The builders are in!

 The builders started on 13th June 2016.   In the garden is Dan, a gentle giant, and a helper or two and in the house is Adam, sharing the two helpers.  The plumber and the electrician have also dropped in to help sever the services to the kitchen.

The kitchen wall

It turns out that the previous builders did a pretty rough job on the house, which is what we always suspected on the evidence of misplaced window catches and poor quality tiles.  When the kitchen was pulled out we found it was suspended on a stud wall and some of the cupboards were held on to the plasterboard with clips and not fixed to wooden battens.  All the services had been routed on the outside of the wall.  At some point a sink fixing had been screwed through a junction box narrowly missing the live wires!  In other words a rough and ready job.

Kitchen floor - a horror story

 The tiles on the kitchen floor have been taken up to reveal, in archaelogical order,  a) rotten hardboard, b) original floorboards, c) concrete with d) rotten (damp) joists between.   The rotten wood is being scraped out so that the whole floor can be concreted and waterproofed.  Kerching!  (The sound of the cash register in action!)

Today work begins on looking under the hall carpet to see if the floor there is in a similar condition.  I suspect it is.

Three layers of flooring.

 Outside, the pots are neatly stacked in groups leaving space for various activities.  The raised beds with their crumbling brickwork and weeds and dead shrubs have been removed. 

Tidy workmen

Peter and Dan discuss the wall

Brick and flint wall after removal of ivy

The lovely old brick and flint wall had been badly damaged by ivy so the men have been carefully raking it out prior to repairing it.   The men are incredibly tidy.  Yesterday they were removing the kitchen floor and taking out the kitchen, today there no sign of either.

Valiant attempts were made to move two shrubs and two trees that we'd like to have kept but it looks as though they have been too shocked to survive.   Dan will keep an eye on them and remove them if necessary.   He's taken the huge compost bin for his father, which is another unwanted item out of the garden.

My poor trees!

Next week the sleepers arrive to create the new raised beds.  So, progress is being made and so are one or two uncomfortable discoveries!