So the weather has FINALLY sorted itself out, and we're able to build some more blockwork after a near 7 month break! Our new mixer is pretty good, our first attempt at mixing mortar was less so, although I think we've got the hang of it again now. 30 blocks laid, should finish the rest of this course later in the week, and then we can install the dpc:

 

I should also finish that Fiesta, currently we're building a garage around it, and that wasnt the plan!

So, the bricklayer who gave us the £2000 quote seems to live on a different planet to the rest of us, as there was in fact NO scaffold costs in his quote, he just thinks bricklayers earn that much money. And to be fair, he was on holiday in Turkey when I emailed him, so maybe they do!

I have no interest whatsoever in lining someone elses pockets to do something I'm quite capable of doing myself, so back to plan A - build the garage walls myself. With Emma's mortar spreading skills :-)

I'm getting quotes from some local builders/bricklayers to build the blockwork walls of our garage. The first quote came back at two grand, which is a joke. Im sure I can knock at least 25% off that, hopefully more. Then the idea will be to set the bricklayers going on a Monday, they'll be finished by the end of the week and we can put the roof on over the weekend - so the whole structure will be complete in a week.

We've poked our heads out from inside our lovely warm house a few times over winter, but basically we've really just been hibernating! Springtime is just around the corner though, so some updates will start appearing in the not-too-distant future hopefully :-)

Here is the timelapse video we shot of spreading out and compacting the sub base for the garage, hope it works:

Should work better now I've uploaded the right video! Best to watch it in that little small screen there, as the uploading process has crushed the quality right down :-(

So here's where we were at the end of the last update, I think, with foundations cast:

Since then, we managed to build the first two courses of blockwork, which brings us to a few weeks ago:

Then in one week off work we had some hardcore delivered on the Monday:

We spread it out and compacted it on the Tuesday:

I've got a pretty cool timelapse video of us doing this, which I'll try and upload if I can. We laid out the dpm and steel mesh on Wednesday and Thursday:

And poured concrete on the Friday:

Over the last couple of weeks this has been setting, and now it looks like this:

Next course of blocks will bring us up to dpc level, and then we'll probably just shut down over the winter months and start again in the spring. We need about 3 or 4 tonnes of Cotswold gravel to finish the driveway up to the front of the new garage slab too. The surface of the slab has got a lot of laitance on it, so we'll probably have to scabble the top couple of mm away before being able to apply a paint or surface finisher, but thats no big deal. All in all it went fairly well, but I now have absolutely zero money after spending a grand in 5 days!! But at least there are no more huge expenses like that until we come to buy the door.

Mortgage-wise, we've been offered a pretty good deal by the Halifax, which we're doing the paperwork for at the moment, so with a bit of luck all our debts associated with the house build will be paid off soon :-)

Well, it seems that Blogger works fine with IE9. My old IE7 just wasnt up to the task any more!!

So, tomorrow I shall upload a load of photos of where we are currently with the garage, although the eagle-eyed amongst you will already have seen the most up to date photo. In fact, your eyes dont have to be very eagle-y at all because its right below this post :-)