Listed and Committed

Important stuff

2012-01-30T20:28:00.001Z

I spent Saturday morning commissioning a toothpaste holder from a potter on the Malmesbury market place. Her ready made pots weren't quite the right size, so she's doing a bespoke version in a lovely yellow and blue splashed design. Making the most of the space in our newly carpented bathroom cabinet seemed highly sensible to me, although Dave did make bitter comments about Nero and Rome.

I helped on the fire fighting front on Sunday instead. My lovely friend Jennie has acquired an allotment and so we rehomed the grotty concrete patio slabs with them. It delighted the inner eco-warrier in me to reuse them rather than smash them up as hard core, and meant that we had help to lift and dispose of most of them. As an added bonus we might even get to taste some of the veg they'll be paving the way to.

In the house the kitchen is limping towards usability, the broken upstairs loo (did I mention the roughly 50% smash rate on bathroom fittings so far?) has been changed, and work has (today) started to reinstate the original large stone framed window in the cellar.

Why, you may ask, is the cellar happening before the kitchen is finished? It's a question I've asked myself. At no point did spending time or money on the cellar feature in my original making-the-house-vaguely-habitable plan. Admittedly I got permission to reinstate the old, bigger window as part of the overall planning application, because I thought I might want to do it eventually, but that was it. However, Dave has somehow created an impecably logical argument that we should put the new window, heating and electricity in now rather than later. It's something to do with cycling, a chilly lycra clad walk to the shed in winter to his turbo trainer, and It's Not Asking For Much to have one tiny room devoted to his hobby.

It will, despite several steels (the original stone frame is rather cracked in places, and there's a lot of house above it...) and more than several £'s, still be very much a cellar for some time, so I'm not too distressed at surrendering it to Dave. There is, in due course and when enthusiasm for DIY has returned to the realm of possibility, a labour of love to be done on removing ghastly concrete pointing from the stone walls. In the meantime it was quite exciting to come home from work and see the cute reveal created on one side of the window. We'll have a little recess where the wall bizarely turns back on itself to allow the window width. Perhaps the cellar stairs and supporting arch weren't originally in their current position? I did have a tinsy tiny hope that the house might miraclously repay the lime plaster level of devotion I'm showing with reciprocal long buried civil war treasure, but this is our last major smash and bash, so it's clearly not to be.

And a final photo of our back yard, presently to be the front yard. We seem to have had diggers moving dirt from one muddy pile to another for some time now, with no discernable change in the overall useability of the space. There has been a sort of inverse progress in that one evening we unexpectedly had no water from a severed pipe (boo) and the next day they reconnected it (yipee!). I believe it's all something to do with levels and drainage and the ground level being higher than the kitchen bit.
Not having someone from work visiting and seeing my lamentable lack of ability to project manage progress on a 2 down 3 up cottage must be a considerable factor in keeping my job as Project Director.

Falling Down

2012-01-23T21:06:00.000Z

Since my readership are either in snowier climes (parents) or preoccupied with being pregnant (brother), I haven't felt too bad about the lack of recent progress updates. And to be fair to my project manger, a lot has happened.

The bathroom window was removed and the house nearly fell down. Scaffolding and acro props were more hastily errected than I had known our workmen could get anything done.

The photo above accurately reflects both a spirit of progress (a week before there wouldn't have been a light at the landing window), the utter devastation that is my garden, and a certain pervading atmosphere of bleakness not inappropriate for December.

A week after the scaffolding went up, we very fortunately had a week of howling gales and horizontal rain. This revealed a hitherto unknown leak in the 450 year old bits of oak that form the top bit of the gable end. So the scaffolding went a floor higher, and we've had some lovely views of the surrounding town and countryside from our impromtu balconies.

And life inside has improved, we have not one, not two but three bedrooms all decorated (well, almost) and carpetted. It was absolutely thrilling to move the bed upstairs again. And, although we have very little in the way of mod cons, the washing machine has been coughing its way through mounds of dusty clothes.

I've developed a handy knack of whisking clothes in and out of it by headtorch, with only a modicum of fresh filth being acquired on the way. Our lovely neighbours have been lending us their tumble drier, as finding somewhere warm and clean for the airer has been a tad trickier to achieve.

And I'm still loving living in Malmesbury, even in the bleak midwinter. Hank and I had a super walk last weekend, and it was a treat to return home and look up and see one of our new bedroom windows peaking above the rooftops. We're the grey gable on the top-left in the photo below. The new green liveried window is almost invisible, which is lovely after the glare of the plate glass monstrosities I inherited.

Hank, incidentally, would be very distressed if you didn't notice his stick. It was the Finest Stick In The World for all of half an hour.

Steamy Night In

2011-12-13T14:28:00.000Z

We stripped the bottom half of the staircase last night.

As with most of the other rooms, 'stripping wallpaper' rapidly translated into 'removing 5 layers of old crumbling plaster and re-distributing centuries old dust around entire house.'

The kitchen is however looking more like a kitchen.

Hot Bath!

2011-12-01T10:09:00.000Z

We had a hot bath last night!

It was off the emersion heater rather then the yet-to-work central heating, and did reveal that the water pressure issue has not been resolved, but, nonetheless, it was the first bath I been able to have since I moved in to Culver View.

The new tub was massively, deeply, wonderful and warm and wet. And from my end of the bath it almost looked like a normal room in a grown up person's house. That was, until the new mirror fell off the wall.

Snapshots

2011-11-26T15:30:00.000Z

Our bathroom has rather hopefully lost its washbasin, and the loo's been turned off.

Which has meant the excitement of having a working loo upstairs....

And a basin. It's only got cold water, and the tap's wobbly, but it seems mean spirited to point this out.

Elsewhere some camera angles make the delivery and fitting of bedroom carpets on the 12th seem not unreasonable...

Whilst others don't paint quite such a rosy picture...

The picture rail, by the way is a mistake... It's coming down.

I painted a bath!

2011-11-23T21:04:00.002Z

You might be misled into thinking that painting a bath ('Why,' Dave's father asked on the phone, 'are you painting a bath? Won't it come off when you fill it with water?') was an indication that we're getting to the finishing touches.

Unless finishing touches include central heating and running water, it's definitely not.

You may not yet have realised it, but things are Behind Schedule.

About 100% Behind Schedule.

I had allowed myself to be lured into a 'I can't wait until its finished' state of mind. Mainly, I have to say, by the fact that every day for the last 2 months Dave has taken me into one of the bedrooms and said something along the lines of 'Look! It's nearly finished!' I've duely expressed admiration at his amazing manly achievement of making builders their tea, and let myself think of toasty radiators, hot baths and tasteful decor as being just round the corner.

I am now endeavouring to return to my zen like state of acceptance of ever so slightly grim living conditions. By dint of reminding myself that this is all happening with absolutely no (if you ignore the odd bit of bath painting) input of any effort by me, I think I'm getting there.

In brief: No bedroom is yet finished, there is no working bathroom upstairs and because of this no work has been able to start downstairs.

