braggadmin

Well we've finally got around to spending pots of money on the house and garden.

We've had a firm doing maintenance work on the outside of the house, hiding network cables, power cables, cleaning soffits, finally sorting the exterior pipe work on the dorma (people who built it used grey piping attached to the original black and then painted it black!).

Also we've decided to get the pond sorted as it was leaking as apparently a heron had been pecking at the lining whilst trying to get to the fish.  Was it this guy? :

The guy that originally tried repairing the lining, Richard, with patches obviously could not find all the holes as despite piles of patchwork it still leaked!

So he's back....., well Richard and also the Heron!  Manda looked out of Shaun's window today to see the heron sitting on the side of the paddling pool, which is the fishes new home.

Richard has been stripping the pond, relining it and sorting out some of the stonework.

We've also asked him to sort the patio out as some of the stones were floating and some were cracked/broken.  We don't think he expected to do as much as he has had to do, and we also hope that the bill is not going up too much!  His discovered a large crack in the cement under the stones, which is why they had moved.

So far this is stage we are at:

What a mess!

The relined pond - has'nt leaked yet!

More mess!

The fishes new temporary home!

Next door neighbours, who would have them!

The next door neighbour has taken it upon herself to block what sun we get in the garden, by putting up a 6ft fence!

Manda is planning to put some climbing plants in front of the fence on our side to hide it a bit.

I said to the guys putting the fence up that I hoped they had treated it well as we were never going to touch it!  "Sorry mate we are only doing what we are told"

Next thing was that they said our shed was partially on the neighbours property.  The shed has been there 30 years (well maintained this shed!) and had never bothered anyone before.  It turns out that the end of one of the apex's was stopping one fence panel going up in line with the rest!

So we have had the faff of having to move the shed forward a couple of inches and I had to cut the end off (as the acctress said to the Bishop).

Doing my bit

In order to show willing and to "add my bit" I too have put the paint stained rags on, leather gloves and so on and re-painted the utility room base with bitumen paint.

It took longer than I thought it would as I had to dig out all the drainage stones where the ground is above the damp course.  Got to now wash these before putting back!

Also whilst wirebrushing the area some of the pointing started to disintegrate so I also ended up having to re-point parts too.  So what was meant to be a couple of hours job has turned into a 2 day job.

Some before and afters .....

I also got blagged by Manda into moving a tree in the left hand "pod" in the garden.  She wanted it centred so smaller plants could go in front.

That was back breaking work!  No need for gym workouts this week......

The shape of the pod is being changed too.  Before it looked a bith like a number "7" but with moving the tree we are going to make that area more like a shallow "U", you can just see parts of the edging stones sticking out in one of the images above.

Having pulled the edging stone out I then had to clean them up by removing the mortar that on them as Dean was all for use using new ones, when the ones we have a fine, especially now they are cleaned up.

Some of the other work done; and to be done…

Here are images of some of the other work already done, not by me but by Dean of DP Maintenance......

As said at the beginning the exterior pipe work still has to be done and the next job after the pipe work etc is the retaining wall running along the left side of the garden is to gain a "hat", which is the cheaper way of repairing the top bricks that are breaking up a bit (£600 compared to over £900).  It will have one of these on the top of it:

The plan is to use the sand colour