What a week...

Phew, what a few weeks! ....

We've been working non stop this last week; Richard has been doing crazy ammounts of driving all over the country and getting up at stupid o'clock! 
I've been working with the electricians doing first fix - that was so much tougher than I'd imagined. Knowing where your furniture is going to be so you can work out the lamps, positioning beds for bedside sockets and lights switches and the whole time conforming to building regs.

I've had to map out the ceilings for spot lights working out where the light would work as task lighting or mood lighting, putting sockets and switches in the right places, thinking which way a door is opening... Phew!! 
We have ended up with 45 double plug sockets! Not counted the light switches yet! - now to choose what covers? Brushed stainless? White? Oh well more research....!

So apart from electricians on site we closed the road for the big sewer connection! 
The contractors came out on Tuesday and we managed  to bring the village to a halt whilst a skip was being removed from another street! But that was nothing compared with Wednesday..
 the contractor cut through a main electric cable in the road and cut off all the residents!! He actually blew a hole in his digger bucket and frankly is lucky to be alive.
Western Power responded very quickly and all was restored in an hour and a half. Only one irate neighbour  which all things considered wasn't bad!!





We've had a bit of a find - we have a secret room! sounds nuts I know and fairly hard to explain: The plans (see photo below) show ground floor connecting to the garage via the utility room and the upstairs plan only goes as far as the lounge therefore the utility room was either going to be vaulted or a floor put in thus making us a very nice dressing room! I must say I'm delighted!! Finally I have a place for all those shoes.. :-)

 

Our roof has progressed rapidly and we are thrilled with how it looks. Dreadnoughts rep (the company who make the clay tiles) came out and wants to photograph and put us in their advertising!

As you can see we've had some gorgeous but bitterly cold days 

 

And so finally and most excitingly (I know thats not a word!!)we've moved into the textile studio!!

We collected our furniture from our "temporary" storage at HB Group (friends Richard and Dinah's contract furniture company www.hbgroup.co.uk) 

We had earmarked a few key pieces last December when we moved out of our previous house; namely our bed, a wardrobe, a couple of desks, a few chairs - enough to set up a little home from home!

It is however taking a while to get everything connected - we have a fully function loo LUXURY!!! A functioning washing machine and dishwasher DOUBLE LUXURY!!! but as yet no working taps or shower.. we had to run the gauntlet this morning and shower in the caravan then run back up!!

I must say Sunday morning lie in; in a proper bed was fabulous!

I even managed to make a simple chicken roast dinner amongst the chaos in my new mini oven/rotisserie!! LOL! 

Hugo and Richard wrestling with "those" wardrobes!!

room with a view...

So much has happened will have to try and blog more frequently as its flying by now... did I say the stairs came today???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back as soon as I can muster the strength!

Wendi

xxx

Really Fast Progress...

Finally I'm able to do some more blogging - it's incredible where time flies off to? I honestly thought I would have so much time on my hands over this last few months but in fact its been the opposite! 

I guess when we are always 'counting down' to one event or another it possibly makes everything go faster? I don't know..!

Anyway - our house was "delivered" and the team started to erect on Monday 30th September; its now 38 days later and the roof tiles are going on! Amazing progress.

In this time we have had the electricity & the water connected, a feat in itself.

The studio has taken shape and I must say I am totally thrilled with it - its going to be an amazing space to work in. We are finishing the flooring this weekend and still have quite a way to go but at least its warm and weather proof. As you can see it took 4 guys to carry the bifold doors into position!!!

The house "kit" went up extremely fast initially with 2 guys on site: Rich and Kyle and joined later by Mick, Greg & Pete. They've done a fantastic job and we are extremely pleased with the product.

The funniest thing was a hidden room we didn't know about - sounds mad doesn't it? But the utility room is a connecting room to the garage and there's no bedrooms above that side of the house and nothing on the drawings so we discovered a space above the utility which has now been promoted to a walk-in wardrobe!!

Here's the first floor finished with a promise of good weather for the next day..

Second floor master bedroom walls go in - you can just see the size and shape of our bedroom window; it's enormous!!!

A double rainbow for luck?

The only hard hat on site is used to store nails and screws!!!

The Roof panels are on..

Oh and did I mention the mud??? This is what site has been looking like with all the rain we've had! Its been awful for Richard who has to go to work in a suit and shiny shoes and for the dogs who are permanently licking their paws :-(

The rear elevation with waterproof membrane and battening ready for tiles

 

We do have some very nosey

"neigh" bours...sorry couldn't resist!! These are the two horses from the paddock at the back of the garden

Now we have tiles on the roof - I am so chuffed as its looking fabulous and as I mentioned only 38 days ago we were looking at foundations

Roof close up! And the beautiful valley tiles - I couldn't resist the patterns here!

And so with the progress rate I will endeavour to come back soon with all the latest photos, keep looking and visit us if you can

Wendi x

I'm back!

Hi there

Apologies for my longer than promised absence. We have had an extremely busy month and have real progress here;

The house has arrived via 4 arctic lorry loads and we have a team of erectors on site. Due to the nature of the construction of the building itself its flying up at great speed. It should be complete in about 2 weeks time and will then be ready for windows and first fix.

Managing the budget has been the biggest challenge as the mortgage is designed to be released at stages according to the value of each build stage; we were given less than was promised at an earlier stage and this totally made life difficult. 
Unless one has a considerable pot of money to dip into its nearly impossible! We have cashed things in and are now trying to sell Richards car just to increase the cash flow. 
Being able to purchase things when there's a deal on is important, as we have with our bathrooms - although we aren't really anywhere near ready for them we wanted to take advantage of the sale and extra discounts offered to us; this has saved us at least half the original cost in the long run but we shouldn't really have bought them yet!! 

