Grade II New Build With Basement

Moles beware

For years we have struggled with moles – at times our back garden has looked like a lunar landscape rather than a beautiful, clover and dandelion infested green lawn. Planting spring bulbs has been rather a philanthropic affair; many of them just vanished underground, never to be seen again, whilst carefully planted daffodils could emerge six months later, metres away and confused amongst the tulips. But now it’s pay-back time: the digger has moved in.

 As diggers go it evidently is small size but it is rumbling around what remains of the garden, creating soil hills that will make our little furry friends tremble in awe - that is, if they can find their way up to the surface to gawp at them.

 We insisted on saving all our top soil from the building area. It seemed crazy to pay to have it taken away only to be replaced with “new” soil at the end of the build, so we stuck to our guns. And, I am so pleased we did because it looks wonderful, rich stuff – probably well fertilised by the pigs and chickens, which used to be kept here years ago.

We’ve also had some good news this week as it turns out that our existing cottage was built on extremely stable, broken stone. So, despite not having traditional foundations, the under-pinning exercise looks like it will be significantly curtailed as the building inspector has advised we will not slip once excavations start for the basement. I’m told this could save considerable time.

In the interim, I wonder at our builders’ deft manoeuvring around the site. Thanks to the unfathomable workings of the company responsible for our gas installation, we still have our old gas meter, suspended in mid air, waiting to be re-located. Now, if that was me I’d have bashed into it by now but George and his guys patiently work around it – they are evidently very used to having to wait for gas meters to be moved!