>>>>>Happy Christmas from Brookvale<<<<<

The view from Brookvale to the south west

And then it snowed...

The week started slowly as the groundworkers removed the root of the pine tree that Jan and I had chopped down last Sunday, and then dug a trench for the kerb edging round the left hand side of the bend (just visible behind the plastic fence). This has given us about 3 feet more width on the bend and will make life a lot easier for everyone as two cars will be now able to pass at this point.

As the rain of the earlier part of the week turned to snow on Thursday, so all the groundwork stopped. By Friday, we had about 6 inches of snow and quite a bit of drifting, as can be seen from the picture above. I doubt that any more work will be done on the driveway until the New Year.

Inside the house was a different story though as Matt and Bob made short work of fixing the remaining plasterboard in the bedroom. We now need just a few more pieces of oak capping to finish off the bay window. Once again though we're being held up by A J Joinery whose full order book is an obvious joy to them but a bit of a pain for us!

A J Joinery were due to deliver the front door frame and utility door frame on Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, and lastly Thursday. In the end Roy collected them on Friday! Bob had hoped to fit these and their respective doors during the week, but that will have to be left until next week now. Talking of doors, our oak front door arrived with the timber merchant on Wednesday and they phoned me up to let me know. When I asked if they could deliver, they agreed for the next day. I gave the full address and clear instructions so that the driver could find Brookvale without trouble. Next thing I hear is that Roy has been told they haven't got transport and that he would need to collect the door. "C'est la vie" I thought, "as long as the door gets there". Three hours later and the timber merchant's driver was on the 'phone telling me that he didn't want to leave the door at an unattended site. Wondering firstly how they magically found a lorry, and secondly why there was nobody at Brookvale, I asked what address he was at - "6 Hillside Road" he said! No wonder - he was 1/4 mile away. So much for detailed delivery instructions.

As the roads in Bedfordshire were littered with dead cars and lorries on Friday, no work was done as none of the trades could get there, but the plasterboard and adhesive has arrived for "dot and dab man". I can still find no-one who can tell me what "dot" and "dab" refers to though. Steve Baldock, our dot and dab man arrives Monday to fix the plasterboard to the walls. Everyone tells us that this will make the biggest difference, particularly to the levels of light in the rooms. Can't wait.

Oh, nearly forgot. Our missing alarm man Michael materialised on Thursday and has fitted his cabling so that we have movement sensors in each room with an external door, and a sensor on the front door. We've decided that we'll also alarm the garage so the control unit can be tucked away in the garage, and the siren mounted on the garage gable end. Hopefully this will deter our nocturnal visitors.

Apart from a little clearing up there wasn't much to do today, but I will spend some time tomorrow staining the door frames and front door. Hope its warmer than the minus 7 of today. I did go to the timber merchants this morning as the door manufacturer had delivered an example of an internal door that we liked. How's this for coincidence - the door designs we liked, one with glass panels and one without are called Virgo and Pisces, the respective birth signs for Jan and me. (not that I believe in astrology)

The Clifton snowpeople

A bit of whimsy....

Now we're somewhat experienced in the art of building a house, a few pieces of advice to any budding self builder :

• However big your wallet, you’ll need a bigger one
• Planning officers are rigid about rules, but each planner interprets them differently
• “Planning officer” and “logic” cannot be used in the same sentence
• "Planning officer" and "common sense" cannot be used in the same sentence
• The most secure site will be broken into and stuff stolen
• Your insurance company will find a way to avoid paying out against any claim
• If you’ve got the best top soil in the area, your builder will still, magically, find a way to make it vanish under sub soil and rubble
• A builder can turn a dry, arid, wasteland of a garden into a quagmire within days
• Don’t expect service from the people that provide the main services
• Your architect will find a way to justify giving you a bill you weren’t expecting
• There are special “trade” prices for self builders – they’re called retail plus
• New builds are zero rated for VAT. You can claim VAT back after the house is finished when you really needed the money to help finish the house
• A tidy roofer is one who throws broken tiles in your garden rather than your neighbour’s garden
• A tidy builder is one who clears up when he can’t get into the room he wants to work in
• A clean builder is one who has only 2 kilos of mud on each of his boots
• All building material will be stored in the most vulnerable place and be damaged before use
• Everything will be over-ordered but your builder will kindly offer to take the surplus “off your hands” at 20% of the buy price
• You will be expected to make instant decisions on very important matters
• By attempting to be “Green” and help save the planet, you will be a pauper for the rest of your life
• All electricians must have one leg shorter that the other as they cannot fit a truly level socket or light switch
• All plumbers are virtual – they don’t really exist at all (we've never seen ours but pipes appear as if by magic)
• Painters can work through high wind and torrential rain, as well as in very dusty conditions, and still get a better finish than you
• Most suppliers will treat a self-builder as a moron, at least I assume that’s why they grunt at you
• Plant hire companies are more despised than estate agents and bankers
• Promises of deliveries on specific dates should be treated with more scepticism than Tony Blair's assertion that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction
• You are deemed too stupid to understand a detailed bill
• A builder's toilet is more deadly than anthrax!

