Its 1st September 2008

I guess most gardens have some plants in them don't they?

After being here for over a year and really only seeing mud it was quite exciting to go off to the Nursery to find plants.

The lawn keeps growing and needing frequent cutting. Its particularly dangerous negotiating the 45 degree slope down to the drive, so I need another machine, steel toe capped boots in case of a slip under the mower or preferably contract out the mowing to someone more agile!

The plants look great and we are currently filling up the areas adjacent to the house with white pebbles. It all very monochrome.

We've got the fencing going in next week and then that's it......look for another plot perhaps and do it all over again???

OK I said it was going to be the end of April!!!!!!

Its now the end of May and we've had some crap weather. Now the grass is down, I'm praying for some more crap weather!!!!

Its been a long, long haul and there's some more to do.....like most people have plants in their garden and we don't have any yet, but the base is now there and we can do that over the summer.

Its cost a lot more than I originally thought....around £20K more , but we are here for the long term and its got to be right. ( or so 'er indoors keeps telling me)

After 12 months of wind, dust , earthmoving and rain we decided to get the windows cleaned and the slat blinds which serve the 'ground floor'. We had a quote from Huf Huas which included the woodwork and the windows which might have been better, but the cost?..... around £900 !!!

We opted for a guy from Oxted who did it for a third of that. We can now see out and admire the view!!!! I was thinking I might have needed another eye test but the expense was worth it...............We can see for miles, as that Kinks number goes!!!!

Lucca, the most important member of our family, a wonderful weimaraner, can't believe that there is grass at the end of the patio, as, for the last year, she has been looking out on the rough terrain, believing we had moved into some apartment with big windows. Life is about to change, big time, and she will be able to slip out in the evenings for a comfort break without having to treck 200 metres up the road!!!

I will be looking forward to a time when I can put the cheque book away and just enjoy the house and the garden.....but then there's a need for a shed and plants and more lighting and a BBQ and so life won't change will it??

The last image is a reminder of what it was like just as we started work!!! Some might say its an improvement....others ..NOT !!!

My fellow Swiss Huf blogger is probably enjoying those long May sunny evenings on the mountainside on his established patio, enjoying those distant cow bells and the cuckoo clocks chiming in his new Huf Haus. Spare a thought for us Brits, cold, wet and having to take off for sunnier climbs to sample what others take for granted. I know, Ric, where I would prefer to have my Huf Haus ...and its not in Engerland!!! Enjoy.....

Its nearing the end!!!!

I said it had to finish at the end of April.....we started in December and we are really not there yet!!

We've got the machine back for a week to push around the soil but the main problem has been the rain. They tried to grout the patio last week and then it rained. Everything just when squaggy and that was the end of that!

I'll do a post when we've finally finished next week , but in the meantime ..here's as far as we've got.

Its April 08, and the snow is falling fast !

I've said that the work must finish at the end of April....not so much the money as the time it takes and the impact on life generally.

So, come the 1st of May all the tiling will have finished and the lawn will have been laid....and the fence put in...and the lights connected. Its not going to happen is it?....

Since we last wrote we have had some progress....evidence the photos.

Pam (her indoors is convinced that the paving tilts TOWARDS the house and all the rainwater will collect just outside the lounge window ready to catch any unsuspecting person inside hoping to get outside without getting a boot full of floodwater. There's absolutely no point in trying to explain the 40mm fall away from the house......its better to just nod and agree that we ought to wear wellington boots at all times.

I've started painting the woodwork black to complement the rest of the woodwork on the house.....'Sadolins ebony' great match....the task was temporarily halted by a large dump of snow which is a little unusual for April....it will look good when finished though.

Lastly a piccy of the Huf in the snow storm.....

8th March.....Progress

Its now 3 months since we started this garden thing............and we're still going strong. Well January was a complete wipe out with the wettest January on record. But February has been kind and whilst the garden is not quite the dust bowl that I would have liked, it has got a bit better, to the point where the excavator can move around the site without losing one or both of its tracks in the deep mud.

To date we have 120 sleepers on site to make the crib walls around the gabions and these will either be planted out or just be covered in pebbles or cobbles. These cost £2500 alone, so this ain't going to be as cheap a garden as I had originally planned. The budget has got out of the window and I reckon we're over double my original feeble estimate of £15,000. But Hey!!! This has got to be done right hasn't it??

The topsoil and some more slate arrived yesterday and we should now be able to cancel the hire of the excavator which has been here since early December. That's good cos that's £2500 per month!!

The other highlight of the week was Kathleen and Marina from Huf. I had been warned a few weeks ago that the 12 month inspection was due and I was asked to produce a list of everything that was wrong with the house.
Ok I thought, I'll get a new exercise book, a pen and then walk round the house noting everything that's wrong.
After a couple of hours I had four items on my list and the rest of the book was blank!! I started poking around areas where I have never been before in an effort to find a blob of plaster where it shouldn't be.....or a piece of paint missing.....around the back of the boiler in the plant room, perhpas a bit of tiling loose in one of the bathrooms......NOTHING !!!!!

