Skip and trees

I won't lie. With all this lovely weather, progress has been slow.

But we have a skip now!

So we can finally move all our crap and have our front garden looking less like a scrap yard...

Andy has started trying to level the area where the shed used to be as this will also be parking eventually. We are debating over if it should be gravel or paving. Andy wants paving as he thinks gravel will be a pain with the leaves but I want gravel because I think it looks better and it looks pretty and you can hear people walking on it. Safety first!

We had another tree surgeon come round. He explained why our quotes were so high. Basically, it's more than a 1 man job as the trees are over a road, someone needs to keep and eye on traffic and help lower the branches.

He did say that the chestnut trees are diseased and they will be dead within the next 10 years which is sad to hear.

That does however explain why the conkers and leaves are falling down. It's very noisy when they hit the caravan!

We're still going to get them chopped back but depending how long we are there and if they will effect out extension will depend on when we decide to get them chopped down.

In other news, my good pal Lottie and Ben tied the knot last weekend :-)

Still no broadband. Apparently Plusnet need to send an engineer to the exchange to "make more room" for us?? Sounds like a cop out to me....

Life in a caravan

Good day!

It's been a while. We still haven't got Internet so I am making use of 3G!

We have been in the caravan for a couple of weeks now and the novelty hasn't worn off yet. 

Andy has made us a little walkway with a cover. We've put a shed up that my dad gave us which has become our clothes storage and washing area:

The shed is nearly as big at the house!

The toilet in the house is working so we are just using the caravan bathroom for showers. We bought this box which you plug into the 12v caravan battery and the gas bottle and it instantly squirts out hot water through a shower head. It works a treat! Although you have to go outside to turn it on and off. A minor inconvenience for the moment.

We haven't done any work on the house, but have been doing some work outside. We've tidied up the drive way so we can park our (my) cars on it.

Andy has also started trying to dig up the stumps for the two trees he chopped down so we can clear that area.

We've also been getting some quotes for a topographical survey and have managed to secure a good one. The architect has advised getting one would make the whole planning thing easier as they will be accurate. So, we need to get that done before we can see any drawings from him.

We've also been getting more tree surgery quotes. Really keen on getting the trees chopped back as it is so dark at the front. You sort of drive into a tunnel of trees when you reach our house. It's quite creepy, and a great shame to miss out on the light. We don't know what difference it will make as there are several other trees in close proximity, but we shall see!

We did a car boot to get rid of a lot of our stuff that we thought was too good to chuck but that we didn't want to keep and that went surprisingly well! We got rid of the majority and what was left was packed off to the charity shop.

An update on the field out the back: the beans are growing well! Andy had such joy on his face watching the tractor spraying the field the other week.

We're moved!

Lack of any updates due to moving!

I can safely say we are officially in! The caravan anyway...

I'll edit and update before the end of this week!

A week for quotes

I don't understand why broadband is so readily unavailable in the country. 

When we went to America, they had wifi and phone signal in the vastest of places.  That country is 10 times bigger than the UK!

Best we can get apparently is 1-2.5mbps. Which isn't very good! And I can't get a Vodafone signal unless I stand outside in a specific spot. 

Middle class problems, eh?

On the plus side, we breathed a sigh of relief when we discovered the position of the Sky satellite is out over he field as opposed to being blocked by the trees to the front.

Silver linings and all that!

This weekend will mostly be spent packing up our rented place and moving out.

Andy is working hard to get us hot water in the caravan. We're probably going to run electric straight from the house fuse box rather than the caravan one as we will need a lot to be plugged in

The wood was treated earlier this week and we've had 2 quotes for cutting back the trees which were an awful lot more than we thought but I think we're gonna have to bite the bullet and just pay it. The trees are pretty big and are over hanging the roof so they need to be cut back. The good thing is if we get them cut back, it will take a couple to a few years to grow back so we won't have to keep spending this money every year. 

We also had some people from Aga come round and assess our suitability for a wood burning flue. I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but we have decided to have all our central heating and hot water run off a wood fuelled stove cooker thing like this:

We probably won't have an Aga, but nevertheless we took advantage of their free suitability assessment.

They said the house was perfect to have a wood fuelled cooker system, we just needed to cut the trees back to allow for the flue clearance. But they quoted us 4-6k. We of course laughed in their face and threw them out, but before that, the chap advised we could source the flue and parts ourselves and fit it ourselves for about 500 quid. That seemed a fair price! We have been searching for an affordable cooker for a while but they don't come cheap, even second hand.

Our research has also shown that the government are providing grants this year for new wood fuelled or biomass systems but they have to be new. It's an environmentally friendly system because wood releases the same amount of co2 when it is burnt as it does when it rots. 

It will just be a little bit of a pain having to add a load of wood twice a day but again, but it will only cost what wood costs which is cheaper than gas and electric. 

Having spent winter just gone relying on electric to heat, it ain't cheap (we were spending 50 a week)! If we got gas, we'd need calour gas bottles or a tank and that is a lot more pricier than normal gas and there is not enough room for an eye sore of a tank. So, wood fuelled seems the cheapest and most logical option to us. 

