Big progress

Our builders have been here on and off for the past 3 weeks, putting up our walls, rendering them and laying our patio areas. I meant to update earlier than this with a work in progress report, but I forgot. I have taken lots of photos along the way though which I'll share with you now...

Step 1. Dig and Lay Foundations

Step 2: Build Walls

Step 3: Render Walls (I don't have a specific picture of this one...)
Step 4: Lay patios:

All that's left for the builders to do is to grout the patio areas.

Next, we'll be adding in the paths that run around the garden, sealing the patio stones and finish painting the shed. That should all come together fairly quickly.
Once that's done it's just the small matter of sorting out the fences, lighting, decking and planting. We may have a garden by September, with a bit of luck.

We Have Shed!

The Plan for the Weekend: Build Shed and make watertight

The Workers: Simon, Rob, Emily and Sarah


Progress Report: 
Our shiny new shed was delivered on Thursday last week by our shed supplier Poultons. They drove all the way from Essex to deliver it to us and were turned around after dropping off the bits and having a quick coffee in under an hour.

Simon and I spent the next few evenings painting the pieces, to try and get as much done as possible before putting the shed up. The rain didn't help with these plans, and Simon had more than a few choice words on Saturday morning when he got up early to paint, only to see all his efforts washed away in a sudden rain shower.

Later in the day our reinforcements arrived in the shape of Emily and Rob, who came along to help us put up the shed. Between the three of them (and me steadying a few bits where I could) they had the shed walls up in what seemed like a matter of moments. The roof was a little bit more tricky, but I think we had the whole building up and secured in under 3 hours. Construction was made a little more difficult by the moat we'd inadvertently constructed on the front edge of the shed...

Side of Shed pre second roof Panel

Front of Shed

Me painting shed post roof fitting

There was still a fair bit of work to be done to get it watertight, so we called a stop for the day after putting some plastic sheeting over the roof to ensure that no water got in through the slight gap at the apex. Given the amount of rain we've had over the last few days, this was a great idea. Simon discovered that sitting on the roof of his shed is not only a fun thing to do, but a great way of bonding with the neighbours. If I ever can't find him, it'll be one of the first places I check.

On Sunday, Simon started fitting the roof shingles to the shed, which are sheets of bitumen shingles, in strips of 4 tiles. Again the rain hasn't been helpful with this or my ongoing attempts to paint the shed, but we're making progress. My parents are coming over this weekend to help us finish off (guttering, sealing, painting and generally making good). Here's what it looks like as of this morning:

The plastic bags remain on the top to water proof the roof

Builders arrive to do the walls and patios on Monday, having also been delayed by the weather.

Progress at Last!

Its been a quiet few months for the Garden Project what with selecting a builder and waiting for them to have a slot to do the work. However, progress has been made this week, with the laying of our shed base, and the subsequent ordering of the shed.

Our contractors won't be coming to do the bulk of the work until the beginning of July, but they were able to come and pour the concrete for our shed base. Once the base was down we could be confident to order the shed, which should arrive in the next few weeks.

More pics to follow of the current state of the garden, but here's one of the builders at work setting up for the concrete pour:

 

You can see that we've started cultivating some weeds again in the sunniest corner of the garden... its a never ending battle.

Design update

Trying to put together information for various other landscapers to come and quote for us,  I decided to make a scale diagram on the computer of the garden design that I can print off and give to people to help them quote for the work.


Here it is:

Weekend #5: Moving Earth and Weeding

This weekend Simon and I have been back in the garden, but with slightly different purposes.

Simon has been moving the earth out of the garden that he dug out over the last few weeks, so our patch is looking a lot tidier than it was before.

How its looking now:

And here's Simon posing with the spoils of digging:

MEanwhile, I've been clearing out weeds from our parking area. I made good progress yesterday, but was thwarted in my efforts by the evil Agapantha(?) shrubs that have been planted out by the builders. They have spikes about a centimetre long that will cut you to shreds through heavy duty gloves. So today I dug them all out and replaced them with Escalliona which look similar, but not spiny shrubs. The name currently escapes me, but they flower in summer with different colour so he have a mixture of white pink and red.

To give you an idea of how the bed in the parking area looked before, here's a pic of the bed down the other end of the car park:

And here's what the bed I've been working on now looks like (the Hebeis on the left have always been there and are lovely):

We also replaced the evil spiky bits just to the side of the house with lavender:

There is still a fair bit of weeding to do, but it will give me something to occupy me over the net week or so and then the whole place will look smart - especially if we get the hippo bags out the front picked up!
The quest to find a contactor continues. I've now had 2 quotes back and emailed both of them back to open negotiations... I also have the cards of 2 more landscapers. recommened by the local garden centre where we picked up the plants. As Simon commented on the way home: going to the garden centre on a Sunday afternoon, officially the most middle-aged, middle-classed past time, but at least we're listening to the Beastie Boys in the car.

