Day 5: The end of the lintel; and some news on costs

Not much building work today, but a little bit of demolition :-) But the main thing was getting news on the costs for the extra work and agreeing them.

So... a bit if a recap on the story so far: the roof had to come off, which affected the do-we-want-to-keep-the-existing-outline. And the obvious answer was "no, but how much will it cost?". The first answer was a little more than we (and Ian) were expecting, but not by too much; and by lunctime Ian had better figures to come and talk over, so he did. The final figure was a-bit-less-than-3k extra: which accounts for a new roof and foundations, and losing the rather elaborate window seat and some work no longer needed ot batonning the roof. For about 4m2 extra floorspace, this is reasonable.

While we were outside, I pointed out the lintel I mentioned in the last post, which appears quite unsupported (in fact isn't really a lintel at all, just bricks laid on the window frame which is no longer there). Today it had developed a few cracks and was potenitally about to fall on our darling infants (or even us). Ian agreed, and in that rather direct way that builders and architects seem to have, he took a spade to it and with quite a few hefty blows brought it crashing down. So many and so hefty that it was quite likely strong enough to stay up, but it was due to be replaced with a real lintel anyway. Note that the pictures are captured from our camcorder (remember folks, with a pc9e you have to switch to usb/memory mode, or it won't appear as a device when you plug it in...) and are therefore of rather poor quality and colour. I've stitched 6 together in photoshop for fun.

Outside, we talked about soakaways, positioning thereof (probably on Dots side, so as not to spoil our only decent bit of lawn where GE's dogs have wee'd on it; also to avoid the kids climbing frame) and likely dates for a digger to come in for the new foundations. Tomorrow is possible; wednesday more likely. Later, Ian rings, having called BTB: some digger at some time tomorrow looks likely. This is good: keeping the momentum of the work going.