Hey there! Remember me? I’ve neglected my blog this week but exciting things have been happening at the house, with the weekend just gone welcoming walls to our extension. WINNER.
So where did I leave off?
On my last update, the rain had sadly put a delay onto our kitchen construction. But by Saturday, the bricklayers had booked us into their schedule over 2 days of beautiful clear skies. I almost wish I hadn’t been so horribly hungover when the noisy job began early on Saturday morning, but waking up knowing it was all go go go was enough to keep a big smile on my face.
Here is a timeline of events, as usual, told through the eyes of our cameraphones:
Friday morning, some pretty hefty trucks – complete with a crane, which I didn’t expect – arrived outside of our house ready to destroy the front lawn. I’m sure that wasn’t their intention of course, but the garden well and truly disappeared underneath the mountains of bricks, concrete blocks and mortar in a flash. Accompanied by what I’m sure is our third full skip of the project, the secret is out to the neighbours that we are a house well and truly under construction.
(Plus, the cats of the street have been having ‘parties’ on top of the brick piles which I find all too adorable. Joe and I have taken to watching them before bed peeping through the bedroom curtains. I mean, let’s face it, there’s nothing worth watching on TV is there?)
Come Saturday the brickies arrived, armed with brew supplies and a radio. It was on.
I wish I could tell you how much I enjoyed watching them start the project, but I’ll be quite honest, I didn’t emerge from my alcohol-fueled haze until mid-afternoon. How embarrassing. Needless to say we had a good chuckle about it (mostly because I looked horrendous) and I was over the moon to see the walls coming together, which you can see a bit of below.
Wanting to catch-up on the action (and get some much-needed fresh air) Joe and I grabbed a packet of biscuits, some deck chairs, and delicately made our way to the garden to sit and watch the house develop.
With it being the weekend and everything, we of course had plans to go out again on the Saturday night (dirty stop outs!) with both of our parents – My mum and step-dad came to visit and within 5 minutes of the brickies leaving on Saturday evening, my step-dad had managed to knock down one wall trying to make it back into the kitchen. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but it’s a bit of an Indiana Jones task to get into the back of the house these days! It really was a “you had to be there” type moment, but what was most hilarious was the fact that he tried to put it back together… Oh dear!
So that brings me to Sunday, which brought more of the same. After some hard graft (and I tell you what, those lads make the job look so unbelievably easy) the brickies did a great job in erecting the walls.
By Sunday evening, this is what it looked like from the point of view from the current kitchen door at the back of the house.
With the new walls, you can really get a better feel for the additional space the kitchen will have. You can see over there on the left of the above picture is a gap in the brickwork. This is where we are going to have some french doors opening out onto a patio, and it’s amazing to be able to visualise that properly now we have a partial structure in place.
Over there in the distance you can see that on our garden picnic bench is a pile of earthwool which will soon be used within the walls, to provide cavity insulation.
And below is a before and after for the weekend to show just how much of a difference the 2 days made to the project. Amazing, right? I know that to most bricks are a bit boring, and if you could see the state of my phone, there isn’t much more than images of mortar and concrete saved in there. But I love documenting each part of the extension so I can get a real sense of change over time. Hope you’re as impressed as we are with the work so far! With a bit of luck, we should see just as much accomplished next weekend.
