I think this is where I left off with the building work updates: acrow props holding up a third of the rear house wall while two steel beams were put in place. The door you can see was the original back door. When we moved into The Gables almost a year ago it opened onto a large uPVC conservatory, which at 20 years old was a little weary, as ageing plastic structures tend to be.
The conservatory that is no more
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We knew at once it had to be turned into a properly insulated room, ideally a new kitchen-dining-room. And so began the process of having a designer draw up plans and submit them to the local authority for planning permission. That took a few months.
But now the photos. The acrow prop view shows our main sitting-room, looking from front to back of house. (There’s a second smaller sitting-room across the front hallway). Originally, when the house was built in 1922, there was internal wall running behind cupboard, presumably with a door through to a run of two or three narrow rooms. We’re guessing scullery, pantry, W.C. and also boiler room for doing laundry. This last possibility we discovered only two days ago when builder Alan was investigating the plumbing in the downstairs loo of many surprising colours. In the corner (left) he found signs of a small flue that had been re-used for the pipework when the upstairs bathroom was installed. (Tell-tale soot in the cavity).
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Anyway, at some point, in more recent times, the big sitting room was extended into the rear rooms to make an ‘L’ shape with a galley kitchen (running off to the right). The far end access to the W.C. was walled up in order to put in a big range cooker, and a new doorway to ablutions installed in the back corner of the smaller front sitting-room (not ideal!)
So: we’re knocking out part of the rear wall into the new kitchen extension, and reinstating a wall on the inside right to turn the (until last week) old kitchen into a utility room, and also restoring the door to the cloakroom and blocking up the sitting room access.
The big knock-through
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In the meantime, while the internal wall goes up for the utility room, I have makeshift arrangements in the new kitchen. This is currently only a shell awaiting its lantern roof-light, window, French doors, oak floor and kitchen units which are being made by Shepherd Hills, a Mennonite community of craftsmen who have their workshop in the next village.
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Utility room and downstairs cloakroom with restored doorway
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As for the outside, the brickwork is done, but I’m not revealing all until the windows and doors go in. There are always drawbacks with flat-roof extensions, not least the look of them, hence the addition of a lantern roof-light to offset the plainness of the rectangle. It is a difficult space to make the most of, in reality not very big. Nor was there much room to manoeuvre due to the position of the upstairs windows. Most of all, we didn’t want to add anything too fussy to this modest little house.
Looking back to the winter, some of you may remember the wall of bricks, saved by builder Alan from the conservatory demolition. They are now incorporated in the new build.
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I can also show you our other structure in progress, as in Graham’s shed. He’s building it from scratch, inspired, he tells me, by a Great Western Railway goods waggon. It will thus have a curved roof, and as he’s forgotten how he built the Sheinton Street shed which also had a curved roof, the process is involving much pondering, followed by phases of making and unmaking. You may notice that some of the hundred year old battens from the rebuilding of the house roof are being repurposed. Also four panes from the old conservatory are going into the window slots.
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And as for the garden, well, after all the rain, it’s coming along rather vigorously in this interim phase of development (i.e. until the autumn when I might make more of plan that will involve finding homes for all the stuff presently in pots. At the moment I’m more interested in growing food. (On the plot: assorted tomatoes inside and outside the greenhouse, runner beans, Russian kale, perennial kale, onions, leeks, a few beetroot, Romanesco cauliflowers, cabbages and oak leaf lettuce).
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I think I’ve finished digging up the lawn, but there’s still the Hedge of Horrors to sort out, with more chicken wire extraction required, plus the unravelling of weigela, privet, elder, sycamore, ash, holly, hawthorn, ivy and some devilishly prickly berberis.
But on the plus side, the sweet corn is growing purposefully in the front garden, as are the Charlotte potatoes amongst the toadflax and achillea.
And that’s it for now chez Farrell. I’m leaving you with a single very lovely rose that snook out of the crocosmia thicket this week. It’s scent is delicious and growing by Graham’s shed.
Happy days amid dust and debris.
More happy days après dust and debris!
That is a thought to hang on to, Sue. I’ve actually been finding myself feeling sorry for the vacuum cleaner. It too needs a good dusting 🙂
Phew, that’s a lot of work!
It seem to be going on and on, GP. End in sight. I think…
Tish you are a woman with amazing patience. I know you will enjoy your new kitchen.
