Its been a long time since our last blog post which is mostly because we haven’t had anything to report…nothing at all. Well nothing we felt ready to write down without a large quantity of profanities.
Not long after our last post Andy went AWOL. Architect Steve and I tried emailing, phoning and texting but heard nothing from him. After a week or so of trying we made the difficult decision to terminate our contract with him – it seemed the only option left to us. It wasn’t a nice thing to have to do but we felt we had been left with no choice. Utility providers who were set up to connect were cancelled and the building inspector was told thing were on hold. Everyone concerned was very understanding. In particular, Kay, my designated project manager from National Powergrid deserves an award for her amazing customer service skills and cheery manner – I went from tearful to laughing during the 5 minutes I spent explaining the situation to her.
One thing I’m learning quickly about self-building that they clearly edit out of Grand Designs is that it can be exceedingly tedious – there’s a lot of waiting. Steve was straight on the ball arranging a new quote for completion of the groundworks but it all takes time. Jonny and I spent the summer looking over at our muddy hole in the ground really quite depressed about it. Our “In-by-Christmas” plan went from optimistic to impossible. We didn’t look at the plans much or talk about what it would look like much, it all seemed too far away.
But as Autumn approaches we’re again seeing progress. The company who are lined up to build our timber frame CJS arrived on site today to do the groundwork. They had quoted originally but were a lot more pricey than Andy’s quote. In my gut I knew I should have gone with them in the first place – it just felt right and I liked John, the groundworker, instantly. But we went with our head over our hearts and you live and learn. There’s no point looking backwards.
A bigger digger was delivered yesterday and by 4pm today the site was once again spic and span and ready to go. They’ve estimated 3 weeks to finish the groundwork and as soon as the foundations are in final measurements for the timber frame can be made – as CJS will be making it we might just claw back some time. But in the meantime, we’ve made alternative arrangements for Christmas – ho ho ho!