It’s been almost a year since our last blog post – we thought things would happen a bit more quickly than they have but we finally have a start date for the build so it seemed like a good time to write an update.
As most of you know things haven’t gone entirely smoothly since moving in next door to the Coach House. Things got off to a great start, the kids school places got sorted very quickly by the fantastic team at the Council. We got settled into Chapeltown life with Jonny and his dad Dave moving the summer house to a new position further down the garden out of the way of the build.
Then we were hit with the unexpected tragedy of Dave’s sudden death in August which left us all reeling – obviously we did nothing for a few months on the build. It was not part of the plan – Dave was supposed to see this through and be Granddad next door for many years to come. His heart had other plans. It was the hardest thing either of us has ever had to go through but we didn’t go through it alone because we were still living with Alan and Lynn, Dave’s oldest and closest friends and who definitely count as family. This helped. As did a lot of other people, and we are grateful to you all for your cards, flowers, beer, damp shoulders and general wonderfulness. We know we are lucky.
Steve, our architect, was understanding enough to leave us be and crack on with finalising planning conditions. When we finally started thinking about the house build again in November, Steve informed us that there had been a big error by the Council’s planning department. It seemed they were supposed to have told us to undertake investigative drilling to ensure we weren’t about to build upon an old coal mine. They had neglected to do this and the report had sat around for about 3 months. I swore a lot during this phone call with Steve and Jonny swore a lot when I told him. However, there’s nothing like a bit of grief to provide perspective (and a bit of swearing also helps). It was an expensive hoop we had to jump through to get what we wanted and it took time to organise and plan.
Christmas came and went, we got quite disparaged, we looked at sofas and kitchens to cheer ourselves up and to remind ourselves once again of the dream. I bought cushion fabric (and yes I know how ridiculously premature that is!). We put pretty things on Pinterest. We sent a lot of emails asking about drilling.
Finally in March the lovely Ian turned up with his enormous drill – he was a most welcome sight!
It took just 2 days to drill two 25m bore holes which revealed 15 meters of solid rock (a most excellent base for a house!) plus an untouched 2m deep coal seam (handy to know in the event of a total zombie-apocalypse style infrastructure collapse). Ian was happy, Stuart our Geological expert was happy and me and Jonny were over the moon.
Today the planning department have confirmed all is well we’re heading to the starting blocks. Our builder Andy starts in 2 weeks – I think we may put up bunting for his arrival, or at the very least bake buns.
We look forward to updating you all more regularly!
Sarah