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