Sorry to all friends and family who have been nagging me to update the blog, it’s just all been a bit busy as we nearing the end of the project so here’s the update for February to April.We’ve been working on the inside top and bottom. The roof has been insulated and looked a bit like the inside of the space shuttle. Then Jasper came to stay for the weekend and helped to plaster board the upstairs ceiling.

 

The ground floor developed layer by layer. The soil pipe work went in with Bevis being very careful not to knock down any of the walls on a mini digger inside the mill. Then after excavating as much as possible, the sand blinding layer went down followed by the dpm, radon barrier and the first concrete layer. Next was the insulation layer then the under floor heating swirls and the second concrete screed.  Sounds so quick in 2 sentences but it all takes so long especially as Bevis doing most of the build on his own, however we’ve had some fabulous help and fun too with friends and family mixing concrete and making hundreds of cups of tea!

 

Bevis made and fitted the outside doors and the winding staircase which means the building could be sealed and we could access upstairs and downstairs from the inside. Then the rooms downstairs started taking shape. It was really exciting coming home every evening with a new room or layer being completed ....things were really moving.... as was the budget! But we’re getting there and the next instalment won’t be so long next time as we’re being signed off by the building inspector at the end of June (fingers crossed) so watch this space xx

 

 

 

Sooooo much has happened since the last blog entry, which is why time has ticked away and the blog is very much over due. Since Oct we have built a little wooden shack on the side of the caravan so we could have a boot room to off load the mud and wet clothes. Actually, we did have a perfectly adequate awning but I was a bit of a spud and put a broom handle through the roof trying to push the collecting water off, resulting in a very cold shower comedy moment and a hole in the tent! But as you can see from the pics, the “loveshack”, as it’s now affectionly called, houses a very important woodburner (made of course by Bevis) and is doing a marvellous job of keeping us warm and cosy.

 

So the good news is we now have a BT landline and broadband! It’s been 8 years since we had a proper phone after living on the boat for so long – it’s such a luxury! But the best news is that we’ve won the planning battle, we can lime mortar the inside walls and let the building do it’s breathing thing. After hours in the National Archive’s we were able to prove how old the mill was and so the conservation team have acknowledged it as a building of local historic and architectural interest which means it can be treated with renovation sympathy and not have McHouse regulations forced on it. Hurrah!

 

The bad news is that both of us have had the flu and horrid tummy bug which knocked us out for a couple of weeks so we’re a little bit behind, but as you can see from the photos, we’ve still got loads done. The windows are all in, the top half of the outside has been pointed, all the oak lintels are in and all the wall rebuilding has been done. It’s stopped looking like a derelict building and more like a house and home... well nearly. We’ve discovered lots of lovely floor tiles which have cleaned up beautifully and should be able to do the downstairs utility room and corridor. The big visual thing for me was when the scaffolding came down and the building stopped being a caged project but now has life and character with light shining out the windows in the evening and the pointed lime walls sparkling in the sun light during the day (when it’s not raining that is and we actually see the sun!).

 

We’re now working on the inside (which is good coz of the terrible weather).  We’ve started to get the downstairs ready for the new floor, heating and bathroom and upstairs the walls are being pointed and the front door is nearly ready to go on! All to be seen next time...

So the thing with a blog is that it takes time to update and so our October update is slightly late because we’ve just been sooooo busy. Having had such a wet summer, the building had got slightly behind schedule but the past 2 months have been fab and more importantly we’ve had lot of help from visiting friends and family and very lovely neighbours too.

The new photos show the lintels going in, walls being built and the big moment of the roof going on!.

Marky Mark and Lisa came to stay with us at the end of August and helped us with the muddiest job yet! Probably 100 years of silt, autumn leaves and goodness knows what else had collected down the back of the mill and over the weekend it was hoisted out bucket by bucket and taken up top and wheel-barrowed up the hill to start levelling out the top of the garden for one day when we start gardening!  And the second day of shovelling and buckets was after a meat- feast BBQ and a few scrumpies plus a very cramped night with us all in the caravan. Hats off to Mark and Lisa and big thank you too. It was a real boost for us as well having enthusiastic people on site because I think I would have given up hours before but working together inspired us all to carry on way beyond the achy muscle stage! My Mum and Dad also came to stay the following weekend and dug out several barrow loads too while sorting out their house move.

