Newbuild4@blogspot.com

 So near and yet so far.  The crane has arrived on site this morning to move containers of blocks, beams and the yellow submarine into their positions.  This is the view of it from my garden - next door but one.  That’s how near it is. In spite of the changeable weather the bricklayers have progressed well.  I’ve spent quite a lot of time on building sites in my life.  My dad, his brother and my maternal grandfather were all brickies and my dad used to take me to work with him when I was little, while my mum was working. No 15 hours a week childcare in the 1950s. I used to play in the building sand.  Can you imagine that now?  I survived it though.  And Dave and I have done many building projects together throughout our married life.  The ‘gang’ working on our house are really good.  The showcase of the exterior is the brickwork, and it is excellent. So once the crane has done its job, the block and beam foundations will be put into...

  I just know you are humming ‘We all live in a Yellow Submarine’, and must wonder why we have just had one delivered.   This is actually an 8000 litre rainwater collection tank, which will shortly be buried in our back garden.  Its purpose will be to collect all the rainwater from our roof  which will then be pumped up to be used to water the garden, and to flush a toilet in the house.  I think it will soon be compulsory to install one of these in every new house. We also have some of our bricks on show, which is exciting,  They are stock bricks and are called ‘Cassandra’.  And now I know you are singing ‘ No income tax, no VAT, no money back, no guarantee’.  If you know, you know 🤣 The weather is being kind to us at the moment, but I think it may be changing later in the week.  We would like to be in the dry by Christmas and it can do what it likes after that.

 A few photos of our woodland, showing where we like to sit and contemplate, and also where the badgers  live We are going to be increasing the size of the woods to include the whole of the badger sett.  The occupants are very active - clearing out the chambers (we always leave hay out for them) and digging their communal toilets.  They are very clean creatures.  We are going to set up a camera when we move house and it will be fascinating to see them going about their nightly lives. I’ve also noticed a lot of bats flying around this year, and also large dragon flies.  I just hope the bats take note that we are building a bat box into the eaves of the house.  They really are the most lovely things and do a great job in keeping the flying insects under control. The builders are getting on.  Dodging showers a bit today.  They are building the boundary wall on the north side, which will support the fencing that exists there already.  We’ve ...

Times have changed somewhat.  The top photo is taken from a drone. Didn’t know what a drone was 11 years ago and now they are multi tasking - some tasks good and others not so.  The second photo is of the foundations concreted.  This is exciting news for me, but I don’t expect it to be for anyone else reading this. There have been times over the last 6 months especially when I have felt as if I was back in full time employment as a secretary - which was my profession decades ago.  We’ve had a long drawn out ‘conversation’ with the land registry, which we eventually won, and now I am knee deep in reports and surveys and trying to keep up with all the certification we need these days.  In years gone by for example  the only insulation we had to have was a few inches of fibreglass in the loft.  Now you are expected to live in a totally insulated box, where not a whiff of a draught or a mobile phone signal can enter.  And to protect our beloved walnut...

 Hi to anyone who has found my latest blog, entitled Newbuild4, which is exactly what it is.  We did our first self build during the hot summer of 1976.  Our second in 1983. Our  third in 2014, when we came back from 18 years in Spain.  And now we are about to embark on our fourth.  Are you totally mad I hear you say.  Quite possibly.   We have owned the land we are about to build on for almost 40 years - it was the garden of new build number 2, which we kept when we sold the house to make our move to Spain, as an insurance policy for when we eventually came back to England.  The plot has a really nice piece of woodland attached to it, which is the main reason why we are staying here rather than move somewhere else.  We have shared this space with badgers, foxes, rabbits, squirrels and many varieties of birds etc.  We couldn’t bear the thought of a developer bulldozing everything down to make way for housing.   Two years ago we...