Jan & Rog

Now its a turf war!

It was quiet amusing to see the games being played at Brookvale between two building firms. Roy our project manager has his own building company PJR Bacon, and its his chippy and groundworkers that we have been using for the last 6 weeks or so. However, Sue at number 3 Brookvale is having some pretty extensive work done on her house - loft conversion and ground floor extension. Sue's work is being done by Keith Donovan Builders and his sign was displayed on Hillside Road for all to see. Now, because the work Keith's doing cannot be seen from the road, its a fair guess that people will think he's building our house as wee house can be seen from the road! I assume that's why Roy turned up with his own sign last week and put it up in front of our house. Meanwhile, Keith's sign has disappeared from Hillside Road, and I noticed yesterday that Roy has produced another sign. Far be it for me to suggest that Roy has anything to do with Keith's missing sign, but I bet Roy's second sign will be put up on Hillside Road very shortly!

Its been a busy week at Brookvale. As I had annual leave to use up I took last week off and did a few jobs around the (new) house - staining wood for the ceiling of the porch and bay window, as well as being a gopher for hinges, locks and handles. The ironmongery is necessary because we'll have our front door next week and then the building will be made secure. I'm still a bit concerned about nocturnal visits so perhaps becoming a little paranoid about security now. With this in mind I arranged to meet at site on Friday our electrician's mate Michael who installs alarm systems. Sadly he didn't show, and I've had no word from him. With planning of the plumbing now reaching the point where a boiler and copper tubing are to be installed within a few weeks I don't want to risk either being ripped out one dark night so I'll have to find someone else.

Bob the chippy has nearly completed the bay window with just some finishing strips of oak to cover up the steels supports to be put in place. He's also fitted some of the oak windows "boards" which you and I would call sills. During the coming week Bob and Matt should finish off the insulation of the bay window roof and then put in the plasterboard for the ceiling. Talking of plasterboard, Roy met Steve Baldock the "dot and dab" man today to discuss the fitting of the plasterboard to the walls. Apparently the term dot and dab comes from the method of fixing the plasterboard which revolves round the use of dollops of strong adhesive applied to the block work, followed by sticking the plasterboard to it. Not sure which is "dot" and which is "dab" though.

Gary, Matt, and Ian have finished laying the bricks that form the path round the house so are now free to carry on with the kerb edges to the driveway, and the widening of the entrance to Brookvale which the planners have insisted we increase from about 2.5 metres to 4.2 metres so that two cars can pass. This will involve the use of another mini digger which I have insisted Roy hires and cross charges me. Taking of diggers, our claim is now with the loss adjusters - lots of paper, little action!

I met British Telecom's new house build man at site on Friday to discuss the provision of a telephone line to wee house. As I had been told that they would just run a cable in the ground I was a little surprised to be told that they wanted a 2 inch conduit to be laid 600mm down in the ground, into which the cable would run. As we had dug the service trench and then covered it up again, this was not what I wanted to hear. And then it seemed to get worse as it was explained that the telegraph pole part way down the drive could only be used if we could obtain permission from the owner of the drive to run the cable under the driveway. Now call me a sceptic, but I don't really think that I would get that permission from the man who has been so obstructive from day one. Option two then was to take a telephone line from a pole to the south in Hillside Road and run the line under the verge to the top of the drive, where we would connect up to it. However, it was option three that out BT man seemed to like best and that involved installing a new slave telegraph pole on the verge at the top of the drive, and then running an overhead cable from the nearest main pole to this new one. From there it would be run into the ground at the base of the pole to connect to our line running in the service trench. Being concerned that there was a rather high cost associated with all this civil engineering, and also being conscious of the silly prices that EDF and British Gas had charged, I asked about the cost. It appears that BT are obliged to provide service to new buildings and that they allocate £3400 per house towards the cost. My BT man thought that we would be well within that cost so is getting his pole (as in telegraph) man to check the proposed siting tomorrow. Now why can't EDF and British gas do that?

Did the usual clearing up yesterday, including retrieving the used tea bags from the wall cavity in the utility room door opening. We do wonder what they have against the black bin bag we've left just two feet away from where they throw these things. I'm now worried I'm getting a bit anal about this. If I'm not careful I'll be arranging all the cutlery in line in the drawer soon!

