The neighbours views improve, for now.....

This was the builders first full week back from lock down and the guys were not hanging about! Concrete had been ordered, so the first part of the week was all about getting the garage walls up to height ready for the first of the two concrete pours. We also saw the last of the scaffolding going up and finishing off the step installation up to the back parking area.

Immediately the scaffolding was finished Jim was up on the roof rippng off the tiles. The tiles, it turned out, were made of a composite material and every single tile has been screwed in place. The guys certainly weren't going to unscrew each tile so unfortunately these could not be recycled.

Within a couple of days they had all the tiles off, loaded into the back of a lorry and cleared from site. No sooner had the lorry left site and they started to take down roof rafters. The wood is like new, very dry and likely to keep several folks in kindling for a winter or two, so no wastage here.

You can see in from the photo's above why the old design of the rafters and limited roof height prevented us from doing a straight forward roof conversion.

I love all the light in the photo above. We won't have this much light once we put the roof back on, but we will have created much more light than we had before by opening up the layout, enabling a sight line right through the property from back to front and installing much larger windows and glass doors. Upstairs we should get more of this lovely type of light as we are installing large glass doors that are 6 meters wide at the front, again opening up the sight line from back to front and installing as many large velux windows as we can get away with.

Once the roof comes off and we get this corner of wall down (above) and the footings in for the new front door configuration we will be able to get a real sense of what the Kitchen/Family room space will feel like. I can't wait!

By the time lock down is over we will be at the point of needing to make our final decision on our kitchen and getting it ordered. Before we do this we want to be able to mark it out on the floor of this room to ensure we get the layout right and have scaled things like the island correctly. I want the biggest island the space will allow. Once the walls are down and the rubble has gone we will be in there with our spray paint at the ready.

As every tile and rafter disappears the views improve for the neighbours behind. Only two of our neighbours responded negatively to our plans and they live directly behind us. Unfortunatly as much as they will enjoy the views with the roof off, I suspect once the new roof goes back on it will feel much, much bigger and drag up all their negative feelings all over again.

Our hedging has arrived and should start to go in down the edge of the wall in the first photo in the next week or so. The work to the flower beds at the back of the house, thining out what's there and moving a few of the the shrubs to new posiitons started this week. This work will continue all through the summer, with the last bits of cutting back competed in the autumn. By this time next year it will be looking how we want it too, ready for us to enjoy when we move back in and easy for us to maintain going forward.

Week 5 of lock down ended on a good note, as it always does, with a virtual "Binster" get together. This weeks menu was picked by the lovely Heather & Rob and inspired by Rick Stein's "Road to Mexico". Once again we all followed the same menu and recipes and then ate it together virtually. We started with homemade Margarita's while we nibbled on nachos with a hot salsa dip. Promptly followed by spicy corn on the cob, steak and onions, cooked on the BBQ and served with Guacamole, Mexican Salad and homemade Tortilla's, washed down with more margarita's. Sore heads the following day, but much fun and many laughs had by all.

Tim and I went into the weekend on a high and looking forward to some lovely walks in the sunshine. Unfortunately our Sunday walk ended badly, with me being bitten by a large dog. We were coming along the Saints Way, which is a pubic footpath, when a small dog (doodle something), came running over barking like mad. We didn't take any notice and kept walking towards its owners who were out gardening. As we were passed by the owner came out towards us apologising for the little one barking at us (Tim was between me and the dog owner ), at that point I glimpsed a much larger doodle type dog standing behind the owner and literaly within seconds it came around behind us and sank it's teeth into me!!!

I was so shocked. It was a completely unprevoked attack and I would never, in a million years, have expected it to happen. We have always had dogs so we are not remotely scared of them (well not so sure about now!) and would have said a good judge of whether we were under threat or not. What was most scary about the experience was the dog did not give any warning whatsoever that it was about to attack and we were on a public footpath.

A last glimpse of the old roof from a different angle below.

That's it for this week, until next time.....

Stay home and stay safe x