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!!!!
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.
posted by bob at 1:44 AM
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