So after a couple of days of torrential rain, Alex and the guys put the first blocks down on Friday 28 August. these are the blocks which will support the block and beam flooring which should start to go in next week. Hopefully with a few dry days we can start to see the extension rise above ground level.

Oh dear – not a lot to say about today! Driveway aquarium anyone???

There is no building work over the weekend but that doesn’t mean Maddie and I were idle.  We went and designed our kitchen – we’ll put some images up when the design company sends them through, we have pretty much zeroed in on the flooring for the vast expanses of downstairs and we have bought a cat flap!!!

Those of you who share your life with cats will recognise that sorting out the feline requirements for an extension of this scale right at the start is known as “getting your priorities right”. Bailey and Jasper approve!

Loads of apologies for the lack of updates, we’ve been having problems with hosting the website. But hopefully they are all fixed now. So brace yourselves for a bit of a mammoth catch up.

So after clearing the ground on Monday 17 August, Alex, Xander and Shaun got to work digging trenches for the foundations on Tuesday. Unsurprisingly it started raining fairly soon after.

First trench

But Sod and his law hadn’t finished with rain – no that was just the introductory course. His next delight turned up pretty quickly. So on the first morning of actually starting the build, the guys made a discovery:

Well, well, well

Well, I never!

Yup – we had a well!!! Just outside the corner of the extension. Cue 3 tonnes of concrete and hardcore before they could go any further. And the guys are finding an average of half a well a day so far – hopefully that won’t continue…

Rest of the week – trenches, more trenches, oh and some more trenches

Digging. Lots of it.

But for builders, they seem to be doing a lot of demolishing…

Here’s the view from the front of the house before they got going:

Before the start

And here is the view at the end of Thursday. Can you spot our porch?

Can you spot our porch?

Here it is:

Here it is

A view of the porch from the lounge

At least Jasper seems enchanted with the cat window in our new front door…

Well – we no longer have a driveway…

…but we do have some cool toys to play with. More carnage due tomorrow.

So we are off. (Well almost). Planning permission was granted on Monday 10 August. Alex gave the Council notice yesterday that work would commence and we are heading towards D-Day. (B-Day?? Sounds a little too lavatorial…) on Monday 17 August.

I’m not usually the sort to self-publicise. You won’t find me tweeting a picture of my lunch or posting a status update about what socks I am wearing. But this blog will be a record for Maddie and I as much as anything. Of how the project proceeds and the challenges along the way. Maddie will be running the project day to day and I wanted to have a record of what she achieves, because I have a very strong feeling that at the end of the upheaval I am going to have yet another reason to be incredibly proud of my better half.

We started talking about extending our home about a year ago. We’ve already had to deal with obstacles and problems – some a lot more batty than others – to get where we are now. And there are probably even more interesting ones ahead. The next six months are going to be entertaining in every sense of the word, so I hope some of you follow our story and let us know what you think as we go along.