Day 31 - Dig Deep

The underpinning has been started. They have had to dig deep holes, which are slightly under the existing house, these have steel rods in them and will be filled with concrete to create the supports.

We can now get an idea of how deep the garage is going to be.

More digging means more grab loader lorries to take the earth away. Luckly the weather has been on our side. Hopefully we will be out of the ground in a couple of weeks and then there should be less mess.

Day 25 - The Great Wall Of...

The walls have finally started to go up at the back of the house. You can see the space for the french doors at the far corner, the window in the middle will be part of the rear living room together with the french doors to the right.

The walls are not going to get much higher until we have sorted out the underpinning at the side.

Day 22 - Laying the Foundation Blocks

Its so nice to see some brick/block work going up. The builder reckons that the brickwork will go up quickly.

The french doors are for the back living room which will now be the kitchen and will extend to the end of the next extension. To the left of the kitchen (if looking from the back garden) will be the main living room.

Day 18 - To The Trenches

The trunch for the foundations for the rear extension have been dug. We can now see where the extension is going to go up to and how much garden space we will have.

Things seem to be coming along now.

I am a bit concerned about the difference in levels between the patio area next to the house and the rest of the garden. We have decided to have very wide steps on the right, that way it will appear like a more gentle slope rather then a high wall.

Not sure what sort of retaining wall we will be using. Will see what our budget allows closer to the time.

Hopefully we will be laying some bricks soon...

Day 14 - Bye Bye Goldfish

The builders have been laying the sewer pipe down the side of the house and they have had to dig up most of the front garden which has meant getting rid of the pond.

We discovered 4 fairly large goldfish in the pond which we managed to save and have now moved to the builders large fish tank at home.

The extra digging meant more lorry loads of earth removal. The builder will be connecting the new piping to the existing sewer once it has been inspected by the Building Regs inspector.

We will be filling the front garden later. At the moment the place looks a mess.

Day 10 - The Earth Moved

...and boy was their a lot of it. We are having lorry load after lorry load of earth taken away. It seems never ending.

The builders have made a start on re-routing the sewer pipe. Its going to run down the left hand side of the house and then accross the front garden which means more digging.

Day 5 - Early Morning Wake up Call

It was Saturday and the second week of Ramadan, it had been a long week and I was looking forward to a sleep in. However I got a call from the neighbour at 7.30am telling that the tempory fix we had done on the mains water pipe had let go and my garden was now flooding with water. Also there was no water going to his house. Again he was really good about it which made me feel that much worse.

Anyway got up, went over expecting to find a small lake where my back garden used to be but it wasnt too bad. I turned the water off in the road.

We managed to find a fitting which would attach between the original steel pipe and the temporary plastic pipe. We got it sorted fairly quickly and hopefully this time it will hold.

Day 3 - Excavation - Another problem

It seemed that we were making good progress. The builder had the digger in and made a start on the excavation of the back garden. There is a LOT of earth to come out and we are hiring grab loader lorries to come and take the earth away.

Things were going fine till about 11am this morning when I got a call from the builder. The digger had gone through the main water supply pipe that serviced both our house and the neighbour to the left. Mains water supply normally comes from the road through the front garden and into the house, our supply seems to be coming from the walkway behind our back garden.

Had to rush to buy some bottled water for the neighbour to keep him going until we got the pipe fixed. Luckily he was at work during the day. We could not get the right fitment for the pipe so had to do a temporary fix.

Spoke to the neighbour and he was really good about it and said that it was not a problem. Still feel bad about inconveniencing him. Hope we are still on speaking terms by the time the house is finished.

Day 1 - Demolition

The builders have started on the house today. They made short of demoliting the garage and shed at the side of the house. A bonfire at the back meant that most of the wooden frame for the shed and garage was burnt.

OH NO!!! Discovered a problem already!!! It would seem that the sewer drainage does not run as we expected it to. We had assumed that there was a private sewer running along the back of all the properties on this side of the road and that the pipe connecting our house continued on into our next doors garden. This was not the case, there is a private sewer connecting three houses to our right when then runs down our drive (the area we want to excavate) and connects to the public sewer in the road.


This is going to be a major problem as we will now have to re-route the sewer so that it doesnt run down our drive. Sounds expensive! and its only day 1. This could be a loooong few months.

Background

We bought this house back in May 2008 with the intention of extending it to make a good sized family home. The previous owner of the house sadly died in November 2007. He lived there since the house was originally built back in 1939.

When we purchased the house it was in need of a lot of work. The heating and hot water was not working, the windows needed replacing and the garden was very overgrown. It was the perfect property to gut and refit.

This is going to be a huge project and an interesting and perhaps stressfull few months ahead. It would be nice if we could have the house ready for mid February 2009, ideally before my birthday.

It will be a lot of work as the property is on a slope and we will need to excavate a lot of the earth to the side and back of the existing house in order to get the layout we want.

We intended to exend the house at the back by 3.5m which and at the the side by 4m. We also wanted to excavate the side of the house to allow us to have a lower level garage under the new side extension. This would be a double garage extending out 5.3m on the side. This is possible as the house is higher then the road level.


Hopefully this should give us 3 good sized reception rooms downstairs with a decent sized kitchen, and 4 bedrooms upstairs (2 with en-suite), a bathroom and a study (which is currently the box bedroom) upstairs.

It has been a bit of an uphill struggle with the local planning department we have finally got the planning application passed albeit with a few concessions like reducing the extension at the rear from 3.5m to 3m and having a steep sloping roof on the side with a dormer window for the new front first floor bedroom which will greatly reduce the usable space in the room.