Sunflowers! – Part 8.0

Good morning. We are off for our eighth land visit. If all has gone well, there should be staircases to see today and there may even be a few internal walls.

It has been a really long week. I spent two and a half days this week going through all our electrical plans. All our lighting plans and that has taken a lot of time, a lot of effort. There seem to be hundreds of small decisions to make for these things and I am hoping today that all that time and preparation pays off.

The plans I have created mark out every electrical socket, switch, outlet. Anywhere there is electricity in the house.

And to do that I created a set of diagrams and plans that cover every single surface of the house. It is a bit of a Herculean task but I hope these plans are going to save us a lot of time and effort explaining what we want. And by going through the decisions quietly by ourselves we will not be flustered and the language will not be quite as stressful as it normally, well, as it can be.

It has meant creating very details plans of every surface of the interior of the house. Which was something we had not done previously and that took a lot of the time. But then laying out sockets, deciding every measurement from how from each wall, how far from the floor.

To figure out the rhythm of the house has been quite important.

Yes.

To sort of make everything feel consistent. Things like how far from the doorway each light switch is. That was quite difficult.

Yes, it was.

So let’s hope that pays off today.

The train has been delayed. I think signalling problems.

Yes.

We are sitting in a train station fairly early in our journey.

First stop.

Yes. I just want an uneventful train journey.

Still here. Still waiting. Still raining.

And we are moving.

And we have stopped again.

The train was ultimately delayed an hour and a half. We have rearranged our meeting so it is an hour later than expected. Given all our padding and buffering, we have a little under an hour to get the car and get to the land.

We should be OK for this rearranged meeting time. Still a bit more stressful than I would like.

Another Renault Clio today. A car I know. So Hertz have been good to us; very fast, very friendly.

Let’s go to the land.

OK, we have made it. We have got ten minutes to spare. It really looks like a building site. Lots and lots of vehicles.

Yes, everyone is there.

When we visit normally there are no trades people on site. Just us, the project manager, and whoever we are meeting. Today there must be.

Six different vans.

So, let’s go see what is happening.

So a lot has happened. Let’s go through some of the changes.

The interior insulation of the walls is going in. That is what you can see behind me now. It is about an eleven, twelve centermetre thick piece of polystyrene with plasterboard on it.

The interior staircase has gone in. That is great news. Makes it much easier to get about the house.

The ceiling has gone in. That is great to see. Makes a big difference. You can feel for how big or small the spaces are. Looks good.

They have ramped up the earth infront of the front door. Now we can actually walk through the front door without going into a chasm.

The waterproofing for the French drain is now complete. That is what has allowed them to put the soil up against the house.

They have added some temporary gutters to help keep the water away from the building until the proper gutters are in place. It is holiday season now. So the house is going to be locked up and only worked on occasionally for about a month. So these sort of extra steps are helpful in keeping everything nice.

Downstairs they have put in tubing for the electrics and the telephone.

The ventilation points are in as well. These are two holes that provide a bit of air flow down in the basement. They are good to see.

Thank you for your comments. Thank you Elizabeth. I think you are right, that it is a walnut tree. I think that Megan has just found walnuts on the ground.

A friend suggested this might be a walnut tree and look what I have just found on the ground. Walnuts.

Seeing it like this makes the desire to want to move in just stronger and stronger. It is not ready. It is not going to be ready for months. It is not going to be ready until some time next year.

But that does not mean I do not want to move in today.

We have a lot of work to do for our garden but that is something for another day.

And we are dones. Thanks sheep.

Some of the progress I expected. Not all by any means. I am glad to see the interior staircase.

Yes, that is very helpful.

That just makes moving around the property easier.

Nice to see the insulation going in.

Good to go over our page and a half of questions for the electrician. We have got most of the answers we want. We got to see some of the sample cable. Which I wanted. He went to some length for that.

Otherwise, yes, good visit. Kind of sad to be leaving.