Settling in

It has been a weekend of progress in the house and garden, not with the builders, but with us making the most of the two sunny days.  With the house being finished people were keen to come and see it, so on Saturday we had a few people around.  This gave us a chance to test out the dinning area for size.

I'm not sure the table is quite up to the standard of the new kitchen. It did give us a chance to look at table sizes though, we settled for 2.7m which comfortably sat 10.  If we can find one, we feel 2m extending to 3m would be perfect. Now we just have to find one.

In the garden the fencing marathon continues, this time staining it.  When the stain ran out it was time to see exactly what the builders had left under the top bit of soil.  We thought a good place to start was along the fence towards the studio.  We have plans to make this a little shade garden and it needs to be dug over, levelled and then paved (or something). 

The first bit was fine, the ground was compact but nothing too bad.  With people turning up for the evening it was time to call it a night. Sunday started with finishing staining the fence and then back to the digging. Sadly the bit by the house proved to more typical of builders as when we started we came across a brick, in fact quite a few bricks.

It turns out that instead of digging up the brick patio (which we think had a coal bunker on at some point), they just shovelled soil over it. To be fair it may have been buried before they started, but with diggers on site it to "turn the soil" before they left, I'm not sure how you miss a brick patio!

On the bright side those bricks will come in very handy and it wasn't too much work to dig them out. Then they also protected the soil below, so there is no concrete mixed in. Today was also about setting a final level for that part to the garden (the top of the manhole cover).  The idea was to dig and level a strip along the fence to see how much it slopes from the studio into the garden and how much soil needed removing.

I hoped that I wouldn't have to shift too much soil around or dig through too much concrete. There will be some shifting required (from studio to garden end), it shouldn't be too bad though. Hopefully once it's all dug, simply raking it will grade it nicely without needing more strenuous work.

The fun part is going to be avoiding the drainage pipes. The bricks will come in handy to mark out where the pipes run so I don't accidentally dig them up. Then we can get onto the real fun of working out how to plant it all up!