So, Kathleen is based in the UK and Marina comes from Germany and they look after the Huf Houses once completed......they don't do the work themselves you understand...they arrange the work on behalf of us clients.

We covered the 'snagging ' items in about 5 minutes flat.......three door locks were stiff and the 3 metre patio door needed adjusting....so we spent the rest of the time talking about the fine "Huf Experience" Marina got back to me a couple of days later (as promised) to arrange for the men to come back and fix things next week!!!!

Great, but I was still moping around the house later convinced that I might have missed something........I hadn't !!! I still had that largely blank exercise book !!

I wonder how my fellow HUF blogger Ric got on with his 12 month inspection....He's over there in snowy Switzerland and we both finished our projects at the same time.....(well I'm still doing my landscaping) and I guess he's just waiting to mow his lawn and wait for the edelweiss to come into flower. He writes an interesting article on the "faux Huf Haus" called Da Vinci...if you haven't been there before....take a look at his blog. The link is on my site.

Its 19th February...Concrete has set!!!

You can now walk around the house without getting knee deep in mud, so the last week has seen a major change. I counted up the slate tiles I had bought before Xmas only to find I was around 400 short. I have a feeling someone may have been quietly sneaking off with them but never mind I took myself off to 'Rock Unique' near Sevenoaks and they can supply me with replacements that match quite well.

There are 1047 tiles to lay and thankfully I won't be laying them. Then its the re-grading of the garden and then its some plants. I'm sure that the soil will have baked hard by then in the long hot summer that is to come and I'll need that digger back to make the holes, but hey, this is the excitement of doing your own house.

The Magnet Kitchen people came back to me (see last entry) and had reconsidered their approach. They had originally said that the faulty doors and drawer fronts had to be dismantled by me and I had to fit the replacements.....but they came back today to say they would arrange it all.....Send the lads in to put everything right. That's a relief as it will be bad enough removing everything my dear wife has put in them...just about a shipping container full of kitchen equipment in every one of those drawers!.

Volker , the Huf Basement expert came from Germany today to inspect the retaining wall as well. I hadn't seen him since those November days in 06 when the site was just a great big hole in the ground. There had been some moisture coming through the retaining wall, through the lifting lugs of the wall units that was causing the paint to lift on the front face.

Volker only does basements and concrete. He's the Huf basement manager...he knows about basements and concrte.......He inspected......long and hard.....'Yes' he muttered, 'Oh Yes' and then took a screwdriver to the lugs and prised out a plastic plug. 'Its not me, but the painters' he says with a big grin.....'Not my team!'. He explained that these lugs should have been removed and replaced with a compound before painting. He was going back to Germany that evening and would get it sorted.............'But he emphasised...Its NOT my team's work.!!! Again, if there's anything that needs fixing, its done without a quibble.That's Huf for you!!

He mentioned in passing that Huf are doing some houses in Bejing.....the Moscow one had been finished recently . Imagine the logistics of lugging one of these houses all the way to China ! We said our goodbyes and he was going off to another couple of sites before returning to Hartenfels ( an hour south of Cologne) that evening.

The previous day, Nick the Huf plumber had driven from Germany to do some maintenance. He said that he had left at 1am and had already visited another site before coming to me at 11.30am. I guess most English plumbers would be just turning out of bed at that time!!!!

I had been trying to source some Huf black paint for the multitude of timbers that are going in the garden. Huf had quoted me 530 Euros for 20 litres....yes 530. I spent a few minutes on the web and found a UK supplier of the same German paint for over 75% less......so that being a good day's work, I opened a bottle of Beaujolais Villages and everything seems good!!

It was quite clear to me now that Januray was not the best time of year to be doing landscaping.

This January was special as well since it was the wettest on record since Noah took to his Ark.



One visitor here likened the situation to the Somme and the helpful comments we heard like 'Well, Its good for the Garden' ...............Well it would be GREAT if we had one!!!!!



Despite the meteorological challenges we did make some progress and as the mornings got lighter and the days a bit drier we continued in our quest to get the patch into some sort of order. Our Landscape Contractor Tim, has been doing a great job.



Yesterday was exciting if you are into big toys....we had a mobile batch mixer with pump on site to deliver our concrete...photos attached...by lunchtime they had pumped around 15 cu metres onto the site with a few retained firemen from the local station helping Tim...you can see the professional way that they handle the pump hose!!!!



Huf are due to come and do their annual inspection in a couple of weeks.....everything works pretty much perfectly and I hav very little to moan about.



A jounalist from the Sunday Express has said she wants to do a feature on the Huf Hauses, keep an eye open for photos of this one in the Sunday rags!!!



I just wish I had stuck to a German Kitchen, after all everything else here is German......we had a nicely designed model from Magnet, but the trouble is the veneer is falling off after only nine months....imagine what its going to be like after 9 years. Those peoplle at Magnet suggested that I remove all the doors take them to Tunbridge Wells and they would swop them with some new ones............. Nice idea, but are they in the real world.???