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

Making real progress

Things must be progressing fast as I do not usually blog twice in 10 days! 

Firstly I must sing the praises of the 'adult' sized paddling pool, had it not been for this I think I may have expired!! The heat (which I love, and am NOT complaining about in the very slightest) has been somewhat relentless, temperatures of 29 degrees in the shade, which was hot shade. No electric fans for sale anywhere in the Midlands or on the internet! So I have had to cool off in the pool; don't worry though - I do wait until all builders have left the site, they don't want to see a beached whale impression before they go home for their dinner!!

The most exciting day this week was Monday when the Concrete arrived. The way its done is really clever: Its all mixed in the wagon via different chambers and poured down a chute - I haven't seen that on Grand Designs!! 

So all the foundations were poured and then overnight Monday and Tuesday we had horrendous thunder storms! I was terrified as the noise on the caravan roof and the booming noise from the thunder was scary... and as you can see the foundations just filled with water! 

Getting me and two dogs off the site that morning was no mean feat, by the time we got to the car the dogs had clay boulders hanging from their feet and ears!!

It soon started to dry out and we took delivery of our blocks for the foundations and house footprint. Tommy and Reg (yes of course I keep calling them Ronnie and Reg!)our brickies arrived and boy have they cracked on; as you can see from the photos below: Thursday about 10am then Today at midday!

On a more sober note and allowing me to vent for a moment, we had a complaint this week via Wychavon council about the fact we'd taken out; where the front of the drive is: a small wall and "ancient" hedgerow - the hedgerow consisted of 2 discarded christmas trees, a tree that had been sawn through (also dead) a small amount of privet, a Leylandii and a falling down dry stone wall. It was a condition of the planning permission to do this as access for the lorries would be dangerous and we will put back a nicer dry stone wall and some hornbeam hedging. I just wish people would approach us and talk to us, allow us to explain what we are doing but I guess its part of the process. We will not be able to please everyone but hopefully in time when its finished and adds value to the street and they see what a keen gardener I am (ambition is to be part of the open garden scheme NGS!!) any animosity will pass. Rant over!

Anyway good news - The studio is scheduled to arrive 3rd week in August and the house is 'pencilled in' for 2nd September onwards. I am getting flooring quotes and window quotes etc which is keeping me very busy!

We should be in France with our friends Richard and Dinah for the next two weeks but have cancelled as we need the time here and the money spent here. Their lovely properties are Bel Air in Lacapelle Biron which is where we should be now: http://www.belair-farmhouse.co.uk/ and in fact their other house The Tobacco barn is our inspiration for this very project, a stunning old barn which we've watch turn into a beautiful home. 
Paul our builder spent months working out there and is how we found him! Its in Barsalio 5 minutes from Monpazier http://www.tobaccobarncompany.com/

This is the motley crew we should be with; The Berrys, The Clovers, The Young Husband Francis's and their offspring!!

The Tobacco barn

I will be back next week I'm sure with more progress,
bye for now 
Wendi x

Heatwave..

Well here we are in the middle of a heatwave which I must admit I'm loving! Highs of 29 degrees here in Pebworth. Its making caravan living very nice indeed and I know we'll look back and remember 'that summer!'

We are making great progress on site as you may expect and despite the fact that Paul our builder is melting in the digger he's just steaming ahead! Literally!

The photos below show that in a mater of days we have gone from quite a high ground level to foundations being dug.

We have now had 46 lorries at 20 tonnes per lorry taken away - incredible!! 

During the dig we have uncovered some treasures too and in the photo below you can see ammonites, bones, rusty metal (these will feature later in some fabric dyeing!) and lots of broken china, again I will use these to make some feature or another in the garden.

The bones are too big to be a pet dog (great dane?) and too small to be cattle or horses (confirmed by Andy the farmer) so we wonder what or whom they are......!!!!!  

We have had some lovely feathered visitors on site too: After I filled the feeders with Niger seed and sunflower hearts we've been invaded by gold finches - Lovely!
Difficult to get a good picture but heres one of the parent birds we have a flock of 6 in total.

