In the beginning

Rich had been browsing the internet and keeping his eyes open for a "project" for some considerable time. He found this barn by pure chance on the internet and visited it a couple of times without me - he didnt want me wearing rose tinted glasses before he had checked a few things out! However, on my first visit unfortunately the glasses did come out and I fell in love with it.

The barn itself sits in just under half an acre of land. It is a limestone barn and the attached "buildings" are corregated iron and wood. These will come down completely and be rebuilt in limestone, but the barn will stay as much as possible with original features.

The Barn

The Barn

The other bit!

The other bit!

Firstly

We had to discuss with our girls what we were contemplating as it was going to affect them quite considerably -well living in a caravan for a year or so wasn't quite what they were used to! Em was ok as she is pretty independent but it was going to be more difficult for Amy as she hadn't at that point passed her driving test. However the week before we moved in December 2009 she passed her test which meant we had another car to buy but at least everyone was mobile.

We made arrangements to put our caravan on the Greenhill Leisure Park at Bletchingdon for the interim period until we could move our caravan on to our land at the barn. We also stay for odd nights with family and friends and, because we got withdrawal symptoms from not being down at our caravan in Warmwell, we had a weekend down at Weymouth

The front garden

The front garden
from near the entrance gate

The front garden

The front garden
This is the left hand side

The front garden

The front garden
The right hand side

Sunday, 27 June 2010

Foundations



The concrete has been poured in the foundations on the bedroom side and entrance hall and is ready for the blockwork to be done to dampcourse.

Not long now before things start happening above ground ...
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this is the start of the piles of earth....
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Services



We have got electricity on site, but need to get the water sorted. The pipe work has been done and its just waiting to be inspected. Fingers crossed we get it sorted very soon so that we can get over to the site. I am happy to live in a caravan but will not do so without a water tap being very close by!
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Survey



We had a survey done to check how far the piled foundations needed to go down - it wasn't good news, they would need to go down nearly 30 feet and therefore wanted a lot of extra money as this wasn't what had been anticipated and quoted for! Our builders were fantastic and they have sorted things out with our building inspector and between them agreed we could do "normal" foundations however it meant going down about 10 feet for the majority of them. Some of them are a bit less so Rich could just see over the top of the shallower ones.... it does mean that we have loads of earth/clay to get rid of - lorry loads and loads and loads and loads... it is free to a good home if anyone wants some
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The builders arrive


Bit of a delay in posting all this but here is what has been happening:
the builders arrived on site with their machinery ready to get started. The remainder of the cow shed was demolished and the site was cleared.
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Monday, 10 May 2010

Oh dear!


However it wasnt quite plain sailing as look what happened...

A railway sleeper decided to move without encouragement and whooshed past Rich's head (which was covered by his hard hat) and land on his foot - oouch!

He has a broken bone in the middle of his foot with soft tissue damage. Crutches are the order of the day as he cant at the moment put his foot to the ground. However looking to the positive he was extremely lucky his foot wasn't crushed by the 1/4 ton weight!

Frustrating for him to say the least
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Going; going; gone.....




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