Sorry for the lack of photos this time!

A picture of our house before it was a house in the 30's

A picture of our house before it was a house in the 30's

http://www.east-garston.com/site-content/history/the-goodings/the-goodings.htm

Bargain purchases

There's been lots going on this week!

We had a chap come round and give us a quote on treating the wood. We managed to get a reasonable price on the condition that we brushed down all the exposed wood to remove dust and cobwebs. Which was fine by us! So we had this weekend to do that ready for his arrival with the chemicals on Tuesday. 

It was going to be an annoying job with 1 ladder, so it was a stroke of luck that we won a 5.5metre scaffold tower on eBay this week too for less than £130! It's a bit old school, but it does the same job as a newer one would.

Unfortunately, I couldn't quite get up to the top without freaking out, so Andy had to do the conical bit whilst I did the other bit on the ladder.

Our second bargain buy this week was this:

That's right. A caravan!! 

The end of the month is approaching quickly (which is when we have to leave our rented place) and we need somewhere to live! 

Again, it's old school. 90's decor. 

It is a 4 berth, which means we can have a bed out all the time and a separate seating area. And it comes with an awning, although a few poles are missing...but that's to be expected when paying £700! 

We spent Friday evening levelling out the front garden, taking the fence out and taking some more roots out to prepare for the arrival of our temporary home.

We also met an architect this week who has done a lot of work in the local conservation area so is used to fighting and winning against West Berks council. Andy and I always thought it was a case of rebuilding the two flat roof extensions but he seemed to have other ideas. I'm looking forward to seeing those ideas in sketch form!

Highlight of the week was Andy trying to cut through a live wire thinking it wasn't live. He's learnt a lesson he'll never forget - make sure the electric is off! 

And finally, and most importantly, I put up a bird house :-)

Down comes the ceiling

I returned from a mini break with my good pal Lottie Booth yesterday.

Andy was left in charge of the house, so I was lucky to return to find it still standing. Just!

Andy had the 'sewer dweller' Ben come around along with his brother Sam and they started pulling down the ceiling plaster 

We needed to do this for a few reasons:

1) Check the rafters are still solid, not rotten or wood wormed

2) Check the felt was still in good nick

3) Check no critters or bugs had set up home in there

4) We need to add insulation and re-plaster anyway.

Some of the rafters have the tell tale holes of the woodworm but seem in good nick. We're going to have to get someone to come and spray the lot as a precaution. That's the risk with older houses. Untreated wood = woodworm's dream.

They did find an old wasps nest that had long been abandoned and nothing else. No bats which is good!

The conical part will definitely need to be re-plastered so it's a smooth finish.

The other bit would actually look quite nice with the rafters showing. So now we are torn again.

The most annoying part so far for me is trying to decide what to do in terms of the finished look. I think I have an idea, then I see something I like or Andy suggested something and it throws it all up in the air again. 

The water tank needs to be moved so its up in the roof and we will have the hot water tank in the kitchen as it will be connected to our wood burning heating system. We have someone coming out this week to assess the suitability and where the flue should go.

In fact, we have 2 tree surgeons coming for quotes to cut back the chestnut trees away from the roof, the architect and the flue man all coming this week.

Andy also wants to buy a caravan as we need to be out of our rented place by the end of this month and we can't move into the house yet! There's so much going on and so much to think about and so much to spend on that you just don't think about at the initial planing the stage.

It is daunting to say the least.

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention the kitchen we have bought! :-)

When Andy came back from his holiday, he said he had an idea around a kitchen. We were never keen on getting a brand new kitchen because of the cost and had looked on eBay for people getting rid of kitchens.

Andy found a listing for a HUGE kitchen, much bigger than we needed. He said that was perfect because then we could pick the parts we liked and fit it exactly to our kitchen size and still have plenty left over. The kitchen is lovely! I really like the units. 

We won the auction and Andy went to pick it up on bank holiday Monday just gone in his racing car truck. He returned many hours later advising that he only managed to fit half the kitchen into his truck!

Now we were tasked with somewhere to store it. We were going to keep it in the truck but given the truck now needed to be empty to go and get the rest, we needed storage! We spent that night looking for places to rent. It was looking liking it was going to be a storage container in Greenham until we came across the Sovereign website which had garages to rent for a tenner a week just down the road in Great Shefford. What luck! I hadTuesday off so went down to Sovereign  and managed to get the keys there and then. That evening, Andy and I unloaded and let me tell you, it was one hell of a workout. The next morning, I was up at 2 to get to Stansted and I was aching!

Andy went back this weekend and Ben helped him unload round 2. 

P.s I also just want to let people know that I am updating this blog all from an iPhone which if anyone has one, you know how annoying and stealthy auto correct can be. I've always been one who doesn't properly re-read things I have written and it probably shows. But hey, this isn't an English test, it's a blog! The pictures are the most exciting part ;-)