On Thursday 29th August we Finally Started On Site. Just over three years after we put in our offer to buy the place, and just over a year after getting planning permission.
We took the day off to mark the momentous occasion and somewhat nervously awaited the arrival of Julian from our chosen groundworks firm. Spent the morning chatting over all the drawings with him and discovering where the architect's drawings and engineer's drawings don't match. Apparently this is not only common but pretty much par for the course according to Julian, who was totally chilled about it, and informed us that our situation was actually pretty good.
The first job was Setting out: a surveyor called Stuart and his sidekick turned up to measure up to check the building is going to fit where we thought it would. And it is with great relief that we were told everything was bang on. Blue lines were then sprayed all over the place, to mark out where the foundation walls will go. There are loads of them and they roughly mark out the rooms.
This blue line below marks the corner of the kitchen, with the tiny buddleia roughly where the sink will go. The metal pins marking each corner were very good trip hazards.
Once we were all painted up Julian headed off and we spent the rest of the day on the phone to the architect, timber frame firm and a huge list of others. Next day Julian was back with his digger and dumper. And over the weekend the sunflowers in the wildflower strip along the field next door were looking very cheerful :-)
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