The Fence Man is my new BFF

Well today is official kick off day for the work on the house. This morning saw the kind of chaos only normally associated with a BOGOF offer on cheetoos at the trailer park Piggly Wiggly. At 8am I was desperately trying to clean my kitchen so the builders didn't think we were total dirtbags. Yes I realize that it was only the guys coming to rip out our fence, but my mama raised me right or at least raised me to know that a clean kitchen is important.

Not long after Rob, the garden guy, showed up with two of his team and then the carpenter arrived so Dom could talk him through all the ins and outs of the piece of architectural beauty we wanted, which would be best enjoyed when running up to use the bathroom. So when I left he was happily chatting away to the carpenter and the last thing I heard him murmur was "So what is your opinion on open string vs closed string stairs in an open space?"

As you can imagine I was all a flutter on the bus on the way home wanting to see the chaos wrecked upon my rotting horrible fence. It really was amazing and I can't believe how different it feels. Despite it not being the nicest day it just felt so open and sunny and totally different than my backyard. Here is how it looks when I got home:

Definitely thinking of raising an army and colonizing next door's garden. After all isn't colonization what the British do best?

Ps. I also love the fence guy because he put down dust sheets and vacuumed up all the dirt his team trekked through my house!

Backyard progress

Well as you can probably guess we've been spending a lot of time in the backyard and by a lot of time I mean like every weekend for a month. This is pretty amazing in itself because in order to do that it meant that we had to have decent weather. In fact we had really nice weather so it was actually really nice to be productive outside. Here is a before picture of the garden just to remind you about what it looked like before we got started:

 Just a small selection of the rubble sacks we ended up with. I liked to consider it a modern art piece...

Here's what it looks like now. So lots of progress, but still lots to go. Despite getting rid of what must be 1.5 tonnes of gravel I can't believe we still have to seive the dirt to get rid of more. I think they are breeding there are so many of them. Good news is the fence is going soon!

        

The view from the far back corner up towards the house. Wow!

7 weeks to go!

I counted this week and we only have 7 weeks to go till the builders arrive! Exciting and terrifying at the same time. So this weekend has been glorious sunshine with no clouds and hot hot weather which makes me very happy. Despite this I am doing what I'm always doing....scrambling around the backyard while hubby is destroying something trying to make sense of chaos. Seriously if the idea of blood and guts didn't make me queasy I'd be right there in the ER sorting stuff out!

Adventure of the weekend (this is a big thing for guys judging by the awed expressions on two of our friends we had over for dinner tonight) was the pneumatic demolition "drill". It's kind of like a jackhammer and some psychotic torture instrument. It's great at chewing through concrete though. So we spent most of the day pulling up the path and trying to break up the hard packed backyard. Tomorrow for day two of DEMOLITION SOUTH LONDON will be going after the support posts that used to hold up the decking. Here's how it looked this afternoon.

Good news though. I convinced hubby that we should just pay for a professional to redo the fence. Phew! Now to just get everything else done....Anyone got a Motrin?

Backyard destruction

Well I'm going to make this short because hubby is off on trip 2 of 3 to the tip and I have to look helpful when he's back. I've got some finished pictures of the shelves avec les livres as you may say if you are French. It looks so nice and I'm really pleased. Here is the finished product!

The other big news is the backyard. After getting multiple builders quotes we were SHOCKED to find out how much it would cost to pay someone to redo the paving, fence etc in our little backyard. So the ever practical hubby decided that there was definitely some stuff we could do ourselves....cue me with a shovel a mountain of gravel and lots of rubble sacks....oh and a hammer, hand saw and whatever else was needed.  I learned a few things from this: 1) gravel is the devil's own playtoy (it's heavy, dirty and we have tons of it), 2) decking should not be put in a damp corner that never gets the sun...it rots...badly and 3) we're insane. Enough of that here's how it looks in progress:

PS. We also have wild blackberries growing in our backyard so super excited when those are ready!