Measuring up

Well, the building work is moving on at a rapid pace. We're now surrounded by a mini grey breeze block city in the space that was occupied by our old kitchen, boiler room and garage. We're beginning to get an idea of the space we'll have which will really increase our living area. Without the walls I thought it seemed small but oddly enough the space looks bigger with the walls up. My sister-in-law's boyfriend who works in the building industry says people always think this and worry that their extension isn't big enough - so it's not just me.


By the way, that brick arch you can see above our window is the outline of the original stone mullion windows that got taken out when the school was converted to a house in the 1970s. A lady in our village kindly dropped us off an old slide of the house as it was when it was a school. The windows were lovely but they would have been very high so we wouldn't have had the super views we have now out of every window in the house.


As we are project managing this renovation ourselves we seem to be obsessing about every detail. So at the end of the day when the builders have headed home we do a tour of the building site to check out what has been done that day. Although it is chaotic living in the house with all this work going on around us, especially with a two-year-old and a five-year-old, it does have its advantages. You can work closely with the builders and make quick decisions which always happens.

I have pored over the flat plan many times, but I can't always visualise the three-dimensional aspect of the plan until I see it in real life and that might look very different to what you imagined.


The windows have been designed to give you the feeling of the outside coming into the room so it feels very spacious and airy.

Meanwhile, on the outside of the breeze block there is a layer of cavity wall insulation and then the external stonework which looks a perfect match to the original sandstone and limestone of our house. The lime mortar is still quite wet and will lighten to match the original part of the house.





I think I am going to get one of those Bob the Builder belts to put a tape measure in. Measuring has become our obsession and I'm finding myself doing it several times a day at the moment. And it's all in millimetres so we're always talking in hundreds and thousands. At least my maths will be good at the end of this!