On the positive side Dave has bought a laminate wood floor for his bike shed. It is so very important to focus on the critical path.

But does it matter? No, not a bit. We've been dead jammy with the warm autumn so far, had lots of lovely weekends away recently and Granny's 1950's electric heater still has one bar working. There's not a lot wrong with that life.

I've rather been waiting for progress...

2011-11-10T22:35:00.000Z

I've rather been waiting for progress before I next blogged, on the basis that moaning about your project manager isn't (apparently) acceptable when you live with him. But now I've just given up.

Suffice it to say that not planning Christmas lunch here was, in retrospect, a farsighted decision.

To cheer me up I thought I'd post a couple of before and not-quite-but-nearly-after pictures of the bottom of the garden.

Before...

After: Broad structure in place, still some more concrete removal (the patio...) to do before get to the fun planting stuff stage, but it definitely looks more like progress than the house.

The shed is a bit raw at the moment, and its not the most charming of designs, but it's what the council officer told me was acceptable. She was categorical that a veranda on the front was not the local vernacular, although of course that didn't seem to stop her specifying wooden boarding. I have a fine longer term (i.e. when the council have absolutely no reason to come back and see what I'm doing) plan to add one. And visions of cottage style planting rambling in a charmingly confused but stunningly beautiful way around the garden. Given a complete lack of any spark of gardening genius in my life to date, that might be rather hopeful. Maybe just getting rid of the concrete paving slabs would be a more realistic goal.

Might feel brave enough to post some pictures of the house next time.

A month in

2011-10-14T06:38:00.000+01:00

A month in, several steps forward, and several steps back.

The framing (it seems that's the technical term for the bits of wood that make up new walls) went up to create the bathrooms almost immediately, and that was intensely encouraging. Further encouragement from plaster board, and plaster skim going on. See picture below for how lovely the newly sanded beams look infront of the new en-suite wall!

Then the plumber fell through the sitting room ceiling, so there's now a coffin shaped bit of mdf hovering on the ceiling above our bed in lieu of original lath and plaster. Dave was not amused.

And then we started stripping wall paper off the bedrooms on the first floor. I am in newly found awe of anaglypta wall paper, it appears (with a few dozen supporting layers of paint) to have been all that was holding the walls up.

At one level I find this really interesting - we're getting to see the bones of the house. These walls were probably inserted a couple of hundred years ago in early Victorian times as part of the permanent division into 2 dwellings, and they're beautiful. But at the same time putting the flesh back on the bones will cost considerably more in plaster and plasterer's time than just a quick skim, which is less positive. Interestingly the plaster on the 500 year old walls - the external stone walls, doesn't have this same problem. And the pattern of plaster failure is almost wholly along the wooden beams within the Victorian walls - must be something to do with moisture content or different expansion and contraction?

We fortunately have a lovely plasterer, he's happy working with lime plaster (traditional and breathable rather than the modern stuff) and has beaten us to it in suggesting nice rounded edges in some places rather than sharp modern 'metal' edges.

Changing Rooms

2011-09-19T20:09:00.000+01:00

I left Culver View this morning with not only a builder beavering away, but also an electrician! Too exciting.

Now that work has started, I've been veering wildly between feeling that the house is both tiny and massive. The various bits of framing for new partition walls that have gone in have revealed just how bijou the house bathroom is. I have, however, been braced for that, and every time I've seen a small bathroom in the last 6 months I've stood and admired how even a small bathroom is absolutely fine. Really. No one needs to swing a cat in a bathroom. They'd be lucky to see Blackie in the first place. And she wouldn't like being swung. So its categorically fine that the bathroom is small.

And the sitting room will be really very pleasantly spacious. To prove that point, it's currently housing not only Dave's bikes, Dave's desk and paperwork, but also all my clothes, Dave's clothes, the bedroom furniture, and our bed. A move (accomplished quite swiftly last night, all 35 pairs of shoes considered) necessitated by general upstairs building activity.

On the builder front Dave is expressing high levels of satisfaction. Not only did Steve pro-actively sit down with him and plan the work with lots of gantt chart action before he arrived, he says goodbye before he leaves in the evening rather than just disappearing! He even, Dave reported in tones of wonder, left a note when he popped out to get some stuff yesterday. In a world where the first rule of any kind of tradesmanship appears to be to communicate as little as possible as late as possible, this seems well nigh miraculous.

Apparently a picture of me sprawled-over-bed-in-post-changing-rooms-removal-knackerdom is not the stuff of every man's fantasy. But I believe the picture below is...

Steve the Builder Started Today

2011-09-12T13:18:00.001+01:00

It is a momentous occasion, work on the inside of the house has started today!

At least I hope it has. I left Dave and Steve drinking tea and heading off to the garden together to admire a few square meters of flat earth (the result of a mini-digger and lots of blisters from me at the weekend). I'm rather hopeful that admiring Dave's mini-digger prowess won't have taken all day, and that some actual building work might have taken place at some point.

We drank champagne last night in anticipation of Steve's arrival. And in the sure and certain knowledge that we'll uncover enough 'suprises' in the next month or so to render any celebratory drinks rather redundant, or at least unaffordable. Dave's 'budget' already seems to have crept over my imagined total, and doesn't include any contingency...

A Narrow Escape

2011-08-21T19:29:00.001+01:00

I almost had to do some DIY this weekend.

By Friday evening last week Dave hadn't quite got as far with his beam-sanding as he'd have liked, and he seemed to think that we could both do it together on Saturday. I'm not entirely sure what a successful recipe for getting back together with an ex-husband is, but I suspect spending my Saturday pointing out all the wood worm/deathwatch beetle/wet rot holes that he's missed is not high on the list of optimal ingredients.

By dint of thoughtfully reminding him that his aunty and uncle have just moved house and that a minimum fond nephew activity would be popping over with a bunch of flowers, plus a bit of shilly shallying before we set off on fond-nephew mission, I successfully put off the start of any beam sanding activity until mid afternoon. By which time it really was too late to start (at least in my book).

I salved my conscience on the basis if he hadn't made three separate trips to bike shops on Friday - don't even ask about the bill - there wouldn't have been any sanding left to do in the first place.

In the interests of fairness I should say that he is doing rather a good job. He's even taking the kind of care in picking bits of horsehair and plaster out of cracks that you can imagine Kevin McCloud commending (hushed whisper as Kevin tiptoes away from the loft, 'Dave has now spent 20 gazillion hours of his life 2 inches from this beam. This really is a labour of love.').

And, because we didn't get knackered and filthy on Sat, we had a night out at Malmesbury's premier Carnival event, 'Malmesbury's Got Talent.' It was, in places, as entertaining as anyone could possibly wish. Although I can now categorically assure you that Malmesbury hasn't got a lot of talent.

Malmesbury Carnival is, incidentally, rather a lovely thing - there's a Carnival procession the first w/e in September, but there is more than a month of tons of different events in the run up. Some of them related to making things for the procession, but loads of other social and interesting stuff. Absolutely charming.

