Bad news, good news

The builder who came in to see my job today, Simon, who’s a blunt speaking Yorkshireman, thinks that I’m being wildly overoptimistic with my budget. He thinks that my current concept involves a huge amount of roof and building work that alone would eat up a massive chunk of my budget, and that’s before adding in the custom-made hardwood double glazed windows and doors that I’d need and other items.

However, there was a silver lining to what he had to say. For a start, based on his experience of doing similar jobs, he thinks that I’ve grossly under-estimated the amount of space that’s available in my ‘grenier’, which means that in his opinion, the large roof window structures that I’ve envisaged will not actually be necessary. He thinks that by cutting them back to dormers and just adding two porches outside the main and kitchen doors, or even adding a larger extension incorporating eg a utility room, would provide what I need and cost significantly less.

So I’m now waiting for a rough sketch from him before seeing anyone else. Although I like my house, in the end there’s no massive emotional attachment and I just see it as a property that I’m looking to develop in the optimum way with a given budget, so I’m looking forward with interest to seeing what Simon has in mind.

I did manage to get out to do some more work on my new tool store, but a bit later than I intended due to playing around with a few sketches exploring Simon’s thinking. I did get the ground dug out for the store’s concrete base, though, as the following pics show.

It needs to be level and despite being hampered by some huge rocks that I kept having to dig out, some of which can be seen in the pictures above, I more or less succeeded. The ground falls away from right to left and from front to back, so it meant laboriously digging out and shifting earth to get the desired result. The next stage is to put the shuttering in place, which I’ll probably do tomorrow, and when that’s done, I’ll be able to level the earth base more accurately before chucking in hardcore. No problem there, because there’s plenty of that around here – you only have to poke a stick into the ground 😉