Saturday 2nd December 2006

Our Huf Haus Project Manager phoned to make an appointment to see us.
This fits in with the arrangements that my fellow blogger Ric and Claudia (in Switzerland ) had last week with his representative.

It is our opportunity to make any last minute changes to the electricals or other minor changes. Pam (her indoors) suggested that we changed the internal layout downstairs again.
" I don't like the position of the cloakroom off the hall" she says.
"Well, do you remember in Germany you changed that?" I whispered.
"And" she added, "what about a velux in the bathroom upstairs, I remember mentioning this to you some time ago"
Rather than try to explain that all the walls are now firmly bolted in and the roof on and the possibility of making those sorts of changes would involve the complete dismantling of the structure, I bottled out and will leave it to Herr Rudiger to explain on Wednesday.

The one big disappointment however are the velux windows in the roof upstairs. They are situated over a gallery that looks down over the dining area and originally we wanted to put in a large Huf Window. This is a large section of roof that is made entirely of glass and would give a fine view of the hills to the North. However our local planners could not agree to it and said there were to be NO roof windows on the north elevation. They finally accepted a compromise with two velux, but it is an opportunity lost.

Otherwise the house is exactly what I had hoped for, what we have to do now is to sort out the rest of the landscaping and driveway, fencing and planting ,connect the services ( still no progress on that front) connect the foul sewer, organise the kitchen and utility installation, and sort out where in the house the dog's bed is going to be.

The groundworks team, Andy St.Pierre from St. Pierre Groundworks and Baz and others had done a great job in getting the site ready for the erection team. All the backfilling completed on schedule and a walkway round the whole house at formation level so that nobody was sloshing around in the mud. It has been raining most days and the garden, apart from the area immediately next to the house is awash with mud. Volker had suggested doing this extra piece of work and he was absolutely right. You do need a firm dry working area around the house.