Slugs and snails and puppy dog tails

2011-08-15T17:13:00.000+01:00

Slight misnomer in the post title as whilst I do have lots of slugs and snails, Hank is now positively middle aged and doesn't have a tail to speak of. But it's got a nice ring to it. And, before you ask, I have no clue where the line comes from. I did get corrected on my last attribution of '7 Hours and 15 Days' to Annie Lennox. Ju Yen helpfully pointed out it should have been Sinead O'Connor.

My ongoing war against slugs has continued with hand to hand combat. Not particularly my choice, but if they chose to lie across the kitchen floor in the middle of the night what can they expect? They've certainly to date demonstrated a complete lack of any efficacy in the organic slug pellets that decorate the back yard. In fact, the first slug I captured was absolutely enormous - as long as one of the kitchen tiles - so it almost feels like they're treating the pellets as a delicacy. No 2 was more normally slug sized. Both took a midnight flight over the city wall into the garden below. I felt a bit unneighbourly, but squishing a slug when in slippers in those low energy watches of the night was completely beyond me.

I felt considerably better about my slug problem after my recent visits to London. I was regaled with 'rat in Barnes kitchen shocker' as an explanation of why the patio doors were shut on a steamy day, and an epic tale of a face off with a fox in Dulwich. Friend 1 coped by waving her week old baby at the next door neighbour until they caught and despatched the rat, whereas Friend 2 chased (all 7 stone nothing of her) the fox to the end of her garden until it relinquished the chicken back to her tender care. Cheered on by toddlers who summarised the incident afterwards as 'Mummy was very cross with the fox.' An excellent example of Somervillian spirit, Mrs T couldn't have done better.

Not doing nothing

2011-07-29T08:38:00.001+01:00

Dave's move into Culver View has not been positive in one respect, I have a sneaking suspicion that he's going to get all the glory of the eventual transformation from dank-hole-student-would-not-live-in to elegant-home-with-quirky-yet-tasteful-character-features.

I get this feeling because BB's response to my getting my planning consent was 'Dave's really making a difference already.' And I can't count how many people have commented how nice it must be to have nothing to do.

I find that slightly unkind ....I haven't been doing nothing. I've been motivating Dave to think that now his big bike race is over he can really focus on getting stuff done in the house; I've discouraged him from even thinking about entering any more sportives until substantial change is visible; and I've pointed out that things always take much longer than you'd imagine.

Which has all been productive of a change in rate of output. We have, after 3 half days of hard labour by Dave (half days because of need to go for bike ride, obviously...) got a sanded beam in a bedroom! Yippee. I'm not entirely sure that Dave has enjoyed it, and to be fair it did look like really hard work. I was anticipating it taking me weeks to do as much as he's done in a few days.

But, I seem to have slightly moved away from the core point here - which is that I'm Not Doing Nothing. And there is proof below - painted bits of shed doors! I spent large parts of a week's holiday doing a layer of primer and a layer of undercoat.

There was the faint hope that they'd be installed by now. They're not. Dave is now seriously annoyed at the lack of progress on the shed. We're still waiting for tiles, and absolutely nothing else is happening. It does feel like almost everything else could happen in the interregnum, but Chris's main job is just dominating his workload. Certainly a helpful learning point for main house work…

Waiting for the Roof Tiles

2011-07-21T18:19:00.000+01:00

It seems that the current pause in shed progress is because we're waiting for the roof tiles. I sort of got that the delay for the roof trusses was justified because the ones we eventually used weren't what were originally designed. And the happy fact that Forestry Commission staff went on strike (not me I hasten to add...) on the one day a week the timber collection happens for our particular saw mill, was just an unhappy conflation of circumstance.

But roof tiles? Surely there was no doubt at any point that they'd be needed? I asked my live-in Project Manager, quite calmly all things considered, why this was the case and received an unconvincing mutter along the lines of 'didn't know the number needed.' And then saw a lot of bright lycra disappear very quickly down the driveway.

So, the shed has looked like this for a while now.

Meeting the Sams

2011-07-19T12:51:00.001+01:00

People keep sympathetically remarking how horrible it must be to have builders in, and how am I possibly coping. I don't like to disown a compliment, but so far it seems remarkably easy. Helped of course by the fact that they're never there.

They did make a brief appearance the other day, and it was coincidentally a day I was working from home. Dave was off on his bike - or it may have been the golf course that day, it's difficult to keep track.

Chris has two labourers working for him, Fat Sam and Thin Sam. Thin Sam stands and waits for instructions with a vaguely adenoidal stare, Fat Sam seems to do most of the work. Chris did a lot of swearing at one point, kicked his truck and walked off. After a decent interlude had passed I went out and offered tea and sympathy that a) the walls weren't straight, b) that meant the roof beams weren't going on straight, c) this meant it was a pain in the arse. Pointing out that it seemed perfectly obvious that there wasn't a straight line in sight, and shouldn't that be expected in an old building, was not a good move. I attempted to retrieve the situation with an upbeat 'How nice it is that we finally seem to be making progress!' Not sure it was an entirely successful amende honorable.

They haven't turned up since, and Dave has banned me from working from home when he isn't there to supervise me.

Chipping Bricks

2011-07-04T10:46:00.000+01:00

By way of celebration, Dave had me chipping mortar off bricks for the majority of last weekend. It was a rather pleasant way of spending a sunny Saturday in the garden, and he did allow me a pass out to walk the dog on Sunday.

The shed has stalled rather. The structural engineer agreed with the builder that the design of the shed roof was a bit dodgy, and so has designed a double A frame roof structure instead (No, I have no idea what this means either, and have decided its one of the many things that I can happily live without understanding). And that’s apparently what’s holding things up. I’m a bit more convinced that what we’re waiting for is Chris-the-builder to have a suitable gap in his concurrent mega project. Not unreasonably he’s keener to prioritise that rather than the shed, and the delay with the roof structural issue has thrown his timings all out.

Chris-the-builder is absolutely lovely, but Dave is struggling slightly with his refusal ever to commit to a) turning up or b) spend time communicating exactly what is likely to happen when. And in relation to the main house there’s quite a lot of metaphorical beard tugging and comments along the line of ‘well, difficult to say when we’d be able to get to it…’ So he’s rather hoping to find another builder that might be able to start on the main house sooner rather than later. In the meantime the shed does look at least started…

I Got It

2011-06-28T08:38:00.004+01:00

I got it!

On Wednesday night I got my listed building consent for new windows and my kitchen wall removal.

Doesn't sound much to celebrate, but it has taken nearly 6 months to get this far.

And this was quite a big decision for Wiltshire Council as it sets a massive precedent. They've never allowed double glazing on a listed building anywhere before. One or two other Councils across the UK have very occasionally done so, but Wiltshire have not. And at officer level they'd taken a decision that they never would. Even more certainly, not on a Grade 2* building (they're lots thinner on the ground than mere Grade 2s), and even more categorically not on this 2* building.

