New Year

I've heard the numbers twenty twelve so much in the last few years (was it 2007 it was announced?) that I automatically associate them with the Olympics - but now I also can't help wondering if in years to come it will become THE year we built our house... hope so, at least we won't forget it.

So, the field is now a muddy one - with ground source coils got in on one of the two dry days we seemed to have in December with some help from John Cantor (www.heatpumps.co.uk check out his new book Heat Pumps for the Home, I haven't read it myself [!] but Rob claims it manages to make sense to the lay person) and now we have a big mud bund to stop any nasty run off from our plot.

Here's some picture evidence of what's been happening - from making an entrance:

 

To a muddy, but FLAT (ish) little field:

To an action shot which makes me feel like stuff must be happening:

Oops, gratuitous pet shot but they do have to get out and I can't help it if the beach is amazing even in the cold...

To pic of one of the nine Victorian pine doors we've bought for most of the internal doors (the ones that don't need to meet the code - like the downstairs loo for wheel chair access etc has to) from North Shropshire Reclamation www.northshropshirereclamation.co.uk We spent several freezing hours looking at hundreds of doors and Rob has been busy in the garage cleaning them up - they're marked and have holes and bits of paint and will need all that "door furniture" (really, that's a phrase?) and will probably be a right pain to hang - but they are lovely and will hopefully make our otherwise rather clean cut and inescapably new home feel a bit softer and lived in. I love the idea that they have all come from different houses with different histories.

Lots of weird and wonderful stuff to go back and look at at some point - Napoleonesque busts, old phone boxes, stone lions and wrought iron gates - it feels like being in a Dicken's novel crossed with a Dr Who episode.

Over the holidays we're hoping that the design-builder has finished the drawings of our tomber cassette walls and that the promise of a shortened lead time from the company making them will materialise which might mean we can get the groundworks ready and started on the foundations in mid-January. The sub-contracted builder reckons he is ready to go for then...


So far it's a happy new year :-)