 Heres my Dad on the 'heap' he's really enjoying coming over to oversee the progress! How big?!!

Last weekend we went to a church fundraising BBQ event in the village. It was held at Pebworth Manor a stunning house and garden that enjoys the most incredible views! It was a very drunken affair with lots of nice food and we met lots of lovely welcoming people. 
This was the stunning sunset... 

So as I leave you I'm sitting in the garden watching our mini swimming pool fill up, cold drink in hand - Concrete is coming tomorrow morning so we'll have foundations proper! Its all very exciting and I feel really lucky to be on site as project manager  which at the moment is a really easy job! 

Long may this sunny weather continue and i'll be back soon

Wendi x

Groundworks commence

It seems I'm a terrible blogger! always signing off from the previous blog with " see you soon"  I cannot believe where time disappears to - its as though it rushes away with out any control. 

There is a positive here I suppose- when I get a quote for a job and they say they cant come out until September, it isn't that far away!! (I'm refering to the Electricity company, they are in fact so busy they really cannot connect us until September!)it is actually only 45 days, 6.4 weeks away

But the positive news is the groudworks have begun. Our builder Paul started just over a week ago and frankly is making great progress. We have a driveway albeit made from MOT type 1 (hardcore) its opened it up and changed the perspective hugely.

Here I am (below) in the hole that will be my studio! Richard did get carried away with the "toys" on site and yes we did consider an olympic size pool...!!

We have had 12 lorry loads of spoil taken away so far and its estimated that there will be at least 30 in total! the driver from Scotts is a real character called Pete - he informs me that each lorry load is approx. 22 tonnes!! we've had 12 lorries so far - you do the maths... (thats 264 tonnes of spoil for those without their calculator handy)

Paul hopes to dig out all the foundations and service trenches by the middle of next week and we'll then be ready for the block and beam floor.

I am busy speaking to the services and getting quotes for various things including doors and windows.

We had a visit from a local archeologist who was interested to see if there is any evidence of Mediaeval foundations - Pebworth is in the Doomsday book and it is rumoured that William Shakespeare himself belonged to a drinking club here! The Archeologist didn't think we would unearth anything although I did find the usual blue & white china pieces strew around about 4ft underground.

We have stayed over on site in the caravan for most of this week as there has been so much going on and I seem to be giving out cheques constantly!!

We've had really good weather here its been hot and sunny for the most part which is great as we don't want Somme like conditions yet - saying that its just started raining..

Paul at SIPS UK has continued on with the building regs drawings and we have approved the house and garage and have just received the studio building regs.He thinks we are still 10 weeks away from delivery which is a surprise as we felt we were closer? lets hope we can get the studio up and running to at least live in and we can take it from there.

On a much different note:

Last weekend our Tuesday Textiles group (tutor Edwina Mackinnon)were part of an exhibition at Avoncroft Arts Centre in Bromsgrove. It was a very well attended event and the standard of work was superb. I have put up some photos as a little diversion from the build..!

My mono printed cushions 

"Dump Pot Alliums" a lino cut print that I embroidered 

Fabulous work by Sian Kibblethwaite


And so thats about it for this week, we are fast approaching the weekend and of course I have a long list of jobs to do. We will continue to try and keep the remaining garden in some sort of shape and have even more trees to tackle!

Back with more news soon
Bye for now Wendi xx

Latest News

I haven't been here much lately and think perhaps I'm the worst blogger ever?!

Hopefully as things progress this month we'll have much more to share..

So I suppose the most important news is that we finally chose the building company
Sips Eco Panels based in Suffolk.
http://www.sipsecopanels.co.uk/ 
We went to see a project in Market Harborough in the early construction stage and just by chance met the owners too. It was fortuitous as we were able to question them about the company and it turns out they were really pleased and couldn't fault them - this was the final clincher!

And so we are currently working with Peter Keogh the building surveyor who is doing our Building Regs drawings
We are only on the second revision and feel we are happy with the plans! He definitely understands and translates our ideas well.