Committee's are inclined to support, although not as consistently as officers would like, their staff’s recommendations. But, extremely happily in this case, the Councillors voted 5:2 in favour of my proposals.

Big sigh of relief. I’d been told, by those rather more clued up than me, that Councillors don't necessarily make decisions in line with planning law, so it was by no means certain that my irrefutable logic would win the day. And maybe it didn't, maybe I got lucky.

Rather sweetly, the Town Council and the Residents Association both seem to be taking the victory personally, and congratulatory emails have been winging their way around both.

Hope!

2011-06-20T20:31:00.002+01:00

I've just been practising my 'speech' for Wed evening. At the Committee Meeting (for the planning this is, in case you've not been hanging on my every word) they allow up to 3 members of the public to speak for up to 3 minutes each on behalf of a planning application. I'm obviously not going to miss the chance to tell them exactly why its blinking obvious that they should say yes to what I want. And having written an impassioned and informed, yet sympathy-grabbing, oration, at least I'm convinced.

Even more convincingly, the other 2 speakers on my behalf are big hitters in the Malmesbury world. The lovely Roger, Chair of the local Residents Association, and one of the Town Councillors from the Town Planning and Environment Committee. I'm particularly impressed that I didn't even ask Councillor Bill to speak - his committee are so fervently supportive of my application they suggested it themselves. Which, given that it means one of them spending an incredibly boring evening in a committee room far far away (it's a whole 20 miles to the local metropolis of Chippenham) is beyond kind.

And I think it can only help - I bet many of the County Councillors started life on a Town Council, so they will appreciate how unusual it is to bother going to these lengths to support a resident.

I'm also planning to wear my shortest-yet-with-demure-neckline dress, which won't help if the committee is full of women, but might if its anything like any other committee I've been near so far. The Town Council, bless them, were all sympathy when I explained, bathetically, that 'I just want to be able to have a bath', and two of the councillors volunteered to join me. The only other woman in the room, a startlingly young volunteer Tree Officer looked suitably aghast at that point, but I really didn't care. They were being lovely and supportive, and that's what matters.

It's been 7 hours and 15 days....

2011-06-16T17:25:00.001+01:00

Well, actually, Annie Lennox got it wrong. It's been 3 months since the deadline for determining my house planning applications passed, which, given that the Council are only meant to take 2 months in total is pretty shocking.

So shocking in fact, that I eventually ignored the advice of my architect-who's-not-an-architect - weak wimpers along the lines of 'you don't want to annoy them you know'. Which from someone who hasn't got a visible clue about the process seems a bit rich.... I actually COMPLAINED to the Director of Development.

And it worked. Big Cheese spoke to medium size minion, who put some pressure on the conservation officer, and after a few painful weeks of stuttering she finally produced the approval report for my first application. That's the one for the central heating and bathroom in the old bit of the house. Yippee, in a sort of muted yippee-but-about-time-too-and-how-the-hell-did-it-take-this-long way.

We can (I use the word 'we' in the Royal sense, clearly anything now related to the house means Dave) now get on with clearing the conditions attached to it, and then we can actually get started.

The pressure didn't work in making Bid Cheese force her to re-think her hatred of my plans to remove a wall to create a kitchen and to replace horrid windows, so unfortunately the second application is still having to go to Planning Commitee. Positively, that meeting is next Wednesday evening, so we don't have to wait too long. We only just scraped into that meeting by the skin of our teeth - and much against the will of the conservation officer who was adamant that she didn't have time to write the report. She got, apparently, a right royal bollocksing from medium cheese when he realised (via a helpful email from me) that we might slip another month.

Fingers crossed for next Wednesday...

For a few brief days I had a builder.

2011-06-16T17:03:00.000+01:00

Not a great deal of progress has been made on the shed since last week. Largely because having looked at the design properly, Chris-The-Builder took an executive decision that in his view the architect didn't know what he was talking about, and the thing would fall down from the weight of the roof tiles. So he has very sensibly downed tools, and asked for a structural engineer to reassure him.

It's not death-to-new-shed time, but it is added-cost-to-new-shed time, which doesn't warm the cockles of my heart. That's because there are various sensible and low cost tweaks Chris-The-Builder could make to the design, (like inserting a support pillar in between the stupidly large doors), but because the blinking thing needs listed building consent, if we wanted to change the external appearance at all we'd have to go back to the council for a new LBC, or at least agree a variation to the current design. Which would mean getting architect-whos-not-an-architect to do more drawings for us, which given the level of confidence we have in him seems like the height of insanity. And would mean trying to get a positive answer from the council within a reasonably short space of time, which is clearly totally impossible given that it would also highlight to them that we’ve started work on the shed without their having cleared the conditions to their satisfaction. There is just no point going there.

So, getting a structural engineer to find a solution (probably involving bolting bits of steel together) and throwing a bit more money at it seems like the only, if not particularly happy, answer.

The really nice thing about this is that it’s all Dave’s challenge to sort out! Given that I have a live in project manager (when he’s not wearing lycra), why bark myself? I’m also doing him a favour, I’m sure there was some Cosmo survey that said it’s not at all healthy for anyone to have nothing to worry about.

My complete refusal to take any responsibility for dealing with this has caused one or two tricky conversations, Dave appearing to think that bike training has precedence over tracking down a structural engineer, or even over cleaning up piles of bricks from the lawn. His logic is so obviously totally flawed that it’s not even worth discussing it.

I've got a builder.....

2011-06-07T20:26:00.004+01:00

Chris-The-Builder turned up today and started demolishing the shed! Its a moment of celebration, marred not at all by the fact that my lawn has disappeared under a pile of rubble.

I am sort of illegal on the shed. That's because of these tedious things called planning conditions, which the Council haven't cleared. After spending most of Jan to April trying to get the conservation officer to agree we'd met the conditions - including having to wait until the frost had passed before the builder could do a sample of pointing in pure lime mortar - I eventually asked advice from the family planning consultant (a mate of my Mum's who helpfully happens to be a Planning Inspector). He bluntly told me to stop pissing around with a clearly unreasonable and ill informed conservation officer, to formally ask for the conditions to be cleared (there's a special form..) and then if the Council haven't reacted with a formal 'ok' within 8 weeks, the statutory deadline, just to go ahead. As he pointed out you can't just keep waiting for ever.

He had a large number of words to describe conservation officers, none of them repeatable. His theory is that they get so used to browbeating residents with requests that are conceded to by Joe Public because you and I haven't a clue what they can insist on, that they get power crazy and don't apply the law properly. He was also totally scathing about a council so not ontop of its workload that they are missing deadlines right left and centre - and appearing unconcerned about it. It made me feel better anyway.

Or at least did until I started feeling nervous about the illegal bit of just going ahead - because in reality the council could slap an enforcement order on me to stop work/reverse work on the shed. Anyway, I really don't have a lot of choice, so no point being nervous about it.

