Walking down the road to the house we could see that the earth-moving around our new driveway area had begun in earnest. For all the past discussion, contention and worry, it's now easier to see how it'll be in the flesh... and it'll be just fine. The landscaping chap's digger was clamping and moving whopping big chunks of granite to shore up the hill. One felt a wee bit concerned about the intrepid chap on the ground who was balancing on recently placed stones, and pointing out to the digger driver where the next should go. Erm, just how firmly can that digger clamp a 400kg lump of rock? Well, I surreptitiously checked the brave fellow and concluded that hadn't been flattened in the past, so I guess he probably knew what he was doing. Or perhaps he's new to a job that's the landscaping equivalent of a Lancaster Bomber rear-gunner, i.e. the other landscapers don't bother getting to know him too well... his boots'll be all that's left of him one day.
Yikes! Touch wood, nothing like that'll happen to him or anyone else!
We met Herr Huf Haus representative and he pointed out a few things that he reckoned we hadn't quite got straight during the planning, and with our permission he'd sort 'em out. The washing machine would have to go against a different wall in the laundry room - ok? Erm, ok. It's only planned for one upstairs landing light switch, but it'd be better with two - one at each end of the landing - right? Righteo. The sticky-out wall section in the bathroom against which'll be placed the non-Huf Haus sink unit (cough, spit) was far too high - agree? Oh, absolutely. Don't you think you'll need an electrical wall socket in that corner of your kitchen? Quite so, quite so...
You see, we were very distracted by the bangs and crashes as the super-efficient german workers got on with their job. The noise mainly, but also the attention grabbing of this-or-that completed bit. Thankfully, all of the upstairs steel bannisters had been put in place so standing above the gallery and looking down is now far less of an 'exciting' experience. The internal above-the-door sky-lights were in, and even looked passably clean. Numerous electrical plastic channels were stuffed into or out of the walls, yet more of 'em were snaking their way across the floors. The heating system was mounted on a plinth, but clearly some way from becoming operational. Oh and the whole place was dry; the kind of dryness that looked an impossible dream this time last week, when the whole interior was a soggy disaster area that smelled of wet concrete. Now it's a dry disaster area that smells of cut wood. Yes, there was lots of progress.
We asked the Huf Haus chap if (in his experience) he'd spotted any other weird omissions, but he reckoned apart from the above all was as he'd expect.
Good-oh.
Then nice-neighbour-below-us came to say hello. We'd already arranged with our landscape chap that he could have some of the whopping big stone ice-age relics to shore up the corner of his garden, so he was just pointing out which and where to our Bauleiter (site manager). All's well, so he's a happy bunny. And remember this is the chap who had no motorcar access to his own drive-way last week due to the stream of chuffing great Huf Haus trucks bloking the way. Oh, and the landscaping digger managed to crush his post box this morning (think USA-style box on stick, and not UK-style slot in the door) which I have to say he took very well - it'll be replaced super-snappy of course. So we're very glad to grant him a favour; a thoroughly decent bloke, with great potential for future late-night piss-ups, erm, winetasting. Claudia also offered him a tour of the house, so the neighbourly bonding session continued.
He made nice noises, so I think he liked it.
One last thing: The Dastardly Mr Bob Salmon's house build is in progress this week, so if you haven't visited his Blog (see link to the right) then you should go there right now. Hey, why are you still reading this? Go now! Now! NOW!
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