House latest....

The roof is at last being fixed. Having initially thought we'd keep the roof it has turned out that most of it has had to be replaced due to rotten rafters and basically it's old barn-like construction. The building will hopefully be as energy-efficient as possible so we're making a 'warm roof' - ie. it has insulation between the rafters and then a whole duvet layer over the top under the battens which doubles up as roofing felt (TLX Gold).

Here's Steve fixing the new purlins - the gap in the rafters will become a dormer window in the next couple of weeks. Behind is Gotton Manor Nursing Home. Perhaps we should keep the scaffolding like some sort of giant balcony!

The first floor is in - lovely chunky beams and joists. And it has that lovely smell of bare wood. The stairs will go where the ladder is.

Upstairs - the spreading roof has been saved by re-using the old floor joists to hold it all together. You can just see where the old floor was - the line of cement blobs just below the top of the stone walls....

Downstairs, this was the one door we were planning to keep :( As the building has been taken apart we've discovered it was altered and extended very badly over the years - basically bodged - hence all the damp and cold - it was leaking like a seive. Of course having discovered this you just have to put it right... hmm not so sure about moving in in June any more...

A much better view is towards the garden. The daffs are just bursting into flower now and blossom is on the trees.

We've put up bird boxes made from offcuts ....

but the best times are when friends come to visit ...

Spring in Somerset

The evidence of Spring - the tiniest little snowdrops appearing after all the cold weather at Sidbrook....

and the daffs are making an appearance at Pengotton......

When it comes to house-renovations we have also come to the end of a long autumn and winter waiting for work to start. Steve and Lee are back on site and my goodness it is AMAZING how much has been done in the last 3 weeks. Here is the house as it is now......basically less than it was. (Ian keeps wishing we knocked it all down and started again but i still like what's left of the old bits).

That big opening at the end on the left will be patio doors in the kitchen diner and the big gap above will be our bedroom. It's a bit drafty at the moment.

We feel better all round now that things are on the move - but can we keep up? I have to keep up a constant supply of detailed plans and decisions about this and that, and Ian (when he isn't working in Wales or speaking somewhere) and Roger are racing against time to get the shed finished in the field so we can move into it temporarily when we leave Wales.

At the moment it has a roof, 3 walls and a floor. Who cares about electrics and plumbing? There's always the composting loo, and the camping stove in the garden shed, not to mention my parents shower just a mile away. Having watched multiple episodes of Grand Designs it could be considered almost a 'rite of passage' (or maybe some sort of penance....) to live in a mobile home or similar while the building goes on ...and on....

At least someone's home is finished.... we might be sharing with a family of sparrows or blue tits if we're really lucky....

Back to the house, for those interested - this is the window and doorway looking towards the garden. The hole above the steel lintel will have a beam inserted into it to carry the upstairs floor....

This is the same bit of wall from the outside. You can see the old ground floor windows above the new one as we've lowered the internal floors by about a metre. The bricks will be taken out and filled with stonework.

One of the beams being delivered last Friday. Steve the builder constructed a sloping ramp out of scaffolding poles and boards, and then rolled the beams down the ramp on metal rollers. He's quite ingenious. The beams came from Whitney on Wye - a little bit of Wales in our house.

It took a lot of grunting and heaving (and a few builders bums) to get the beams off the ramp and onto the floor ready for cutting notches for the floor joists and then erecting next week. We still have no idea how they are going to get them put into position and we'll be up here in Wales when it happens so could be none the wiser. It'll be like magic.

Christmas Eve at Pengotton

Our house now has scaffolding! Building work starts on 4th Jan - we can't wait!

Cornish granite from Lankelly made into a bench with a view (shame about the fence - a job for next year)...

Every man must have his shed...

My gorgeous hubby in the woods on Christmas Eve. Glad to be home.

Colder than Greenland??

We arrived back in Newbridge last night to minus 13 and dropping. I have never known such cold in our country - and i am proud to say this week we live in the coldest place in britain...except it took HOURS for our coats to come off and the house to feel warm again. Our wonderful landlord had saved us from frozen water pipes while we were away, and our lovely neighbours had cleared the snow off our drive - what a welcome. I am SO glad our boiler was fixed last thursday before this hit. I think i would have had to stay in bed with a hot water bottle if we didn't have heating.

Here are some pics from my walk to Llysdinam with Barney this morning....

The river Wye was partly frozen over...

the snow formed crystals on everything....

this is Llysdinam house - often visited by the victorian curate Francis Kilvert for those who have read Kilverts Diaries

and the beautiful snowy welsh hills.

Please note I didn't take a picture of Ians reputedly-frozen nasal hairs.

I was sorely tempted to go with Ian up to Bangor today where he was hosting a business visit to the algae plant. But even from here it's still a 3 hour drive each way and even the prospect of seeing snowdonia in the snow couldn't outweigh the tiredness i feel at the moment from all the driving between somerset and wales. This weekend we made some good decisions on the house - and even bought some flooring for the lounge. Dad should be on commission. I love it - it's engineered oak boarding - with a very dark stain and distressed effect. Can't wait to see it down but sadly it'll probably be at least 6 months away as the walls have to be built first and the roof redone.

Some progress has been made however - Roger has been working faithfully on Ians shed. This is how it looks now..... unfortunately i've got to put in more plans for the minor changes from the planning permission. Shouldn't be a problem though. What do you think of our red cedar boarding? purchased here in wales.

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!

Small delights

Cyclamen bravely growing in the rubble of our garden.

A big green dragonfly that visited our little pond - is it laying eggs?
A tree covered in tiny crab-apples. We are gradually discovering what all the different trees are as they have come into fruit this summer. I think these are crab apples - they are a deep dusky red but are still rock hard.
Todays bottle-find uncovered whilst transplanting cyclamen. We now have about 11 or so little bottles of different shapes and sizes on a shelf in the shed. These include 2 victorian beer bottles with marbles in the neck, found under the old barn floor (previously a sitting room before we took the floor out) - I can just imagine a farm worker of 120 years ago relaxing in the corner of the haybarn to enjoy his beer after a hot day in the hayfields.
Bright yellow pumpkins quietly growing on some wasteground where we had removed some large bushes but not been able to dig out the roots. Although the seeds were sown very late, they have produced several large pumpkins and spread out beautifully over the lawn making great ground cover and keeping the weeds down.