Ho hum. Can't face writing in black and white where we've got to on the house planning consents tonight, I'll save that treat for another time...

Sadly...

2011-05-27T14:11:00.000+01:00

We've plumeted from 4 baby birds to none in as many days. They kept falling out of the nest. Rather sad to find a corpse a day on the floor.

On the plus side it does mean that there's no need to delay the builder. In theory he's supposed to be starting on the shed some time next week. As he's yet to commit to an actual specific day, I'm not entirely convinced...

Birds Nest

2011-05-20T18:56:00.001+01:00

Rather irritatingly one of the birds that I've so carefully nurtured through the winter with copious sacks of the very best seed has nested in my shed.

The shed has had an open door ever since I e-bayed the rather marvellous but truly humongous red safe that it used to house. Removing the safe entertained me for two whole evenings - the first evening a rather portly chap rolled up with his equally middle aged brother. My advert had clearly stated that the safe would need at least 4 hefty blokes to shift, but I didn't like to say anything in case they had hidden super powers.

The next 2 hours proved my point for me, as - fuelled by several cups of tea - they eventually moved it at least a foot. I usefully participated in the head scratching, provided more tea, smoked a few fags, and even more constructively ripped out the doorway. That at least meant there was an aperture wide enough for the thing to go through when they'd finally worked out how to traverse the few feet to the doorway. By 10pm it was thoroughly dark, the safe was jammed in the doorway precariously teetering first one way and then the other on the step, and one portly chap was on the wrong side of it. Comedy escape scene ensued, portly-bloke-on-inside taking a running forward roll approach to his exit, beaching himself on top, portly-bloke-outside heaving him over the final leg.

Dignity unimpeded, the chaps returned the next evening for take 2, equipped with trolleys, ramps and a low loading van. Safe exited stage left, and blackbird - taking advantage of now un-closable door entered stage right.

In principle, as a slightly environmentally inclined person, I'm all for birds nesting in my garden. I'm rather against it when I'm finally hoping builder will arrive to knock down the shed in a couple of weeks time, and the prospect of having to press pause once again to wait for fledglings to, well, fledge, is distinctly unappealing.

How you may ask is this all Dave's fault? Well, it's not, clearly actually his fault that the bird nested there in the first place. But having noticed the nest when it just housed eggs, I suggested that it was an urgent critical-path kind of need to dispose of the nest before the eggs hatched (on the abortion principle that disposing of eggs seems less heinous than killing baby birds). And then blithely toddled off to London for the week.

Returned from London to find nest happily full of open beaks and cheeping. Dave's excuse that the scary blackbird had never left her nest for long enough for him to remove it. I've been quite calm about it, on the basis that if the babies are still there when the nest needs to be removed for demolition, then Dave can dress up as a giant blackbird and tweezer worms into little mouths.

The Honours List

2011-05-05T20:15:00.000+01:00

Whilst I obviously like my house very much, my 30-something mates seem to have reached a stage in life where they expect luxuries like a bed or a bathroom when they go away to stay for the weekend. And when it comes to grub, I lack the juicer, American fridge and asparagus steamer without which it is clearly impossible to produce a decent meal. So it’s all the more commendable that I can publish an honours list of those who have not only left the comfort zone that is Islington and Chiswick to venture into The Provinces, but have actually stayed overnight here.

Drum roll…..

Nick and Lou;
Chris;
Cara (twice!) and Craig, Jaya and Saffron (and Murphy!);
Frank;
Sophie, Callum, Ben and Colette;
Bulbul; and
Mayu.

There are also some people who deserve listing despite not actually having to suffer an overnight, and they are:

Liz, Martha and Alice (I cancelled them at the last minute, and they were terribly nice about it);
Pip (she helped clean the place which was more revolting than actually staying);
Mum and Dad (they would willingly have come if I hadn’t taken an executive decision that I’d rather they didn’t disown me for clinical insanity in taking this place on).

There are even a few more on the to-visit list who are hurriedly getting their visit in before the builders move in. (The need for haste is clearly relative, realistically anytime this century would probably be fine.)

Shrinkage

2011-05-01T21:16:00.002+01:00

Culver View suddenly seems rather smaller than it did before. That’s because the sitting room is now housing 4 bikes, the only inhabitable spare room is dominated by a tower block of plastic storage boxes filled with lycra of varying shades of luminescence and a TV is now taking up all the floor space in my temporary living space.

This is all because I’ve unwittingly acquired an ex-husband, and whilst he doesn’t take up much space, all the clobber that is irretrievably associated with bloke-dom does.

In debates re: need for 4 bikes rather than, say, 1, he’s drawn heavily on comparison with 40 pairs of shoes and several racks of clothes. Given that I was here first, this feels completely unreasonable. Various friends consulted so far Completely Agree with me.

Longer term there is a solution, and it’s called the cellar, but that’s currently a cardboard box-fest.

Happily ex-husband is also now unemployed, so I’m about to hand project-renovate-small-house over to him. He’s already created a gantt chart with ‘Bike Shed’ as the first milestone. Unfortunately ‘Bike Shed’ start date is linked to ‘Finishing Marmotte Bike Race’ which is in France in July, so there are a couple of months pause while he trains for that before his mind can properly focus on Culver View.

Overall I’m happy; he can hardly do a slower job than I have so far, and I’m looking forward to a summer drinking Pimms in the garden and languidly flipping a hand to direct my in house Project Manager cum Labourer to his next task.

Planning Process

2011-04-06T18:54:00.001+01:00

A month on and I am now feeling utterly frustrated with progress. It appears completely impossible to reach agreement with the Conservation Officer about anything or on anything.

Firstly, although she gave permission for the shed, she applied various ‘conditions’ to that permission. For those fortunately unfamiliar with the planning process, this means that I can’t start work on the shed until she has ticked off her approval of those conditions. So far she’s denied black is white (a clay tile she stated was concrete, when it isn’t), demanded a sample of pointing that can’t be done in winter, and found fault with the timber board width I have given her as a sample for the outside. That’s not to mention that she wants part of the design she has approved, re-designed. And I don’t. So far the architect has not managed to move any of this to a conclusion with her, and I am not sure how we move on. My builder was lined up to start on the shed at the end of January, it’s now April and we seem no nearer being able to get him to start than we were then. Even if he’s free to, which he now isn’t.

On the planning applications for the house, I have spent exceedingly large amounts of time consulting with all possibly relevant bodies to ensure that they are supportive and don’t give the Conservation Officer anything to hang her hat on. Because she’s looking for reasons to turn my applications down. And, thanks to the work I’ve done explaining my proposals and lining up support, any impartial outsider would conclude that she has absolutely no evidence to support a refusal. But I’m informed by my truly lovely local Councillor – a completely unrelated person who is just helpfully getting involved mark you, not my architect who I am paying to get these permissions granted - that she’s still absolutely obdurate. She is disregarding the advice of the Civic Trust, the Town Planning Committee, English Heritage, The Malmesbury Residents Association and The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in sticking to her view that there is value in a wall I want to knock down, and that double glazing is totally inappropriate. i.e. inappropriate in a building that is already double glazed with incredibly ugly windows, and where all I want to do is spend vast amounts of my own money making it look more appropriate.

