryan, his mate, drives the neat little articulated dump truck.  On one occasion while Colin was scraping the natural layer, I saw a nice looking bit of limestone uncovered and just pointed to it; Colin casually picked it up with the shovel, placed it at my feet and carried on scraping.  Neat.  Part of our contract was the removal of all the plaster, hardcore, slate etc which had accumulated around the site in untidy piles, either loose, bags or plastic tubs.  By the end of the day there was a clear excavation for the driveway (down to the natural brash) and a huge pile of debris near the gateway, as well as a large pile of shrubbery on the lawn.

My contribution was the removal of a 4 metre section of the low front wall, which felt almost a crime as it was probably 180 years old.  (NB That's Colin not me in the photo, with Ryan in the background.)

I arrived on Tuesday to find the huge pile was a lot smaller as the grabber lorry had already visited and removed about 16 tons of it.  I was doing some bathroom tiling later when he returned for the rest and was so quick that I almost missed him.  TOP TIP - if you have more than two or more skips of hardcore for landfill, consider using a grabber lorry which has a capacity of 18 tons, is much easier than filling skips and costs only £150.

By the end of the day the new kerbs and the granite setts were in place, ready for tarmac, and the drive excavation was ready for the ballast.  After the removal of Mount Etna I felt guilty about the greenery on the (shared) lawn, so I moved it all to the back of the house for burning somewhen.  Home for a shower and beer.

Wednesday saw the laying of the hot tarmac, as well as the return of the grabber with 18 tons of ballast.  He also then took away the smaller version of Mount Etna comprising the old tarmac from the pavement plus more hardcore which had been found around the garden.  It turned out that the driver/operator was Ryan's Dad - I do like working in a fairly small place where people know each other.

All that was left to do was for me to point the setts with cement and building sand. It's been a good week already!  We'll revisit the driveway in the autumn when the other trees will be felled and the layout will be revised in the light of experience; then we'll put in the edgings and add the top layer of gravel; at some time I will also have to rebuild the wall ends with my nice bits of coping.  This is the result so far, with our car (just visible) parked on our driveway for the first time (what a pleasure after over seven months of finding a legal parking space every day!):