External walls finished, but we smell a Rat....

Its been a busy week. Dean and his team have now finished the external brickwork, nicely finished off with the alternating red half bricks in a sort of inverted castellated design. Roy had his chippy come down to site on Friday when he fitted the wall plates - basically, planks of wood that are clamped to the top of the inner block wall and to which the roof trusses are fixed. As you can see to the right, the roof trusses arrived (on Thursday) and they are due to be fitted by crane on Tuesday by Pete Brooks and his team.

So we steam on, but there have been a couple of developments that were unwanted. Firstly, when I went to site on Thursday, two of the temporary pegs, sited to delineate the boundary of our land, had been knocked over. As they were the ones nearest to the driveway I didn't bother with them. However, it appears that someone working on our build committed a heinous crime - they parked on Mr Hyde's grass! Worse, they were seen. I therefore had a visit from Mr Hyde's representative, Peter Philips, who had put two more posts in the ground to replace those that had been removed. According to Peter, Mr Hyde was a very unhappy man due to the trespass on his land and had supposedly said "Not showing me much goodwill, is he" (referring to me of course). Although I thought it pathetic in the extreme I imagined it was the rant of a rather sad old man and agreed to make sure that no-one dared to park there again. So today I have put that bright red plastic fencing right the way along the boundary and put a couple of long bits of wood across the end of Mr Hyde's access track to stop our guys parking there. (There is a danger of course that I will be accused of trespass in so doing!).

Anyway, the second development is that the same Peter Philips now appears to be working for Aidan who lived at No 1 Brookvale. He still owns the house but lets his workers use it rather than pay hotel charges. Peter is trying to get planning permission to build two houses in Aidan's garden. One of these is only viable if access can be achieved along the existing driveway and this would require each of the owners of the cottages at Brookvale, including us, to agree to the owner of this house using those parts of the driveway that we each own. Given the opposition to our build this ain't gonna happen! The same Peter Philips has also written to the owners of 2 - 4 Brookvale and suggested that they, and Gillian Walton at number 5, together with ourselves should each pay Mr Hyde £2000 to purchase the drive from him. Whilst the letters have been received by numbers 2, 3, and 4, Gillian Walton and we have yet to hear from him. As you might imagine, no-one can really understand the logic of paying £12,000 in total to acquire joint ownership of a liability, (the drive) which all of us have a right to use anyway. It does seem odd that these two things are being handled by the same person at the same time. So, given that Peter Philips used to be in business with our old friend, we all smell a rather large Rat(aj). Could it be that Mr Hyde is still the innocent in all this and that the two old business partners are trying to work a flanker?

As yet there is still no sign of the title deeds that show that Mr Hyde owns the drive, despite my solicitor being on the trail with Land Registry. The plot thickens.....

Jan & Rog

Inching forward

With Dean on holiday there's not been much progress this week, except for the scaffolding which was erected on Monday. I popped along at lunchtime on Monday to see how things were going and was greeted by two very grumpy scaffolders - a very common trait so I'm told - a moaning scaffolder is a happy scaffolder apparently. Anyway, I asked them if then needed anything and they said "no", so I left them to it. Later in the day I checked if all was done and was told by our neighbours-to-be that the two scaffolders had been moaning about not knowing what was wanted. Apparently their boss, who had been fully briefed, had gone on holiday and not given them the full details. Anyway, all the scaffolding is up now although I suspect that a little bit of obtuseness has crept in because the single ladder up the scaffolding has been set up at the furthest possible point from the cement mixer meaning that each load of mortar will have to be taken round 3 sides of the house to get to the ladder. Scaffolders revenge perhaps?

Other than that, I've been tidying up again today - strimming the weeds which have grown rapidly in the recent warm, wet weather, and moving the Hares fencing which one of the delivery drivers has managed to drive into and comprehensively wreck. I've just positioned it a little further into the site to give more room for the delivery of the roof trusses next week.

During next week Dean expects to finish all the brick and blockwork. Indeed, he has to as the chippy arrives on September 1st to erect the roof trusses.

One little negative - we seem to have a wrongly positioned door from the utility room into the garden. Its too near the front wall and doesn't leave enough room for a standard worksurface (600mm) let alone a washing machine. Need to talk to Roy about that on Monday.

There has been a development on the access road and Mr Hyde during the week too. I took a call from Peter Philips who is acting from Mr Hyde and it appears that there is an impasse - we really don't want the land and driveway if we can't use the land as an extension to our garden, and Mr Hyde wishes to retain his right of access to the field and is not interested in selling the driveway for the modest sum we feel its worth. Peter Philips told me that he had explained that we had marked out his 14 foot wide access road and then pegged and roped it to show its boundary with our land. Mr Hyde asked what we would do when the permanent fence was put up, to which I responded that it would follow exactly the same line as the temporary markers. He asked that Peter Philips supervise the positioning of the permanent fence and now seems to be happy to leave it there. So, we hope that's the end of that little saga.

Jan & Rog

We have walls!