And so to today - Jan and I went of to a reclamation yard near Cambridge and bought some floor tiles (apparently correctly called pamments) for the porch floor. They are a sort of salmon / beige colour and look to tone in well with the red and cream bricks used for the house. We managed to get them in the boot of Jan's car and left them in the garage at Brookvale. Might even have a go at laying them myself.......

Jan & Rog

The path to nowhere, a complete bay, and a bill for £15,000

At long last the remaining window for the bay arrived on Monday, so following a couple of coats of stain, the installation was started on Wednesday by Bob the chippy. As you can see, by the end of the week he had all the windows and the bay doors fitted, together with the window cill which Bob had cut and shaped to fit the angles of the bay. We've still got a gap above the windows which will be filled with tongued and grooved boarding which I will be staining on Monday as I have a week's leave (end of year rush to use all all remaining leave). The second photograph shows the view from inside the house and if you look through the window where the sun is glinting you'll see the gap in the hedgerow where the thieves who stole the excavator pushed down a tree to make off across the field.

>

Which leads us nicely on to the saga of the stolen digger. An invoice arrived on Monday from the hire firm. In between items for charges for the chemical loo, scaffold tower and so on, was an invoice for nearly £15,000 for the digger and associated shovel. I've not yet had confirmation that a valid hire contract is in place, but I do now know that the digger in question was not new but a 2006 model. The fact that I'm expected to replace a secondhand digger with a new one seems a tad cheeky, to say the least, but it appears that this may be a starting point for negotiation. I've now placed the whole matter in the hands of my insurance company who advise that a loss adjuster will probably want to visit site to see what happened. We discovered too that on the same night the digger was stolen, there was a break-in at a farm nearby and rolls of copper wire were stolen from a factory storage unit. Busy boys that night weren't they?

>

And so to progress elsewhere. Gary and Matt have been busy laying the bricks for the path round the house, the edging for which you can see in the photo of the bay window. I would expect them to finish the path in the week ahead, depending on the amount of rain we have! Matt has also built the little pier around the porch support post which can be seen in the second photo above.

>

Murphys were back on Thursday to connect the gas in the road at the top of the drive. We've also gained a not exactly pretty brown box on the front wall of the house which will contain the gas meter. This unpleasant little receptacle has a hinged lid which is opened by a special triangle section key. Where do you suppose the key was left? Why, in the box which can only be accessed with a triangle shaped key of course!

>

Lee the painter has been busy applying a final coat of Sadolin to the windows and doors, and despite a less than dry week has got on well. We're really pleased with the look and colour of the windows, especially the bay, as they are exactly as we imagined they would be.

>

Jan and I have been deliberating over doors all week. The external doors have to meet building regulations Part L compliance in respect of heat loss, and one door to the property has to meet part M compliance for (wheelchair) access - a clear opening of at least 750 mm. Now that's all well and good if you're fitting UPVC as there are endless options, but when it comes to oak doors, the choice is very limited. The door must have a "U" value of 2 or less, which is much more easily achieved with double or triple glazed doors than one made predominantly of wood. The other problem is that the oak door manufacturers advise that their doors do not like full sunlight and rain, so should ideally be protected by a porch. That's fine for the front door which is well sheltered, but what about the utility room which faces south east? We may have to buy a door made of a more durable hard wood - meranti - in a style that matches the front door. The only trouble is that meranti is rather pink. Not sure how much the light oak stain we're using will tone it down.

>

Our plasterer, neighbour, and good friend Tony Holland (league of nations round here you know) met Roy at site on Monday to discuss when he could start plastering as nearly all of the plaster boarding for the upper floor has been finished. Tony hopes to start in a week or two, possibly working evenings and weekends. After that its second fix woodwork - skirting and internal doors.

>

This morning I met Roy and his tarmac man - JJ at Brookvale to discuss the re-surfacing of the driveway. Coincidentally I had seen JJs men finishing a drive in Shefford on Friday, and did wonder if it would be the same firm. Small world isn't it? Anyway, inevitably JJ and Roy had known each other since there were dinosaurs on the planet and they joked and ribbed each other

as JJ wandered around in carpet slippers with his little measuring wheel (JJ suffers from gout it appears - hence the slippers). I should get JJ to talk to the council planners as he said that the driveway would support the heaviest of vehicles without any upgrading. JJ said that it needed a depth of 25 mm of tarmac to create an excellent finish so has gone off to calculate the cost. I have no real idea of the likely cost to resurface over 100 metres of drive. Doubtless I will find out quite soon.

>

Jan & Rog