Foundations and more

It was great to get back from Dublin to see the footings done and most of the internal demolition completed. We'd been advised that the first point at which delays might occur was when digging the hole for the footings. There was a danger of it filling with water if the water table was too high. Looks like we avoided that.

This past weekend was a long weekend in Ireland as Monday was a public holiday. A quick visit to the site on Tuesday showed no signs of activity. I am pleased to report that work resumed today and real progress was made with the block work that will form the walls of the new extension.

October 31st 2018

New identity

Surprise Sunday Bulletin

Tomorrow we are off the Dublin for the week so I thought to check out the building site. Low and behold, work was going on. The front and rear extension both gone.
I hope they proceed at a good pace whilst we are gone.

Photo taken midday Sunday October 21 2018

That's more like it

A perimeter wall has now been demolished to give the contractors easy access to the site and a low wall, that divided the garden, has also been demolished. The new extension goes beyond that wall and so it had to go.
The weather is set fair for the next couple of days so I hope to see more good progress.

Now we know we have moved

Pete and Mike are in the house

The pace of these builders is hectic

Two days in and already they have erected five sections of a site security fence. They must be exhausted.

Sorting out postal redirection Irish style

We decided that we would not change our postal address. Too much hazzle and sure isn’t our post box only at the other side of the village. It will give us a good reason to walk up to the house each day and keep an eye on the building work.

As the postman was delivering post to a neighbour at our new location himself says “oh shall I catch him and tell him that we are now living here?”. Great idea says I and so off he goes to catch the postman.

No problem says postie, sure don’t I know where you are now, and I’ll be more than happy to drop off your post here in future.

Postal redirection sorted Irish style, no need to fill in pages and pages of forms.

Signed a contract with a builder!

Sheila writes...

Crazy or what but we’ve signed a contract with a builder. Although not crazy because we did actually want to sign a contract and get the work started. So, on Friday 12th October we met with our preferred builder and the architect and spent two hours working through a contract, called a Blue Form. There are 40 clauses in the contract – who knew – but all seemed reasonable. We negotiated over a few of them but no major stumbling blocks.

One interesting element was that there is a penalty clause if he doesn’t finish on time. However, the finishing date is 30th August. Quite a long build and to quote one local who we told it was taking 45 weeks replied with “bloody hell, what are you building?”. The builder seems a nice enough chap but sure we are only in week 1 of the project, plenty of time and opportunity to fall out.

Now onto phase two of the project which is interiors. Our next task is to make decisions on colour of walls, type and colour of flooring, what style and make of windows we would like and on and on and on. So much so that a white board has come into play.

Location of the rental

The white board is proudly sitting in the kitchen full of decision that we need to make in a timely manner, so the builder can keep to the schedule. If we delay him and the project is delayed the penalty clauses will not be applicable.

Another upside to the long build is that the rental house is so big we feel we are in luxury accommodation. That’s not to say it is very glam or anything, but it is officially classified & marketed as a five-bedroom house with two bathrooms. So much room in fact that himself and myself can spend hours apart and still be in the same house.

No 6 Tithe Saoire Na Cluanite

Project flit

Today we vacate Carrigeen in preparation for handing over the site to the builder tomorrow who is going to transform our home.

So, a little over two years since getting possession of the house and moving all our stuff from France, we are emptying it out and may well be gone for a year.

The builder has a 45 week schedule, and even though the schedule includes a handsome contingency for bad weather, we'd be optimistic to believe it will happen to plan.

The "flit" is just 1km to a house we have rented at the other end of Ballyferriter. In this way we will keep some continuity with our engagement with the local community and be handy to keep an eye on the works.

Watch this space.