Playing House

October 2011

The other day, we finally decided it was time to work out where the house was to go.  The first step was to go back to the plans drawn by the land surveyor when we bought the land.  Starting in the NW corner, we laboriously measured along the northern perimeter.  This was made more difficult because Richie had sliced through the 30m tape at about 570 cm, when he was trimming the grass for our first attempt at laying out the ground plan.  (Apologies for the picture – these drawings - attached to an email from the architect - will not print or copy or anything, so I’ve photographed the computer screen)

 

Interestingly, we found that we owned more of the NE corner than we’d realised.  The northern boundary is a barbed wire fence and we’d just assumed that where it stopped was the edge of our plot.  It turned out that it is the edge of the neighbour’s plot, as ours extends a further eleven metres in a straight line (through prickly oak and an olive tree) due east.  So we put up some posts and tape – hopefully if anyone disputes the boundary they’ll come and tell us about it sooner rather than later.

Then I mapped out the ground plan in stones.  The build must be at least 5m back from any boundary, so that places the north (bedroom) wall, and I worked it out from there.  It’s not very good, as I had to go round all sorts of hazards, and the ends didn’t join up very well when I’d finished, but it gives an idea. The walls are drawn approx 60cm wide.

Here are a few more screen shots of the proposed build – looking rather smoother as CGI than they will be in cob!