Anyway photos below show the first corner going in and the following days as the entire structure takes form, rooms that were just in 'plan' have now become real sizes and I can finally begin to see how furniture will fit into these spaces! I am quite challenged on the 3D front and am not able it seems to visualise space!! 

The funniest thing this week was discovering a hidden room - The guys were putting up the utility room area with these enormous panels and we couldn't understand why there seemed to be a vaulted ceiling in there? (first vaulted utility room I'd ever seen!!) so after much debate we've realised that we can have a dressing room from our master bedroom - Bonus!! It wasn't anywhere on the original plans  and seems it was just a void space?

We are meanwhile still in our caravan on site; It hasn't been too bad on the whole due to the weather as its been such a fantastic summer but I'm fast losing patience as the damp's setting in and it was really cold last night. We had the heating on all night!!  I have asked all my close friends to tell us the minute we start smelling of mushrooms!!!!

Anyway I'll be back regularly now as progress is so fast....

See you soon

Wendi x

p.s we also have a page on facebook - check out Maple barn

Apologies..

apologies as I wont be blogging here for a while - I will be back in about a month and all will be explained..

Wx

An Exciting Day!

Today I am really excited!! So excited in fact that I hardly slept last night and have the monster of all headaches! It feels a little like Christmas morning for me as The Studio is about to arrive any minute! Heres a photo of the base ready!

We've had a very productive couple of weeks and have the block and beam floor down now - it's almost finished, just a few cut blocks to be done but Paul is away and Richard works such long hours that with the time constraints he can't do much in the way of "noisy" work but he laid the blocks and found plenty to do over the Bank Holiday weekend.

note my car parked in the garage for the first time!

We are currently having to juggle financially as the mortgage company decided to give us less money for the stage two release - this in itself is so frustrating when we've budgeted really carefully. It means we cannot order things like bricks and tiles (not exactly luxury items but really important) so this will no doubt put our schedule behind! We have to keep going back to the drawing board and decide what is a priority now - we do need to fit out the studio so that we can actually live in it whilst we build the house but unfortunately there's simply not enough money - bugger!! 
So we will be in the caravan for a tad longer; I blow hot and cold about this - its OK most of the time, I have all the cooking facilities I need and have in fact cooked some lovely meals, the bed is pretty uncomfortable and I do dream of being reunited with my own bed and then there's the shower, well, here lies the real problem, its a dribble not exactly luxurious so I would like most of all a hot, powerful shower!! We are moving the caravan next weekend to the driveway and I will lose 50% of my living space overnight! The dogs currently live and sleep in the awning and will have to come into the caravan which isn't ideal and will be very smelly!!

Preparation before it goes in the indigo vat

I'm not doing much on the textile front - I was supposed to be going to Edwina MacKinnon's house today to meet with all the ladies from my textile group, we were having an indigo day! Im sorry i'll miss this but really need to be on site! I'll have a go on my own as I bought an indigo starter kit - for those of you who don't have a clue what im talking about heres a couple of pics:

                          The result after pole wrapping

                  

And so i'll be back tomorrow with photos of my studio, well half of it as it takes 2 days! see you soon....

Wx

Latest progress & Festival of Quilts

Here we are in August and Maple Barn is growing steadily albeit below ground! Lots of trenches and pipe work, concrete and blocks - we were warned that so much money is spent where you can't actually see it and it turns out to be right! 
We have had so much soil taken away now - 61 lorries in total at 20 tonnes each time, it is certainly a lot of 'muck' but we are fairly confident that there won't be much more (?!!)

The studio is progressing well and the concrete slab is down, services are in and this coming weekend Richard will be putting gravel boards in to secure the ground around it. The studio and the house are all ordered and in manufacture as I type and we expect delivery to be at the very end of August to middle-end of September.

The footprint of the house is taking shape in the form of block work and Paul is preparing the site now for the block and beam floor which is currently in design and then stone which will surround (and cover the mud) the whole of the area outside of the house for scaffolding ready to receive the building itself.


This will make a huge difference for us living on site, trying to stay one step ahead of the weather and laying boards to walk on in order to stay as clean as possible is a nightmare; I've renamed the breed of our dogs- they were once Cocker Spaniels, now they're are affectionately known as 'mud hounds'!! I've had them clipped very short to keep them a bit cleaner but its a battle.

At some stage fairly soon we will have to move the caravan... This is attracting mixed reviews! We are situated quite high up (see previous photos) and we are going to be moving to the front of the site - Richard (who is an engineer) assures me that with simple planning and strategy it will be easy, (I'm less confident - that is by the way how we work together!!)It will be fun and I think I may start selling tickets for the event!

We had another mixed week of weather but managed a beer with Paul the builder and Tommy the bricklayer on Saturday!

And we celebrated my niece Millie's 1st birthday too, she's so adorable I can't resist posting a few photos!!

I did have a massive attack of cabin fever this week and we decided to go off for a mid week mini break and stayed at a friends house. It was so nice to have a real shower and a proper bed and a comfy sofa and big TV!! I'm now back on site and suitably refreshed to plod on with living in my trailer!!  


Textiles News:
A huge event in the Quilting and textiles calendar at the NEC this week is 'Festival Of Quilts'. It attracts a huge international following and I went along yesterday. There were some amazing textile creations and some of the art quilts were incredible.

Here are some of the photos I took yesterday: 

Edwina MacKinnon's 4Seasons

Ineke Berlyn

Linda Kemshall Close up

Linda Kemshall

My absolute favourite -close up

One of my favourite Art Quilts

Love this one!

Amazing perspective

and finally I have been building a website using TicTail an incredibly easy user friendly site where set up takes only minutes! I'm not quite ready to launch it yet, I still have more items to finish and or make but it wont be long before The Maple Barn Company is ready for business...

See you soon Wendi x