Songs from the wood

The next day our house arrived!!
Needless to say, not without some amount of chaos - another episode worthy of Grand Designs.
Joe from Touchwood arrived to oversee the delivery. Shortly afterwards the truck arrived, driven by the highly entertaining Grant, who regaled me with stories of previous deliveries he'd made to far out places, while we watched Joe negotiate threading a huge long pallet of timber up from the lorry, over the hedge and narrowly missing next door's house, whilst the telehandler further messed up the drive. Joe decided maybe he wasn't keen on continuing offloading that way so we had a rethink.

I had to ask permission to bring the timber via the field next door, which involved frantic emails and calls to the field owner, the farmer, and then the farm worker, and eventually we had the gate opened and Grant parked up by the gate. Took several trips back and forth with the telehandler and eventually we had a huge pile of timber in the corner of the field by the site. Just as it started raining, heavily. Joe decided it was time to go home! We breathed a sigh of relief that it was now all in the hands of Touchwood, and I went back to work. Phew.

That weekend we continued to toil away on site, this time just tidying and clearing, sorting rubbish etc. I couldn't remember what it was like to rest. I realised I was feeling a bit lithe despite not having bento the gym for about a month, and weighed myself to find I'd lost 2.5kg. Whoops. So top weight loss tip: working all day every day outside on a building site, no doubt coupled with immense stress. Not sure I recommend it!

Joe was back on Monday to start cutting, and we were back doing our 'normal jobs'. The timbers are almost all from Sweden, with some bits from Scotland. Touchwood have a certain amount of pieces ready cut, and others are cut to size and shape on site, which is Joe's job before the others turn up. He installed himself with a workbench on top of the garage, overlooking the field opposite, and cracked on with it with his headphones on.

There wasn't really any need to come to site, but I popped in on the Friday morning and was astonished to see the I beams for the first wall had gone up - wow!