Waterloo Farm: a self-sufficient blog

I am now past the worst of the pain, and the body is starting to recover, having gone back to work yesterday! My two weeks of annual leave are now over, having spent 14 days solid working on the Farm. It has been a phenomenal two weeks of blood, sweat and at times, near tears! But it has been extremely rewarding to, and I can honestly say I would not have missed it for the world!

The ‘hard core Saturday’ saw tons of hard core being wheel barrowed back in! This then gets compacted using a ‘Whacker’, which I have to say is actually good fun, leaving the ground very hard. Next this is covered with sand and lightly compacted to protect a new membrane which will go beneath the concrete pad to form a physical damp proof.

We are planning to have the new concrete floor laid on the 18th December, and so far it is all looking good to hit that date.

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Mark and Dale have been busy today (this does not imply they are not busy on other days!) with some really noticable results. Firstly the cut through into the master bedroom to create the new corridor, needed to resolve the en suite bedroom issue and allow us to put our bed central to the window allowing us to wake up and survey ‘our land’ !

Also, the old stud partition wall between bedroom 3 and 4 is now cleared so the new studs can be put up allowing the old ones to be removed. It’s really exciting when ‘big’ things happen like this as one has a real sense of progress.

Exciting day today as we saw the cut through of the new door way into the Family Room.

It was a very messy business in terms of dust, at one stage it looked like the house was on fire with the dust bellowing out of the open doors and windows. Mark and Dale appeared like snowmen, Mark actually took on a rather festive Father Christmas type appearance!

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I think Mark and Dale were getting wall removal withdrawl symptoms, so we agreed to take some more down! (Hey what is another few walls amongst friends?!)

The walls in question ‘made up’ the downstairs cloakroom, however, they sat on top of the concrete pad that we need to remove, so it made the most sense to take them down.

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It felt like things slowed down today, but no one worked any less hard. I guess it is true what they say, it is harder to build things up than knock them down!

The steel lintel that was on the floor yesterday which was required to knock through from the entrance hall to the old pantry, is now in place, thanks to the swirling efforts of Dale and Mark. Dale appeared to be acting as a human ‘acrow’ at one stage! It now sits snugly into the wall and is actually level with the ceiling, which means we can place a thin oak beam to cover it and it looks like we will have an oak beam.

With all the remaining wall out and the room cleared it really starts to open out the entrance hall area.

I was handy with my barrow as ever and kept the teas and coffees coming.

I wonder what day 5 will bring?