There has been steady progress in the building phase of our home improvement project, so I thought it might be a good time to give a quick update as to where we’re at. You can read Part 1 of this series here, and Part 2 of this series here, to see the start and how far we’ve come so far.

Steady progress

I am using our builder who we use at work, so he has been called off my work to carry out some other building work that has long been booked in. So that doesn’t bother me. I am told that most of the building work on the Indian Stone patio will be done by Monday. I suspect Tuesday.

However, all the borders are now built, and I can really start to see how much better this is going to look. Here is a before picture:

By this point I had already taken the plaster off the back wall. I job I wouldn’t recommend making a habit of. And this is where we’re up to now:

It was a bit of a crappy day weather wise up north, so it’s looking pretty grim right now, but progress is definitely being made. The steps are clearly formed, and the top level borders now finished gives me a much better vision for how big it’s going to be. Some of the bricks on the steps still need to be finished off, and the lead on the back wall still needs to be removed and patch repaired. There’s also the larger of the two holes on the back wall to fill in. The smaller one is the outlet for our dryer. Not my choice to put it there. I think we’re going to put a grill of some kind over the top of that to try and tidy it up.

The plan was to take up a flagged area which you can’t see pictured, so I could have laid soil and turf this weekend. But because we’re a day or two behind, that looks like a job for next weekend. I’m also not looking forward to trying to remove those cement dabs from the back wall. If anyone has any tips on how to remove those please leave them in the comments section!

Crucially, our builder has now laid pad stones which you can just see in each corner of the top level. This is where the posts of the Verandah from Prefix Systems are going to sit. So the plan is next week for our surveyor to nip round and do a final survey for that so we can get that ball rolling too. Prefix’s new Verandah brochure says a lead time of ten days for that so it shouldn’t be too long before we’ll be seeing it up and fitted. Really looking forward to that part!

So, once the building work is done, the list of things left gets a little smaller. Installation of the Verandah shouldn’t take long. Laying of soil and turf and removal of flags should be a fairly straightforward task. Stripping the lead from the back wall is something the builder can do as he’s finishing up. Then there’s just making the garden look clean and tidy again.

We plan to get a couple of patio heaters of some kind to go under there so we can use it in the Winter. We’re just not sure whether to use red lights on the wall or get a couple of gas powered free standing ones. Again, any thoughts on that are welcome down below.

I can start to see the end of the tunnel now. There’s still plenty to do, but it’s at this stage of the project that we can now start to see how things are going to end up. I should have another update for you this time next week.

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