First week of house building

Amid trepidation about the falling value of the pound, yet again(!), we started the house building this week.

You will find photographs with captions here:-

http://picasaweb.google.com/JPD.Britt/Housebuilding#

Everything began well with Fr Rico blessing the site, then we got a substandard delivery of hollow blocks (breeze blocks) You can see from the photos that I could (and did) crumble one with my own fair hands. Not what you want to use to build a house!

There has been much digging and pouring in of cement and all seemed to be going well until this afternoon. Now the actual site has a slope on it and I, foolishly, thought we might get a JCB and level the ground first. Apparently not. The work on the foundations has proceeded on the uneven ground with the result that the floor level at one end of the house, which is a foot or so above ground level, is 4 metres above ground level at the other! No the engineer and the architect didn't spot this problem either.

So now we are going to have an undercroft at one end of the house and my office is going to be high in the sky! I can't see any feasible alternative, so that is how it will be.
Actually the undercroft will provide another terrace facing a different direction from the main one and might also be useful as a small photo studio, who knows?