It defeats all logic.

On the plus side my local Councillor has ‘called in’ the applications to ensure that they will be heard by a committee of Councillors, so that it won’t just be her view that is the deciding factor. It will delay things by at least a month, if not 2, but at least I have some chance of persuading the Councillors to ignore their Officer’s opinion, and that is at least slightly positive.

And on the even more plus side, the garden (if you look past all that concrete) is superbly springlike at the moment. The birds – carefully nurtured through winter with ridiculous amounts of sunflower hearts and niger seeds – are chirping their little hearts out, and I have the most amazing magnolia tree that is in full bloom right now. There is even a mass of brightly coloured bulbs that have made it through the piles of dead leaves and are just bursting with happy springiness. What’s more, the evenings are light enough to enjoy it all! So what if I won’t get any work done on the house before next winter - it’s a gorgeous spot even in its current tatty grot.

Positive Stuff

2011-03-09T19:16:00.000Z

It's mildly possible that my four readers (Mum, Dad, Brother and Ex-husband) are getting the wrong impression from the blog so far. I'm not pissed off, unhappy or going ever so slightly insane. Well I am, at moments, a bit pissed off with incompetence but it's in a very accepting sort of pissed off way. Overall I'm enjoying the experience. There's no real rush after all, the house is liveable in, it's actually not freezing every day any more, and Blackie and Hank are getting gradually used to co-habiting with spiders and the odd hedgehog or badger that creeps in under the gap under the front door. (OK, it's only been leaves so far, but it could be a baby hedgehog any day now the gap's so big.)

And I have actually built something.

From scratch, without planning permission or listed building consent - I wonder how I dared - I have created a log store. And this isn't only any old log store. It's a brilliantly conceived landscape feature, combining functionality, with, well, functionality.

I'll explain. One of the charming features of the garden (or so the estate agent tried to inform me) is the 70's concrete pierced blocks decorating the boundary wall. You know the kind of thing (or you do if you're as old as me and played in Teeside friend's gardens) - sort of square breezeblock bricks with patterns cut through them? I don't know a lot about building work - as my employers have now regretfully worked out - but somehow I've osmosised that building walls is expensive. And given that you can't get a skip into my drive, getting rid of knocked-down-70's breezeblocks would be a time consuming and expensive option.

So, since I work at an Arboretum and (by ancient rights granted to Forestry Commission employees in the year something-BC) am allowed to take home free firewood, I had a brain wave. A charming log store could run along the back wall of the garden, cunningly providing me with fuel in a couple of years when it's dried out, and in the meantime rustically covering up the delights of the '70's. Although it was my idea I have to say that I'm rather pleased with it. It was a plan, and it's definitely cunning. Baldrick would have applauded.

Now some people, my friends Chris and Cara to wit, might say that a plan is all in the execution, and since they actually executed it they might want all the credit. And that's not unfair. They innocently came to stay the other weekend, and before they knew it were knocking up a Functional Landscape Feature. And it's turned out rather well, if I do say it for them.

Now all I have to do is find a solution to the crenelated breeze blocks running along my 'wall with a view'. They look a ton less attractive without the snow. Ideas (other than running civil war re-enactments until the canon demolish it) very welcome.

How Have I Done So Far?

2011-03-08T23:21:00.002Z

I may not have made much actual visible progress over the last 6m, but my understanding of the planning process has come on in leaps and bounds.

There are supposed to be several stages.

Stage 1: Discussing with your helpful and reasonable council officer what both they and you might find acceptable.
Stage 2: Your architect telling you which part of what the Council think is acceptable is in fact reasonable under planning law, and what is total-bollocks-they're-just-having-a-laff.
Stage 3: Writing a persuasive 'Design and Access' statement that seems to have very little to do with design or access as you or I'd understand it.
Stage 4: Planning permission and listed building consent applications submitted efficiently and effectively, with no schoolboy errors.
Stage 5: Receiving planning permission and listed building consent with the happy plaudits of the planning authority.

Given that an old friend just completed the whole Five Stage process in only a couple of months of purchase of his listed coach house, I can only take the hint that I've been less than effective so far. Try though I do to justify it, I can't persuade myself that sticking central heating in and changing a few windows on a little cottage deserves the level of trauma I've so far enjoyed.

So, in time honoured appraisal fashion my Learning Points so far are:

Stage 1: Your architect should advise you that there is no point trying to have a discussion with this particular Council officer. She will be neither reasonable nor negotiable. Skip straight to Stage 2. Mental note - get an architect who is experienced enough to tell you this, not your mate's brother who is a nice enough chap but it turns out never fully qualified as an architect.
Stage 2: Your architect is experienced and understands planning law, and tells you what you can do under planning guidance, and then applies for it. Mental note - repeat of Stage 1.
Stage 3: Your architect writes a DAS that you read and think how nice it is that he knows what to do, because you couldn't possibly have written it yourself. Mental note - Avoid pain of having to re-write DAS yourself, based on no specialist knowledge other than that culled from your Mum's best friend who helpfully happens to be a Planning Inspector.
Stage 4: Application submitted, with you reading it prior to submission and finding all the points you hoped would be made, articulated so clearly you'd give yourself permission if you could. Mental note - This avoids extreme irritation of your having to pick up errors in the scale of documents to be submitted, errors in cross references to document numbers, errors in the types of drawings included on the documents submitted, basic typos and correcting the name of your house on almost every document.
Stage 5: Business-like acceptance by Council that application made, reasonable and they can't really refuse it. Mental note - assume there will be at least one learning point, just haven't got there yet...

My you-haven't-been-crap-really-consolation is that old friend is chucking copious amounts of money at his extremely large project, and just got lucky with his architects. Obviously actually appointing a qualified architect was a sensible decision in the first place, but hey - who could know that?

Bad Housekeeping

2011-02-20T20:37:00.002Z

A new friend gave me a novel 'Bad Housekeeping' to read the other day, assuring me it was ‘very funny.' I'd like to think it was unconnected to the tour of my house she’d just had, but given that a visiting 7 year old commented on the dust the weekend before I'm not sure I should be sanguine. In my defence, I'd say that the blitz against old man grot before I moved in exhausted at least a year of my capacity to char. And at least it’s my dirt now.

So, this evening I settled down to read 'Bad Housekeeping', bolstered by the knowledge that my planning application was finally submitted last Monday. It's amazing the excuses for downright laziness that I find it possible to come up with.

There’s one common comment from all those who’ve been round the house so far, that it’s ‘got lots of potential’. I think it’s the kindest thing that anyone can think of. I help them along with ‘It’s the garden I think will be lovely.’ And they thankfully seize on that and agree wholeheartedly, ‘Oh yes, such a blank canvas.’ One or two helpfully add, ‘or it will be when you’ve got rid of all that concrete.’

