Ruin Rebuild

One of the first things we did after arriving here was to remove a wall of piled up rocks that closed off the land to the left of the house. (You can see it in this picture.) Since then, that small area has served as construction site and car park and had the aesthetic appeal of a sand pit. But we've finally got around to starting what we originally planned, which is to rebuild a proper stone wall across the opening and build a garage behind.

In the past, there was actually another small house on the land and two of the walls were still partially standing. We've had them built back up to first floor level, added a wall across the front, and created an opening for the garage and another as a foot entrance.

Here we go ?Ethe first stones go into place for the front wall. Note how simple it is to build a wall from a rough pile of stones...

A tractor with a simple lift is useful after reaching a certain height. Not that the people who originally built our house ?Ewith walls up to about 8 metres ?Ehad such a luxury. How

did

they do it? I don't know...

"The garage and pedestrian entrance would look great with antique wood as lintels," said one of the builders. And how to get large enough pieces of antique wood? Well, there's the ruin of a rather nice house across the road from us and there happened to be a few enormous chestnut beams in reasonably good shape. By asking around I found someone related to the owners and, a couple of days later, gained permission to take them out....

Nice pieces of timber! Cutting them down (without bringing down the walls) was quite precarious, as was dragging them out between some neighbours' cars. But then, with a little judicious chain sawing, they went into place beautifully.

And this is as far as we've got. No further progress since this picture was taken in April or May...