Waiting again

So with phase 1 of the build completed in a couple of weeks there isn't much happening at the cottage at the moment. Having finished the opening up exercise we are now waiting for the structural report to be completed and added to the rest of the technical documents to be sent to the planners. Once this is done we then have to wait on their decision before moving onto phase 2.. If waiting was a sport we'd be turning out for England.. and the sponsorship deals and massive weekly wage could pay for the building work.. and I could drive round in a Ferrari.. why the hell isn't waiting a sport!

One (sort of) interesting thing that has happened is that we appear to have a snake infestation* in the garden as Pete discovered when moving a pile of rubbish. An Adder had made the pile of old prams and bedpans it's home and when disturbed, legged it (slithered slowly) up the nearest tree and hasn't been seen since. Like Indiana Jones, Laura has a slight phobia of snakes so having one knocking round the garden is pretty fun for me.. "look out.. snaaaaaake!!"

Anyway, here's a few pics from last Sunday of not very much.

*can you have an infestation of one?

Indiana Rowley and Hels Bells check for snakes in the kitchen.

Me, the wife and Nige (the day before he set off to solve the middle east peace crisis by riding his motorbike through the middle of it)

Ehhhh Rat Fans!

We haven't had much time to get up to the cottage lately (me swanning about pretending to work really hard and Laura actually working really hard) but I managed a quick run up there this afternoon to see how the guys were getting on. The transformation from very run down cottage to very run down building bomb site has been pretty dramatic but it's great to see things progressing. The fact that there were two vans outside I'm counting as progress!

The main focus has been on opening up ceilings, walls, footings and beams to allow the structural engineer to properly assess the scale of the nightmares.. I mean.. slight issues that the house has. It's been a pretty nasty job for Pete and his team having to remove an unbelievable amount of detritus that has built up over the years. The worst job for them has been opening up the ceilings upstairs which brought down a massive amount of rubbish thatch which had been dumped in the loft when the roof was last worked on. In amongst the thatch that fell on their heads were a healthy number of rotting rat carcasses that had found there way up there after eating some of the tasty poison left out around the house... Pretty glad we weren't there for that (actually very glad we weren't there for that).

This opening up phase should be finished tomorrow and the structural report carried out early next week. Hopefully we can soon move on to the more interesting building and demolition stage where I'm sure there will be lots more dead rat fun.

Our bedroom before. The arched beam arrangement in the centre of the room is the very, very rare cruck truss which, due to Death Watch beetle, has the same structural integrity as an Aero bar: 

 After:

 Bathroom before:

After:

 The remains of the ceiling (r) and the huge pile of dead rats with a bit of straw covering them (l):

The garden is looking lovely, I'm surprised Gardeners World haven't been in touch to find out how we've created such a master piece: