Builders at last

Having just come back into Wales from Somerset again I'm bursting with things to write about. For now, I'll content myself with an update on our building project in Somerset...

This has been a Very Good Week. We have had an actual, real live builder on site!!! After almost 6 months with nothing discernible happening to our house, we now have a concrete base inside the main barn, some footings and low block walls, a couple of drains.....and a lot of sticky red clay outside where the concrete and subsoil have been excavated away from the barn wall. I can now breathe more easily. Let it rain. The barn is secure.

Here is the beautiful concrete slab (beauty is in the eye of the beholder), and the walls to the left will be the utility room - it looks tiny at this stage but will hopefully have room for a few boots and a dog one day.

This is technically what we are calling 'phase 1' - more so we can feel a sense of achievement than that any significant work has been done. Steve and Lee, our builders, have been brilliant. They turned up on time, every day, worked hard, kept everything tidy, discussed everything with us ....... and even came in under quote! What's more, they were both very good looking (don't worry they definitely won't be reading this and I'm sure Ian can get his own back with a simple mention of Alice-whatsername-Roberts).

I, meanwhile, have spent the week in trench warfare. Still sorting out the trenches dug through the lawn for water and drainage. Why oh why didn't we put down plastic before dumping all that red clay onto our lovely green healthy grass? You definitely learn by your mistakes. After about 7 hours

scraping with a rake I think the grass can breathe again. It is a challenge though finding places to put all the subsoil that is being dug out - i think we'll have to design some banks or hillocks somewhere - hopefully to look as natural as possible.

We relocated a lovely contorted hazel bush a couple of weeks ago - too early in the season as it turns out as it promptly and thoroughly died - or so I thought. Looking more closely this week, little green shoots have popped out all over it. God is good.

And to finish off, this is the view from somewhere in the Brecons on my journey back to Newbridge.

Drains!

Having just spent 2 weeks at home I'm feeling a bit of a fraud writing a blog called 'My Wales' when all I write about is our house in Somerset! I am absolutely loving our renovation project - it is the best job I have ever had. What an opportunity to redesign a house from scratch, and the garden.... I feel so peaceful whenever I am there and love every bit of it. This week I have been mapping all the physical features - trees etc so we can keep a record of the drains and water pipes we have been laying, and collect the names of the trees as we discover them.

This is where the engineer in me and all those years looking at plans is coming in useful. I don't seem to be able to think without a plan in front of me. We have sadly wrecked the lawn and laid pipes from the borehole to the shed, up to the house, and down to the veg patch, and put french drains in the lawn. Digging the trenches revealed why it was like a paddling pool last winter - the ground is solid clay except for a couple of inches of topsoil where the water sits. Now, hopefully, it will trickle through the gravel into the perforated pipes and run down to the field where we will one day - hopefully - have a pond. I can't wait for rain to see if it's working! Apologies to those who might find drainage boring - that was me too until this week!

Roger digging the trench across the lawn - 0.8m deep so the water doesn't freeze on its way to the house

then perforated drainage pipe laid 200mm below the surface -

and backfilled with gravel, then topsoiled and seeded (thanks Dad x)

....all under the watchful eye of freddy frog

old things...

As I am now re-united with my computer (and Ian) in Wales I thought I'd make another post on here. This is one of the victorian COBB bottles we found under the barn floor. Apparently they were for lemonade, not beer, and were nicknamed the 'penny monster' being returned to the shop for a penny, unless the bottle was broken to get the marble out. Thanks Kelvin.

We keep the bottle in our 'eco-loo' out in the garden - a composting loo that uses sawdust and nature but no water (it smells a lot nicer than a chemical loo) - along with the old Hotel Splendide barn door from my parents farm:-

The picture below shows the door in situ with my Dad (far right) as a boy, his father standing next to him, his sister Molly on the left with their housekeeper and the American soldiers who were billeted there during the war. I remember as a child going up the precarious old stairs in the barn and seeing a loo apparently stuck in the middle of the floor - this is where they lived while they were manning the searchlight in Big Meadow. A little bit of Darch family history. That barn was since converted to an architects office and is now a lovely house. The strange thing about this is that MY memories are now part of the history of the farm - that really makes me feel old!