The getting-rid-of-concrete progress would be hastened along if the Council were doing their job properly. Or I’d settle for promptly. I’m presently waiting for the conservation officer to agree the materials to be used on the shed so that I can get a builder in to a) rebuild current falling down shed and b) get rid of the concrete slab around it. Unhelpfully, when the conservation officer gave consent for the works, she also added conditions about rendering – there wasn’t any mention of render in my application to rebuild the shed, so I’m not sure if she is asking me to add some. Maybe just a random blob in the middle of a wall? Anyway, she’s meant to have a target of 2 weeks to respond to a request to clear a condition on a planning application, and so far it’s been almost 4. She’s at least finally communicated about it, and says she might get out next week. In the meantime my nice builder has had to start work on another job, so it’s now going to be a lengthy delay before he can get cracking on the shed.

Although the shed isn’t much more than a twinkle in my eye, Dave already seems to be eying it up as a luxury bike maintenance suite. I’ve informed him in no uncertain terms that if it – post-house building works - ever becomes anything other than a garden shed, it will be a writing and sewing shed. He’s got a perfectly good house with dedicated bike room and a bike shed with granite work surfaces in Yorkshire. He definitely doesn’t need another in Wiltshire.

Tree Surgery

2011-02-14T20:40:00.003Z

I've been rather too busy dating my ex-husband to do any blogging so far this year. I'm also hoping that the expressions of 'No I don't mind at all' as I cancel friends' weekend visits to pursue the course of true love (or at least someone who won't be horrified by what I look like first thing in the morning) are genuine. I have a semi-serious mental register of mates who are prepared to come and stay in what to them - they all have higher standards than me - is little better than a squat, so the folks I'm cancelling are doing quite well as they get the credit without the pain.

I have made some progress at home. Or more accurately, friends and family have made some progress on my behalf. My brother came to stay the weekend before Christmas and chopped most of my trees down. Don't get the wrong idea, Culver View is not the kind of mellow Cotswold manor house a friend has just bought that comes with arboretum and home farm. But I have got a potentially delightful pocket handkerchief sized plot, and what for Malmesbury is a really quite big garden. Hitherto, but no longer, dominated by 3 ridiculously large fir trees. My lovely neighbour Elaine (one of them, there are several, mostly (!) charming) took a few pictures of Nick being manly in them from her back garden, so you get the idea of the size we're talking about (no idea why its inserted sideways - someone more blog literate might elucidate?).

I have to say it is disconcerting moving from having a little brother I arm lock and sit on top of whenever he tries to get on above his station, to one who knows how to chop a 20m high tree down without hitting a house 10m away. He was remarkably tolerant of my 'Are you sure you know what you're doing?', 'Nick should you really try and chop it down that way?' and 'I don't want the tree in the house' running commentary as he calmly disassembled the things. Lou and I, in very submissive girlie fashion, followed his instructions in disposing of all the stuff he chopped down. In less submissive girlie fashion Lou then climbed the tree to show him how it should have been done, while I made the tea. I believe it's what you do when you have workmen in?

Insult to Injury

2011-01-04T20:06:00.001Z

Am even more indignant about the weather now than I was when I last posted. I coped with what I thought was commendable sangfroid when my hot water tap froze in the run up to Christmas, helped by my mother pointing out (when I rang for virtual tea and actual empathy) that things were Worse Up North as their shower had frozen. The fact that they had 7 hot taps and a bath still operating vs my 2 cold taps seemed churlish to point out, so I duly gave sympathy where sympathy was due. Now, despite leaving what heating I have on when I was away, I've returned to almost no water in the house at all. Better, I'll grant you, than a burst pipe and water everywhere, but there is a happy medium where you turn on a tap and water flows calmly out. It appears that the main has burst, leaving no pressure at all, which means my shower has no water. And as I don't have a bath, I'm stuck. Wessex Water seem to think it'll be Friday before they can take a look. I asked them (as my colleague at the next desk flinched and held her nose) what counted as an emergency in their book. They did concede that not being able to bathe in any way shape or form qualified. I'm waiting with not-very-baited breath for a call back tomorrow morning.

Cold

2011-01-02T18:24:00.003Z

I do feel mildly miffed that it's been the coldest December for a century. It would have been perfectly possible for this to have been a mild winter, which would have made having 3 crappy storage heaters to warm a house with no insulation and howling gales sweeping through gaps in doors and windows almost adequate. It's fair to say that I now have a great deal of understanding of the £4k annual electricity bill that the old chap who lived here before generated. So far I'm probably clocking up the same kind of cost, and I'm not 96 years old. I have tried and failed to get the heaters to save up all their energy and belt it all out in the evenings - even consulted mate in Docklands who has a glamorous modern flat bizarrely furnished with storage heaters. BB blithely informed me that storage heaters are hopeless (yes, I know) and that she gave up years ago on hers because they were completely uncontrollable. Not a particularly helpful conversation, but she was very sympathetic, which does help. Whilst I wait for the snow to go and the thermometer to creep into positive figures again, I've been making good use of my ski thermals, my electric blanket and my hot water bottles. A combination of all three makes life almost toasty. Oh - and made some rather nacky draft excluders for my temporary sitting room - picture below. The sitting room carpet (boasting a rather nice vomit pattern) now has oblong graft excluder shapes cut out from it.

It has all made me determined that my minimum goal - even if it involves killing the conservation officer and hiding her body in the cellar - is to have central heating for next winter.

Must Pull Up My Socks

2010-12-08T19:01:00.002Z

I seem to have developed a rather unhelpful attitude to Culver View which goes something like this: 1. Aaagh. Must be shit loads I should be doing / organising / making happen. 2. But, plaintive excuse creeps in, am at work all day, how much can you really get done in a couple of hours when it's dark and cold and miserable and it's all a bit scary because there's so much to do? 3. Therefore do nothing. 4. Aaagh. Must be shit loads I should be doing.... (Repeat at wake up, in odd moments during day, when lying in bed at night.)

My excuse so far has been that I'm waiting for the conservation officer to get back to me on the pre-application enquiry. How can I possibly do anything until I know where I am on all that? She has now got back to me, end of last week, almost totally unhelpfully. Cue telephone call for help to old family friend, usefully also a Planning Inspector and the standard Winram helpline on all matters planning permission related. He reckons that actually I don't need consent for most of the things the conservation officer is trying to make me specify, and that she's wrongly planning to withhold consent for some of the stuff I definitely do need permission for. I'm now waiting with baited breath for his considered reply. In the meantime it's an excellent excuse to continue doing nothing...

2 Weeks In

2010-10-19T20:12:00.001+01:00

I've decided that the only approach to the next year is to a) expect very little to happen, b) expect very little to happen extreeeemely slowly c) expect it to take a very large amount of my time to make very little happen very slowly.

I'm basing this on the number of visits it took from a local builder to pop a chimney pot up and to remove a backboiler from a fireplace (a second fireplace, not the one you've already seen pictures of. Keep up.)

