Thinking

I wasn't a great fan of Michael Jackson. Some of his music was OK but I didn't go rushing down to the record shop to buy his albums - no iTunes in them days. I do admire his success, and though he did appear to go a little off the rails in later life, I've not heard anyone who've met him, describe him as anything other than a very nice guy.

It is tragic that anyone dies at an early age, I feel for his family.

I think it is time to let Wacko Jacko rest in peace, and celebrate instead the showman who was Michael Jackson. May his music live on.

So, as the day goes on, I look out of the window into the back garden. The washing is drying on the line. The grass needs cutting and my son is playing with his friend noisily.

A BBQ is planned for later. We've been unlucky so far this year, a combination of timing and weather has been against us. So far we have had just one barbecue and my son is pressing me for a second. Yesterday we failed as at the crucial moment the clouds came over and is chucked it down with rain. Now I look to the sky, the forecast says it will remain dry, but those clouds don't look good.

My office window is open and the smell of burning charcoal from a neighbouring garden suggests that someone else is having similar plans.

Yes, another landmark event. Do you know, we might actually be at the end, or at least a step closer to it.

Today I handed back the key to our storage facility. We had hired a room at a local self storage warehouse to put a lot of our general clutter that we had lying about the house. It gave us the space we needed while the builders were crawling around our house. With the builders almost gone, we decided that we should clear out the store bring all our stuff back. Amongst other things it enables us to stop paying for it. Due to the huge over-run, we had gone over budget with the storage costs.

So the garage has filled up again with our stuff instead of the all the builders' stuff. Not everything has found a permanent home as yet. A room is still not finished. The study needs to have a window enlarged to please the building inspectors. All to do with escape routes etc. The window has been measured and is on order. A couple of days ago the builder told me it should be installed sometime this coming week, hopefully tomorrow. Once it is in, we can decorate, fit desk tops and shelves and put in there some of the stuff currently in the garage.

We are now starting to look at the back garden. It has always been in the plan to have this done, but the extra costs in the house extension has resulted in us waiting for the build to finish before going ahead. We have had two quotes which have been almost identical. Looking out the back, seeing the garden in a state. I am now wanting to progress on that.

So much for the idea of keeping a journal on this site.

A few entries and I give up.

Here we are it's 17th September over 7 months since the builders first walked into our lives and at last I think we can say they have finished. Well, almost.

As with all builds, the odd snag crops up and this morning a guy is up a ladder fixing a gutter. When the upper floor went on over the garage, the gutters were extended and a new down pipe was fitted. OK so far. As the work progressed they realised that they would have to dig a soakaway for this downpipe, and a another one for another section of roof. So they decided to route the rainwater another way, to the other section of roof and so now they only have to dig one soakaway. OK they've saved themselves a bit of work. Except the new section of guttering which started out having a downpipe at the end, now doesn't, but it still slopes that way. So a couple of weekends ago, when we had a heavy downpour. The gutter overflowed.

The trainee is now up the ladder re-fitting the gutter. At least I think it is the trainee, he has made a mess of my front door and the dinning room floor. Lets hope he does a better job with the gutter. I think it would have been easier if they had just dug the second soakaway.

Friday

Nothing happened yesterday due to the weather, rained all morning and blowing a gale for the whole day. The news had loads of reports of trucks being blown over.

This morning and again there is a knock at the door. The weather looks a lot more promising with the wind having dropped and blue sky visible. The porch is being worked on today which means digging up the concrete driveway. My son (7) was excited when he saw the pneumatic drill, as much as he would have liked to stay and watch, he had to get to school.

So now the whole house is rattling to the sounds of the drill. It shouldn't last too long, once the concrete is up, it will be spade work. Meanwhile we have moved one of the cars onto the road and are using the back door to get into the house, walking through the dirt and mud dug up last week.

The architect contacted me by email on Wednesday. He and the builder wants a meeting on Saturday morning to discuss how to deal with the drain and manhole that appeared unexpectedly while digging up the back garden. Looks like we will have 3 options.

1 . Get a specialist company to drive piles around the sewer and bridge over that.

2 . Dig down and pour in concrete pads, then bridge over the manhole.

To my untrained mind, those two options appear very similar, the only difference is that for option 1, the piling company get the extra money, for option 2, the builders do the work and so get the extra, currently estimated at around £2,500

Option 3 is to change the shape of the extension to work around the problem, which will mean more work for the architect, and resubmitting the plans to the council for approval, which would cause even more delay.

We are going to have to be careful how we deal with this as the architect and builder has vested interest in the decision. If there is more cash flying around, they will want as much as possible flying towards them.