The walls started seeing big changes too. Bevis used acro props to push in the leaning out back wall and I had my first go at pointing with lime mortar. We employed the very talented Tom to rebuild the south apex; that is after Bevis and Evan (Bevis’ sister’s boyfriend) had dismantled the apex – which was a bit of a shock to come home to one evening, with half the wall missing! If anyone is looking for a traditional slate stone waller – I can’t recommend Tom enough - for someone so young he is the best at the old traditional ways! Also the sand blaster too was a real trooper and made the inside look beautiful.

And then the roof! It was a bit scarey taking it all down – not just because every rotten rafter Bevis stood on could have (and did) crumble away but also because ... THE ROOF WAS COMING OFF! We were left with the bare skeleton of the building. The velux windows had arrived, as well as the new slate and the battens...and then the labour arrived too! My cousin Neale had said he’d come up for the weekend to help with the roof and them my brother heard we were doing the roof and decided to get in on the action too! Considering he is a roofing contractor, he, and his marvellous 3 mates who came for the day, were a very helpful addition to the weekend! The night before they arrived, I was woodworm spraying the beams in the pitch dark at 9pm with a head torch and spray bottle, climbing up and down the rafters (honestly my mum would have been having kittens if she’d seen me!) Then the next day, the mill went from a bare exposed building, to being battened and felted, velux windows fitted and a third of the slate on. The change was amazing! It was quite a change for me too – making sandwiches and tea all day – so out of character, I desperately wanted to get up and nail the slates on but sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do!

After the guys had all gone, Bevis and Bubs (our very lovely neighbour, who happens to have worked on many a roof before) worked for 2 weeks on slating the rest of the roof, fitting the barge boards, ridge tiles and guttering.

On top of all this action we are still battling against the inaction of BT! After 6 months of being ‘on hold’ and at least 5 engineers coming out to look a defective telegraph pole to tell us what we told them 6 months ago, that  it’s defective... we’ve now got a new pole ... NOT got a line yet but it’s a step in the right direction. And we’re still battling with the building regs team because we want to let the building carry on breathing with lime mortar in the same way it has for the last 200 years and not insulate it creating a barrier to this breathing process. So it’s a ‘watch this space thing’ with BT and Building Regs...

It all sounds so easy in a quick blog of what we’ve been up to but as always it is tiring, time consuming and relationship testing but we keep on going with a smile still on our faces because the mill will be a beautiful place to live at the end of all this and I can’t wait! (especially with the winter nearly upon us in our little caravan....so the November Blog will be interesting!)

So when we arrived we spent the first few weeks chopping down all the trees that were over hanging the mill and contacting all the services to get connected (which took forever - and we're still waiting 5 months on for BT to get their act together ). 

We booked a very nice digger man called Ian Wooley (he was such a trooper) and we excavated 60 tonnes of shale to give us somewhere to put the caravan and eventually car space. we also managed to befriend most of the village distrbuting our free shale to do thier driveways and hard standing - which was good for us coz that would have been a lot of skips!

 

Then we dug the biodigester hole - (with great pic of Wooley down the hole!) 2 days with a pecker digging through bed rock  - bless him.

 

Still waiting for the electricity transformer to arrive delayed the build a bit, so the scaffolding only went up at the end of July. But in the mean time Bevis started changing the lintels. I was very excited to hear he had hired some 'strong boys' for the job - thought my luck might be in! only to discover that it's a few bits of metal that holds up the wall when the lintels are changed. Disappointed! Thought I might have had to make tea and sandwiches for the Chippendales with builders bum and all!

 

With the caravan on site, electricity connected and our lovely neighbours lending us a very long computer cable for connection to the outside world - we had properly arrived!