JWK's Garden Destruction

When I was a lad we were taught to add up without any of these fancy things to help :rolleyes: :D.

I thought everyone knew there were 16 farthings to a groat :D, and a Piece of Eight was equivalent to an American Dollar (roughly 50p) and 16 Pieces of Eight equals a Doubloon.

That is all primary school stuff :p :D :D :D.

 

:D :D :D Depends on where you change your money and when you do it :thumb: :D :D

 

Thanks for the encouragement chaps and chapesses! :thumb:

 

Hereâ??s the final catch up of my project, no gardening stuff this phase its all building. Remember itâ??s now early 2008.

At the front of the house we are converting the integral garage into a utility room and are going to add a shower room just in front of that. The groundworkers built up the new shower room floor to the same level as the rest of the house, which meant the garage became unusable:






So there is nowhere to keep my old classic :( Iâ??ve not used it for about 15 years also itâ??s not road-worthy and will rapidly deteriorate if I left it outside.

Someone from Canada bought it, paid the deposit then disappeared off the face of the earth (damn you ebay ). Luckily I found a buyer closer to home (Hungary!). It was a sad day seeing it go but hopefully its new owner will look after it better than me:



The next stage was to build the walls. The existing house was built in the 30s and it took a fair bit of hunting to find a matching brick. Builderâ??s yards did not have much selection and looking through catalogues or on-line was not successful. Eventually a specialist company sent around a rep who had samples in the boot of his car and I soon had all the walling materials ordered ready for a start in early February:



Iâ??d been on a weekend brick-laying course at Camberley Adult Education Centre which Iâ??d successfully completed (i.e. attended) and have the certificate to prove it, so now Iâ??m a fully qualified brickie Iâ??m going to build the walls myself!

First job is to use my brand new 9â? diamond tipped angle grinder to cut into the existing walls. Itâ??s a powerful tool, big and heavy and slices through brickwork like butter, it made equally easy progress through my ulna, so after a quick stay in the Royal Surrey Iâ??m not supposed to do any heavy work for a couple of weeks :eek:

This was a lucky break (literally) because the local small ads turned up an excellent bricklayer who was available right now.

Brian the Brickie knows what he is doing and in a few weeks most of the brickwork is done, far quicker and much neater than I ever could have done:





In May this turned up:


Its not a battering ram, itâ??s a 6.5 metre steel beam weighing 300kg. My logistic skills failed again as I should have got this round the back before the walls went up, now we have walls in the way, it has to be lifted up and turned on the back garden. 9 men and a girl were needed:


Then we used a couple of genie lifts to raise it into position:





The idea is to have a wide glass doorway in the new extension to connect to the garden, by this time the brickie had completed the gable end and we also had another couple of steel beams in place for the roof:


I try to find a roofing contractor, but even though some turn up to look and help themselves to a set of plans (costing me £25 a throw :() none of them ever send me a quote. So I will do the roof on my own, I donâ??t trust myself with power tools anymore so Iâ??m sawing up all the rafters by hand :eek::


By early July Iâ??ve driven the neighbours mad with my sawing & tapping, so I try not to make too much noise at weekends (which is difficult because I work full time). I take a few fridays off work and finished sawing up the rafters and banging in nails, The Building Inspector approved my rafter handiwork so Iâ??m well chuffed.

The next step is to fit the roof lights and with a couple of helpers and several attempts we finally found the method to lift it and fix. This was taken last Sunday 20th July, the first roof-light is in position, only three more to go!


So that brings us up to the present. I still havenâ??t used a single skip yet, anything taken out the ground or demolished walls/roofing materials are being re-used to make the garden terraces and paths. And I've only ended up in A&E once so far ... :o

There is still more to come, Mrs JWK wants the roof to be water tight by the autumn, so watch this space â?¦

 

:thumb: Cheers TG. I have got a couple of plans for the garden.

Firstly the front garden plan is set in stone because I submitted a landscaping/ planting scheme as part of the planning permission. I wanted to build beyond the building line at the front and initially the council were not happy with that, so I came up with a planting scheme that minimised the "impact on the local street scene" in planning speak. Basically I am going to have high beech hedging (which most have in our village anyway), a few specimen plants in containers strategically placed. I have to follow this plan as a condition of my planning permission and most of the specimen plants were in the old front garden and now live in my veg garden waiting to be relocated back again. So the frontâ??s going to be fairly straightforward.

The other plan for the back garden near the house is less developed and I think a bit more interesting. I'm going to have a patio area with a couple of tiered retaining walls that double as seating. I will have a small water feature in these walls near the house as we love the sound of water.

The planting I havenâ??t decided on yet, the effect I want is a Mediterranean feel (which I know is right up your street so to speak ) â?? spikey, palmy, succulent type plants. I have a couple of Chusan Palms (Trachycarpuths (sp?)) already in position and might get a couple more as they seem to thrive â?? they would form the backdrop. I would like a large Torquay Palm amongst them if I can afford it. I havenâ??t decided on anything else yet, and am no expert, whatever I put in must be hardy and evergreen â?? Agaves maybe.

I want the garden to be child friendly as well, so no sharp spikes - I have a couple of Yuccas that look good but are a bit fierce so they might go.

Iâ??m hoping to finish all the hard landscaping over the winter and look forward to planting up next spring.

Oh and I just remembered that I want fragrant plants as well, spaced out so that we get different smells over the year, like wintersweet (we already have some mock orange up the garden which has been really nice in the evenings). I'm starting to think Iâ??m not going to have enough room for all this; I will have to plan it out properly some time. :thumb: