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