Garden: Check

Guess what we have? A back garden! The tree surgeons finished today. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to make this a nice yard, but the jungle has been tamed.  We'll probably let the garden grow for a while to see what we have to work with before doing anything major.  The first photo is how the house looked when we viewed it, the next one is how it looks today.


It turns out there is a sidewalk on one side of our yard.  And the bomb shelter is not longer hidden.  (It's on the right hand side in the photo below.)  We have access to the former coal shed, which now houses garden tools.  When the big trees were there, we couldn't open the door!



The flat roof is repaired and the new gutters have been installed.  All the wallpaper in the house has finally been stripped off the walls.

The building work started today.  The builders started removing the chimney, starting in the loft (first photo) and moving down to the first floor back bedroom (second photo.)

With the chimney breast gone, we have about 500mm of extra space.  To utilize it, we're building a new wall which will make the bathroom just a little bit bigger.  The builders started at 10, by noon the wall was halfway down (first photo) and this afternoon it was gone (second photo.)

With the wall gone, the upstairs is strangely open.

And, good news. Having the guy uplift all the driveway garbage in a truck actually worked. We had so much rubbish that it filled two 14-yard size trucks. We now have a dumpster/skip in front of the house for all the rubble and brick from the building work.

 Niall and I both have both been ill today. I was on site on and off because I needed to meet a few workers and pay some others. We (Niall and I) were talking tonight about how much better this renovation (so far) has been compared to Cardiff. Sorry, it's just nice to have someone else do the hard work.