Hey all! Almost 4 months in, and we’re still standing…JUST. We’ve come a long way, but boy oh boy are we exited to actually get started on the house building part of this now. I think we’ve been pretty patient and tolerant though it hasn’t been without some really trying times for us. We are still the only people onsite, there have been letters to the council asking why “travellers” have moved on to Bantaskin Street, we’ve had drunken loons calling us gypsies, we’ve been up in the middle of the night with all sorts of weird and freaky noises outside, from the dogs, the cats, the human traffic, we’ve been over to TC twice to stop the fire alarm deafening everyone, we’ve been rained on whilst in the loo and in the living room, we’ve used up all our data over and over again watching Nashville, we’ve both been sick, we’ve cried, we’ve tried to be normal, we’ve drunk probably a bit too much, we’ve cooked a few nice meals, we’ve had a tonne of take-aways, we’ve stayed in BnBs, we’ve let the bath leak on to the caravan chipboard floor, we’ve run out of sawdust, we’ve been given 2 generators, and our batteries have gone flat but as of this week - THE END IS ACTUALLY IN SIGHT!!!
We moved onsite in July, having purchased a “Serviced Plot” from Glasgow City Council. We got our mains water connection around a month ago now, and have yet to get electricity connected. The Scottish Power case for our street was closed and we weren’t able to action anything to get it opened up again…so as the nights have been drawing in, we’ve been getting colder and colder, and having to light candles earlier and earlier. A serious challenge when we are still trying to get the caravan finalised for winter. Luckily Ben’s impact driver has a little torch on it when you screw… The insulation is near completion, but a few weeks back we basically stopped doing anything as we were getting too exhausted, with no movement in any direction.
At the end of a long summer of waiting for emails and wondering why nothing was happening, we changed direction and hooked up with the excellent team at Design Engineering Workshop, based in South Block, who have been brilliant and helped us to get our Stage 1 warrant drawings finalised. These are with the Building Control Officer now… Fingers crossed there isn’t much longer to wait for the ok on this front!
Last week we got our loan offer from The Ecology Building Society which was another HUGE day - not without emotional turmoil! We will be receiving the first chunk of money this week, they say! This means breaking ground really is going to happen. I mean ACTUALLY going to happen and we should have foundations in the ground before the year is out. Crazy excited about this. We’ve met a brilliant groundworks contractor who will be building the ring beam, the slab, drainage and driveway. A separate company will be doing the piles. The other 5 plot holders may also be keen to pile, so we’re crossing our fingers they will be ready to go around the same time as us…SOON PLEASE!!! But it’s looking like possibly only 1 or 2 will be….
We borrowed quite a bit more than we thought we would from Ecology, and so it may be that we can accelerate some of the build process and get done a bit quicker than we originally anticipated. It also means Ben and I being able to step back a little, which sounds really, really, really good right now.
Hoping and praying we’ll be posting some pictures of actual house building on here very soon y’all!
Joanna xx