Thanks, Anne. I’m even quite enjoying it in its disconnected state 🙂
I can imagine what a lovely, characterful home you’re going to have when this is all over, Tish. You’re a brave couple- that’s an absolute mountain of work. I’m raising a glass to you this evening (and most other evenings too!)
Aw, that’s so thoughtful, Jo, raising a glass to us. Thank you. I have to say living in a building site does get a little wearing.
🙄🩷
I am impressed the garden is doing so well with all of the moving and shaking sound the house..Can’t wait to see the final.
We humans may have been shivering with the lacklustre summer, but the garden has been enjoying the coolish, wet weather, and that’s why it’s looking so verdant.
Gosh, that really is a lot of work, both inside and out. I only wish we’d had our conservatory removed and a proper extension built. Too late now though. You’ll have a lovely home once it’s finished.
That’s a happy thought to keep thinking, Jude – a lovely home once it’s finished. Thank you for that.
It’s such a little house really, but the amount of work that needs doing is somehow more than the sum of its parts. And then living in it at the same time and shunting all our stuff around from day to day, and forgetting where we’ve put things…ah, well, it challenges the old brain.
You have a lot going on, but it’s going really well. I have to say that your title brought the the Berlin Wall to mind, not yours. 😉😁. But it worked.
Well the Berlin Wall was also in my mind too, Janet 🙂
Wow, that’s serious construction going on. How are you holding up?
Gosh, I’m in awe of how long you’ve had to live in a building site. But it’s going to be so special when you finally get there. How do you keep a productibve garden going in these circumstances?
I’ve been lucky with the garden, Margaret. It seems to have been using its own initiative mostly, though I do have to keep an eye out for pigeons. Also it likes this cool summer, and I haven’t had to do a lot of watering as I did at the allotment. I’m also thinking the soil must be rather good!
Excellent!
There’s nothing quite so cathartic as knocking down a wall!:)
Yes, that surge of exhilaration before the dust settles 🙂
:):)
Thank you for the update. I smiled at the word ‘cloakroom’.
Such a genteel euphemism, isn’t it 🙂
Yes!
A ton of work, indeed. It’ll be worth it.
Cheers, Thom. Hopefulness helps 🙂
I have a much better idea now of the scale of your building works and what they will achieve for you. It may be a bit of a mess still at present but it’s already easy to see how good it will look and how practical it will be!
Thanks for that generous support, Sarah. I suppose, all in all, it’s about making a space we can comfortably grow older in. But yes, still a lot of sorting out.
I’m impressed that you lived through it all. Better and happier days to come, I’m sure
Thanks for the hopeful thoughts, I.J.
Chez Farrell is truly impressive. The vision you have of the renovation, the research for outsourcing, reusing, repurposing etc. and then you go and show us all up by displays of productive veg beds.
p.s. I read that ” wrapping plasticard sheet around an empty wine bottle, filled with boiling water, in order to ‘set’ the curve.” is the way forward for the shed roof but only if its for a model railways 😉 Is there a larger scale version I wonder!
Much appreciate your appreciative words, Laura.
Also you have Graham marvelously intrigued, roof-wise. And a tip he might well find handy if he gets back to model making. The mention of the wine bottle anyway adds a certain something to the enterprise.
His present solution is bendy board cut to manageable slices, and man- and woman-handled up the garden steps. (The things one does). So the skin of the roof is in place. The aim is to cover it all in rubber sheeting. I’m not sure my muscles will be up to the manipulation, and am hoping Builder Alan might help instead, this among the 1001 other jobs he’s doing.
As to veggie proliferation, the rain has much to answer for.
Also I’ve just started reading Crow Country. Stunningly evoked. Written exactly as I would have liked to have written it myself. Thank you v. much for the recommendation. In between am also reading Alice Oswald Falling Awake and the lyric gold of Dorset poet, William Barnes. They are forming a mighty creative coalescence in mind. Soul compost.
you gave me many laughs here Tish. So good to have your views’ of Crow Country’ as I felt the same way about it. Interesting too on Barnes – he’s cropped up a few times for me recently including some research on minor poets and in his anthology of said poets Auden confesses to not liking Shelley but being ‘delighted by every line of William Barnes’.
It seems with Barnes every line is true and in all dimensions. Nor, and in every sense, does he seem to miss a beat.