Dean and his team have been laying the facing bricks this week and have matched the height of the internal block wall leaving only 3 feet or so to go. I was surprised to see him there today (Sunday) but apparently he wanted to finish the bay to bottom of window height before the scaffolders arrive tomorrow. Unfortunately Dean's team are all on annual holiday this coming week which will mean that he will have one week to finish the brickwork before the carpenter arrives to fix the roof trusses. Its cutting it a bit fine - we'll have to pray for good weather week commencing 24th August!

No other news at the moment - all's quiet on the access drive front.

Jan & Rog

You never know what's around the corner!

Following the delays due to poor weather last week, Dean and his team have made really good progress this week. Not only have the inner block work walls been built up to a height of about 5 feet, but the outer brick walls were started on Friday and we can begin to visualise the effect of the cream bricks.

Roy, our project manager, has been as organised as ever and has now placed orders for the special roof trusses which are scheduled for positioning in the first week of September. Roy has also arranged for the a company to visit to quote for the scaffolding for the upper courses of bricks, and for the roof. Quotes are back too for the windows and doors - all oak - as we wanted something that would look the part and be long lasting. However, we now understand that only companies that belong to FENSA (Fenestration Association) can supply windows as they can certify that the windows meet current building regulations standards. I've emailed FENSA and asked them to let me know of a window manufacturer near us that has the approporiate accreditation.

As ever our planning team at Central Beds has been on the ball (you don't believe that, do you?) and at long last given approval for the foul waste. This was a condition of planning approval being granted, which, due to a bit of a mix up between planners and building regs people (never I hear you say!) was initially refused because the building regs lot said they didn't know how it was being handled so the planners refused to accept it. Mouth - open - question - answer - simples! Not really difficult is it. Anyway, our building surveyors submitted detailed plans in early May this year, chased the planners in June and again in July, after which I chased too. Guess what, the approval was posted on the Central Beds web site last week, but of course letting us know is not a priority. Still, its only taken 3 months to look at a simple plan and say "accepted".

I've been on a weeks leave this week so have busied myself being Mrs Mop and clearing up the site (builders being less than tidy people). I've cleared Mr Hyde's access drive to the field beyond our plot too - doubt that I will get a thank you for that though, but there was a reason. And so to the intrigue................

I received a telephone call last week - from a chap called Peter Phillips who used to be in partnership with our old "friend" Stuart Rataj (pronounced Ratay) apparently - that's with a silent "ay" on the end. He said he was acting for Mr Hyde, the owner of the driveway to Brookvale and that he wanted to meet up to see if we could reach a compromise over access.

We duly met on Monday and I was asked if I wanted to purchase the driveway and the land at the end of our plot that provides access to the field. "Yes" I said. However, there was a snag. Mr Hyde wanted to retain the right of access to the field and wanted a minimum of 6 metres width so he could get a combine harvester down the drive. This was an odd request as he's not used the drive for farm vehicles for at least 17 years, so why now. Peter Phillips didn't know. When pushed on what value Mr Hyde put on this, Peter Phillips said £20,000. As my valuation of this land, without giving Mr Hyde access, was in low single figures, we had an impasse, but Peter said he would go to see Mr Hyde and explain my position.

As you might imagine Jan was less than enthusiastic about losing some of our land (as was I). It was also rather ironic that this was the man who had signed letters to the then Mid Beds District Council insisting our planning applications should go to committee so that the parish council could vent their spleen about the "inappropriate" design of our house, and this was the reason we reverted to the existing planning permission. Had we continued with our application we would have moved the house nearer to the garage and had more garden. If that had happened we would have perhaps been more amenable to a compromise with Mr Hyde about the width of access he wanted.

Peter Phillips then suggested that we should measure out the plot and agree where the boundaries were. As I had no problem with that (in fact if Mr Hyde had been a little more positive much earlier in proceedings, we could have done this some time ago. On meeting Peter at Brookvale he told me he had been to Land Registry at Stevenage to check all the deeds and titles which showed the various measurements. I knew that we should have 36 metres along the hedgerow between us and My Hyde's field, and that in theory Mr Hyde had a 14 foot access track beyond that. Trouble was, when we measured out 36 metres, Mr Hyde didn't have 14 feet left between our boundary and the hedge which delineated the next boundary.

Knowing that Mr Hyde's deed for the "cart track", dating back to the 1870s was the primary document I suggested that we should then give Mr Hyde his 14 feet access width - I didn't want to end up with a costly boundary dispute, and if making this gesture to Mr Hyde was likely to help reach a compromise, then it seemed sensible. Subsequent research has shown that a combine harvester requires 4.2 metres of road and as 14 feet is 4.3 metres, perhaps we have a solution... lets wait and see.

Given that Mr Hyde wishes to have access across to the land behind our plot I've said I'm not interested in buying it as it cannot be included as part of our garden if the occasional farm vehicle has to drive across it. I have said I will buy the driveway from him though - for a nominal sum. This would remove his current responsibility to repair the road and recover costs from the owners of 1 to 6 Brookvale. As I pointed out - its nothing but a liability. (Mind you , if I own it there can be no dispute over whether or not we can use it!)

Do we actually believe what we're being told - well, not really. We suspect that there's more too it than we've been told. We'll have to wait and see!

More news next week.

Jan & Rog