I’ve posted about a few of our previous oak pergolas, but this was a bit of a unique one. Firstly the pergola was joined to the house which usually isn’t a problem, but with this particular job, the house was not only cranked, but there was a change in heights to contend with as well. Secondly, it was sat over an Indian sandstone patio which we also installed at the same time. Usually for this, we would concrete the posts into the ground first, and the construct the patio around the posts, cutting the slabs to fit. For this however, the client had decided that they would like the pergola seated onto staddle stones.

It’s been an incredibly long time since I blogged about the build of this car, so a catchup is definitely in order. Since the last time I wrote about it, the car build has been completed, and the final stages of it all went relatively smooth. The usual unforeseen issues came into play, mainly in the form of front suspension geometry which we thought we had overcome, before the first outing.

When I was in my late teens and twenty’s, myself and other labourers used to do the majority of the hard graft on site, as we were young, fit, agile etc. The stories we used to have off the skilled workers, who were then in their forty’s, was all about how they have already done their shift as labourers in the past, and how it was always tougher and harder back in their day. What I can’t understand is how now I’m in my forty’s, I’m still finding myself doing incredibly hard graft. Today was one of those days. 7 tonnes of topsoil needed to be carried (yes carried) up the driveway, up 2 flights of steps, across the top of the garden and tipped into the raised flower beds, and today of all days, I was on my own. The method of works was very simple, fill a rubber trug with 5 shovels of soil, lift it onto my shoulder, carry it up the 26 steps, and tip it off. My target was 5 tonnes in the working day which started slightly late as the delivery arrived an hour or 2 later than anticipated. To achieve this goal I needed to ideally move each tonne, in about 1hour 15 mins.

With the huge rising energy prices throughout Europe, I decided to finally do something that I had wanted to do for a fair while, and install a grid tied solar system to our house. With plenty of second hand panels for sale on multiple platforms, my maths said a budget of around £600 should be enough to build a 1.6kw system, and although there are a huge amount of variables like unpredictable prices and equally unpredictable British weather, I think a return of investment in 2-3years is very probable. This is a massive improvement from a lot of articles reporting that a 10-12 year ROI is a good return. So this was what, along with a few other things, gave me the spark to get on with it.

So we’ve been on this particular job for a while now, and finally things are really starting to take shape. The whole job has taken a lot longer than anticipated due to the nature of the property. The house is nestled into a steep bank in a town inside the Forest of Dean, which actually makes it to look like a 2 story house from the front, and a single story bungalow from the rear. With the rear garden being an entire story higher than the front garden, access was less than ideal. All of the materials including the 60 heavy oak sleepers were all carried or wheel barrowed up this incline. The weather didn’t do us any favours for large parts of it either.

So yesterdays sleeper steps were finished off first thing in the morning. We had left ourselves with the last few sleepers to install at the top of the flight of 12 yesterday, and once that was done we could get on with the infilling. The decision was made to use the same millboard decking boards as we are using on the rear section of the garden, as the treads on this flight. As we had left a 200mm gap between the risers, it wasn’t ideal that these boards measure in at 176mm wide. So the second board on each step that tucked up under the next riser, really wasn’t on show much at all. However, once finished to contrast in materials really worked, and we were all pleased with the final results.