5 visits. Over the 2 weeks since I moved in.

I've also already transgressed against the laws of listed building consent. I should have got LBC before removing the back boiler. My reasons for not getting it are a) it's about to be bloody cold, b) I therefore want to be able to have an open fire in my temporary sitting room and c) lighting a fire in front of a sealed backboiler means it could explode. I already know that none of this will wash with the conservation officer, I'm sure she'd point out that there's only one known fatality from a back boiler explosion, and the risk of damage to the beautiful 1970's stone surround was high. I'm actually hoping that she won't notice it - the back boiler was hidden by an even more unlovely electric fireplace (hoyed enthusiastically into a skip by Pip when she was here) - so I'm going to pretend it never existed.

I think I might be doing quite a lot of pretending.

The first really major fib is going to be about the sitting room fireplace. Frank, (yes, am outing a new-ish-probably-temporary-because-he had to-work-like-a-navvy-last-time-he-was-here-boyfriend), did a good job of demolishing almost all vestiges of the red-brick infill fireplace within the 16th century one. I was highly concerned that the conservation officer would want me to keep all the victorian infill and would prevent me re-opening the whole 16th C inglenook.

Nonesense, I hear you cry, that would be madness. Well, she has so far tried to insist on having cast iron guttering on a replacement shed and expressed dismay at removing a couple of feet of victorian wall that protrudes into the sitting room, so I'm now extremely wary of letting her have an opinion on anything. It's a great shame really, I started off with the intention of working as closely with her as possible, but the demand for thousands of pounds worth of cast iron, I'll repeat that, cast iron, guttering on the new shed (overall a much nicer and more sympathetic design to replace the one below) was an early last straw for me, so I've rapidly learnt that caution is the better part of valour.

So, have I made any progress? Infintessimal, but yes. The architect has lodged a pre-application enquiry for the LBC changes to the existing building, and we're about to get to the point where he can do the same for a possible extension to the tinsy winsy kitchen. A structural engineer has been engaged to look at foundations for a possible extension. And most importantly of all, I've got a working fireplace in my temporary sitting room, photo below. Which means that a) I can toast tea cakes on the fire and pile them with butter when it all feels Just Too Much, and b) Hank and Blackie won't be packing their hankerchiefs to find a warmer home any time in the immediate future.

Grot and Excitement

2010-09-21T19:23:00.001+01:00

I got a bit bored of cleaning last weekend. It's quite amazing how little of the place far too many hours of scrubbing - and that kitchen does need scrubbing - got done. By the time I'd twice been to the shop for additional ajax, bleach and scrubbers, I decided I deserved a treat, and took a hammer and chisel to the sitting room wall.

The downside is that that room is no longer move-into-abble (even with a scrub out), the upside is that I had the unmissable thrill of slowly chipping away the plaster to get to the original stone fire surround. I'd hoped that there would be the old fireplace there, had feared it wouldn't be, and had the quiet satisfaction of finding that it was. It's also got a Victorian looking brick fireplace inside the 16th C fireplace, and then the 60's have added their mite with a breeze block and concrete effort to block that up. I ran out of time, so I haven't had time to investigate further than the front, the proof of the pudding will be in seeing how far back it goes, and whether it's still a workeable chimney. I'm crossing everything because it could be absolutely super.

Photos below showing the start on the sitting room wall. The area to the right of the rubble is the edge of a stone fireplace surround showing the sloping 'stop' towards the base of the stone pillar.

And the, not quite finished, result. The fireplace is suitably and wonderfully massive, over 5 foot across. Handy for roasting the proverbial ox should the occasion arise.

De-spidering

2010-09-18T19:52:00.001+01:00

Am expecting a visit from the RSPCA I've banished so many spiders today. My defence strategy is that I've ushered them humanely to the door, whilst my friend Pip enthusiastically took a hoover to them. Given that she was spending her weekend here cleaning old man grot from unmentionable places in the bathroom, it seemed churlish to cavail. And I did have a sneaking suspicion that the ones I'd despatched were just waiting round the corner until I left to sashay back in again.

Anyway, Pip has rather cleverly demonstrated what it takes to make it to the top in the murky world of pensions law. Getting her visit and working-till-I-drop-but-I'm-meant-to-be-having-fun-because-it's-the-weekend in whilst there was still an alternative bed and breakfast arrangement - my rental cottage lease doesn't end until 2nd Oct - means that she didn't actually have to stay at Culver View. And she's nicely absolved from future manual labour. Although she was so charmed by the novelty of fitting a loo seat ('but you don't understand, I've never felt useful before') that she may even come back for more. Or, more tactically, volunteer her husband.

I've treated myself to 2 house warming presents (the loo seat was more a necessity than a present): a belt sander (does what it says on the tin - has a belt, and sands things) and a Vogue subscription. The little I've seen so far of Malmesbury shops (not a cape in sight - this season - honestly!) suggested that Loosing Touch was a real possibility, whereas the handy local hardware store seems to stock replacement belts in every grit rating possible, so both are perfect purchases.

Cunning Plans

2010-09-16T19:49:00.003+01:00

Had 2 kinds of responses to my first blog post 1. Admiring. From those even less technologically apt than me who thought the blog looked very professional. and 2. Irritated. By people who couldn't quite understand why I hadn't uploaded any photos yet. I'm more of a 1. person myself, which gives you the answer to 2.

One good reason not to give you a picture is that, actually, it's quite an ugly cottage. It's the arse-end of a larger building split in 2, so it has limited curb appeal. In fact there isn't even a curb. And it has the most horrid windows. I'll be, once I can reach agreement in a gazillion years with the local council conservation officer, changing those, which will help, but it's never going to be chocolate boxy.

On the plus side it has parking for several cars which is like gold dust in Malmesbury, the most lovely (potentially) garden, and is very private so it's perfect for scardy-cats like Blackie. It is a functional choice over aesthetic, and it is dead old, 1550-ish, which I like. Oh, and inside, whilst it'll be tiny to anyone in Nun Monkton, it's actually quite big for a Malmesbury cottage. Londoners will appreciate that if no one else does...

Inside it's quite difficult to capture a good photo - but the wallpaper in the sitting room (don't let the beds confuse you..) is worth a throw. Everyone apart from me hates it, I think it's great, so am only sorry that that will have to go as part of my priority hunt-the-fireplace-by-knocking-holes-in-walls exercise. Tempting to start doing that this w/e, but feel that de-slugging the kitchen and bathroom should take priority.

Committed

2010-09-12T22:50:00.001+01:00

Last week I completed on the purchase of a Grade 2* Listed building. It lacks central heating, an upstairs bathroom and modern electrics, but on the plus side has a ton of slugs on the downstairs carpet, an onimous list towards the cliff edge and the happy rattle of deathwatch beetle.

I am now however irrevocably committed. Or should be if there's a handy vacancy in the local asylum.

So far I've only cried twice and taken sleeping tablets once, which I think may prove to be a personal best over the coming year.