Varied Week

Planning Conditions
One of the Planning Conditions that needs to met before we can commence work is the planting to the 2nd floor perimeter - I think the council are suspicious that my proposals are fictional.
Cycled to http://www.middlecombenursery.co.uk near Congresbury to review my proposals based on some initial suggestions made by the very knowledgeable Nigel North last year.  Wore the wrong gloves so my hands were freezing when I arrived and it snowed on the way back!
This is the most fantastic place to see and select plants and shrubs - makes the big warehouses and chains look like a joke.  Everything is such great quality and really well nurtured, not taken off lorry from Holland after life in a greenhouse. 
The theme is mostly coastal plants that can take exposure; both wind and sun, some grasses, rock plants and thrift, with french lavender - hopefully there are enough Latin names on the drawing to keep the planners busy.  Also room for kitchen garden planters for herbs and salad leaves  together with a couple of areas for selective vegetables.

Party Wall Notices
Discovered that Party Wall notices require urgent action; I thought I had agreed to carry out condition surveys and leave official letters to Architect but discovered that the necessary timescale is 2 months for certain conditions and we have only 3 weeks!
Both neighbours are aware and are happy with my proposals, but the Party Wall Act sets out certain procedures designed to allow work to take place when neighbours are not in agreement.  The requirements are very precise for various specific conditions even when construction is 3 - 6 metres from boundary walls!
Spent a late night writing an email to one neighbour who works abroad, to at least make contact and preparing further information.  Thankfully other neigbours are at home most of the time, so after meeting running through the construction details they were able to sign-off the proposals.

I do intend to live here for the foreseeable future, so I really want to get things right, so this is a lot more than a paper exercise.  The engineer has worked on similar schemes and has come up with foundation solutions that minimise disturbance close to the boundaries.  As a precaution I will carry out detailed surveys of boundary walls and immediate garden areas so that any existing damage can be recorded, so if either the construction or the contractor causes additional damage we have something to refer back to.

Garage Renovation
I have nearly finished renovating the garage close-by that I intend to use for storage during construction.  A salvaged glazed door and door are fitted and the sliding doors now operate - just.  Finally need to replace/strengthen a couple of plywood panels that are disintegrating.  On closer inspection the roof is fairly leaky, the wooden structure soaks up most water so consequently is like Weetabix turning to muesli straight out of the packet and the bits that are not rotten are riddled with woodworm. Expanding foam is a bit of a sticking-plaster job but at least I cannot see daylight, and it does kind of glue stuff together.  Chances are it will last a year so plan to cover the my stuff with polythene and not store anything too precious, just heavy items that would be a hassle to move any distance.

Finances are tight
The contractor is rightly keen to make sure that I have finances for his main portion of the build and to secure them up front.  This is very tricky and over the past few weeks I have realised that borrowing money is so incredibly expensive, I have been producing a new spreadsheet every few days, looking at the project from every angle.   I am planning to finance 90% of construction, with the remaining 10% for fit-out using a bridging loan as a worst case scenario.  Thankfully a few close friends have pledged support if required as a backup so I am hoping that I can satisfy the Contractor  that the project is feasible and that they will get paid!  Meeting this week - wish me luck!