After numerous delays, all 4700 bricks and 500 blocks have been delivered. Consequently, we are now 54″ higher than we were on the last report!

The delay in the bricks was merely down to the ‘rarity’ of them. Baggeridge had to make them before delivering them to the Matching Brick Company. Delivery delays ensued.

3 skips later…Adam, George, Andy & John had a few drinks. The footings have been excavated ready for leveling off.

Andy & John were good friends from work who offered to help dig the footings. We had a BBQ to celebrate 3 hard days of labour and took time out to laugh at me falling into one of skips head first!

Adam & George started site preparation. Cleared down the fences, moved the sheds. Wow, looks like there’s some work to be done!

Submitted house extension plans to local Building Control office for approval.

The plans were drew up using Visio and printed out on A4 paper to a scale of 1:75. A number of weeks went by and they eventually came back with a rather long list of discussion points. Some of them At the time I remember thinking were rather petty (exact definition of window design) but others were gonna be more troublesome (location of drainage under the site). All tuned out OK, as the person assigned to my application assisted me to a better job and I thank him for his patience!

My 1st mistake on the project was thinking that Building Control were somehow connected to Planning… This cost us another 8 weeks in time.

At the beginning of 1999 we decided that an extension would be a great use of the available land around our house as we are quite settled where we are. In a moment of madness, which lasts to this day, we decided that it could be built by ourselves which of course doesn’t include the wife. So in June of 1999 after many weeks waiting for plans approval we set out destroying our neat little corner plot to build a garage and bedroom. The picture gallery shows you the progress from start to finish with major milestones. ‘Obviously’, we’ve now finished and I actually miss the bricklaying! Whilst I have more plans (conservatory) I’m afraid that it’s internal redecoration for the entire house before I get to do it all again!

To start with, all I wanted was a garage but this mushroomed into a two story extension providing us with a further bedroom - this bedroom would be the largest of the house and would eventually become ours. Quite drastic internal work was also required to balance the girls rooms out, move the existing en-suite and accommodate the corridor to the new bedroom.

I’ve always been fairly practical but I’d never embarked on quite such a large project before. Funnily enough I’d never actually laid any bricks before planning the extension. A quick 2 brick course flower bed and I thought I was ready for anything. George, my step-dad, was keen to do the job with me and was a great help!

The rest of the page is an archive of the news posts I previously made on the extension. I’ve also added any major event details. Maybe some of my mistakes will assist someone else to get it right 1st time, who knows!