A little update

We've been making fairly slow progress on the garden over the last few weeks in terms of what it looks like, as we're waiting for quotes to come back from some landscapers to cover some of the more skilled work - laying the stone and the raised planters, and rendering them.

In the meantime, Simon has been digging out the patio areas a little more to prepare them and make them nice and level(ish). Yesterday I was even able to help as I'm feeling much better.

Here's a picture of what it looks like now:

To make up for that fairly ugly photo, here's a picture of Simon driving a boat in Stratford-upon-Avon last weekend:

Our bird feeder is still very popular, in addition to the goldfinches the pair of pied-wagtails have returned, the male of which has become super territorial, and keeps attacking his reflection in our windows. Crazy bird is crazy. We also have spotted a starling in the last few days.

No video of the digging out, but here is crazy bird:

Weekend #3 - Woodhenge

The Plan for the Weekend: Setting the posts for the Pergola.

The Equipment Required: Fence posts, Postcrete, Post hole digger, spirit levels, poke oke stick.

The Workers: Simon, Peter and Sarah
The Support Team : Kate

Progress Report:This weekend we were back on gardneing duties after 2 very enjoyable celebration weekends - the wedding of Emily and Rob and my Dad's 60th birthday. Far too much booze, food and fun.

During the week I went out to the local wood merchants to source fence posts and the wood for the path edging, which was delivered on Saturday morning.

Saturday was spent getting prepared, as my Dad was heading over on the Sunday to help us. Simon took delivery of the timber and moved it into the garden and garage. We looked in to hiring a post hole digger, but as they were only £22 in Wickes (and more than that to hire for a week), we ended up buying one. Its a rather cunning but simple contraption - basically two rounded shovel blades hinged together with long handles. It makes lovely round holes just large enough to house a 4x4" post. We also heard about a product called Postcrete, which is used unsurprisingly to concrete posts in place. Internet reviews suggested that this product was somewhere between alchemy and magic, so we bought what we though would be enough bags to cover all our posting requirements. It turns out we need more, but I'm not sure the car suspension could have coped with many more bags than we bought...

On Sunday  before my Dad arrived we spent trying to get a level on the garden using the laser level, which was fun, but tricky whenever the Sun came out. Thankfully Dad turned up shortly after, and we started measuring out and then digging our first hole. I say we, I only ever did measuring and moral support while the boys did all the digging. Digging out the holes was slow going, and sometimes very slow thanks to a layer of rubble but steady, and getting the posts vertical and level on top took a fair amount of time, but the Postcrete turned out to be truly magic.

You fill your carfully measured and dug hole 1/3 full of water (we made up a special measuring stick for this), put in the post, make sure its nice and vertical and then pour in the powder. We found it best to have 2 people holding and making sure the post was vertical in both planes while one person poured the powder was best, but in theory could be a solo job. On a warm day like Sunday though we only had about 30 seconds to make sure we were level after all the concrete was in before it went so solid as to make moving it tricky. After 5 minutes the concrete was set fast. Chemistry - it's awesome.

By the time we broke for lunch (and the first half of England v France 6 Nations match) at 3pm we'd set 3 posts, and by sundown at 6:30 we'd done 5 - which is half of the posts that make up the pergola. Although the ground isn't level, we were able to check the tops were level with cunnning use of the edging planks placed on their cut side on top of the posts, which was a good measuring method, but I think got dropped on someone at least 5 times over the 2 days...

A sucessfull day, barring the disaster in the evening when the permanent marker my Dad left in his back pocket leaked all over our cream leather sofa...thank god for household insurance.

Monday, Simon was back to work, so Kate joined the working crew for the remaining 5 pergola poles. We got going abot 11:30, and by 3pm when Kate and I had to leave for an appointment, we had 3 posts in and the 2 remianing holes mostly dug. It was these last 2 holes - closest to the fence out to the parking area that were the worst. Our soil is clay, so tough to dig through to start with, but for these two the rubble layer about 20cm down was by far the worst we'd encountered. Whole bricks, chunks of concrete and tarmac for about 15cms. In the end the holes had to be widened so we could get a pickaxe in to break up and lever out the worst of it. Whilst we were out, Dad backfilled and redug the holes so that they weren't too large, and Simon made it home before dark to help him set in the posts in the concrete.

2 days, 10 posts. Not bad. We need another 7 posts to go in for the secondary fence, but these should be quicker as the positioning is not quite as vital as for the pergola - as long as they're vertical and in roughly the right place we'll be fine.

What it Looked like when we finished:

Not the greatest photos, thanks to the Sun position - I'll try and upload some better ones later. In the foreground you can also make out our birdfeeder, which is prvoing very popular with the local population of goldfinches. In the mornings, about 20 of them come to our place for breakfast. We also have a pied-wagtail pair a couple of fat pidgeons and some magpies.