Here's a little preview of the regs so far..











We understand that delivery of the house will be approx 10 weeks once drawings are finalised! 







Richard took the day off on Friday and we received our first machines! A 2.5 tonne digger and a dumper truck - the dogs could tell something was arriving!! 

first glimpse of the delivery lorry

Heres Richard bringing the dumper truck.. 

Richard started to dig out the foundations for my studio - no prizes for guessing who like playing on all the toys!!!

I did master the art of dumper truck driving but only wish my legs were a little longer!!

Here I am in the digger...

A good weekend was had and a very productive one too! and the very very good news is that Paul our ground-worker starts on MONDAY!!!!

...and so the blogging I hope will become more interesting and I will be back sooner than you think..

bye for now
Wx

Busy Weekends and bucket loads of patience...

...It's now May and frankly i'd be lying if I said i'm not fed up with nothing happening!! On the other hand I have to understand 
(no! Richard is not standing behind me twisting my arm up my back making me write this!!!) there are so many processes involved with building a house and I have to remember we only completed on the land at Easter - so officially it's only been a few weeks???!!!?!?!?!

Well at least we now have the caravan on site and have spent 3 weekends over there; It's actually surprising just how much work we've managed to find. The garden itself takes allot of mowing and there are hedges and trees which haven't been pruned or maintained for a long time.
We are also lucky to have a lovely neighbour Tina who has provided us with water and electric and the wheelbarrow.. the list goes on!
Here's a picture of the caravan with awning and yet another bonfire! (Saffi The cocker spaniel in foreground)

We have been marking out the house with neon spray paint (you know the one that completely disappears after it rains?)
I find it so very hard to visualise the spaces; for example the hall way is 6m x 3m which as a rectangle on the ground looked small!! Everyone i've mentioned this to has exclaimed "it's massive!!" so it's probably best I don't comment on room size at this stage!
Here are a few photos where we marked out the studio - this is 10m x 4m, the last photo in this section is Not erected it is just an example of what the studio will look like. We are going to have Bi-folding doors measuring 3m and two long windows, it will be clad horizontally in Larch (same as the house).
Marking out also showed that there are trees that sadly need to be removed - I can't believe how this makes me feel, We have tried every which way to not cut down the silver birch, the others are self seeders sycamore and laburnum - luckily there are allot more trees on the plot and we also intend to plant more, we have to get the balance right where the neighbouring house are; we don't want to see them and i'm sure they don't want to see us!

Well that's about all we achieved this weekend, we are still waiting to sort out the groundworks and also and more crucially we still have a number of conditions to discharge with Wychavon panning - they have now come back and asked us to use ACO systems either side of the driveway (its a long driveway!) this in itself will add considerably more cost and more labour and well more grief!! We aren't happy about it and cant understand the logic? We are having a gravel driveway which will drain naturally! anyway I will update about this as soon as we know more..

In the meantime I continue my "research" with interior design and have include a few more pictures of inspiration. As we know where the stairs are going now we can be more specific with choosing the design - this is first choice so far:

We are having black natural slate flooring (2 dogs and lots of visitors mean the cream/white option is a NO!!) but the staircase is just about spot on, the glass balustrade is also what we want but not the stainless trim on the outside - here we want to see the wood and possibly some nuts/ rivets (sorry not sure of correct terminology!

And finally here are just a few more ideas I have, I love bookcases and have 100's of books so I will NEED something like this:

 Lovely hall table:

 I already have this bedlinen tucked away in storage, not sure if it will make it to the master bedroom or guest room..

 This little gem of a chair is my inspiration for a project: I love Danish furniture and bought a lovely but very tired & old danish chair from a well known auction site last year, Im hoping to get it out of storage and a friend will reupholster it (more pictures to follow)

 and finally finally I couldn't resist this lovely photo - Im having a walk pantry and have a minor fetish for organised storage (perhaps I should get out more?!!)

Thanks for reading and I hope to have more 'concrete' news soon (LOL!!) xxxxx