Trials and tribulations

Okay, so perhaps I'm being a tad over-dramatic but I thought I'd start this post with a photo of the beautiful skies we get up here in Orkney ~ trust me, my loves, the photos get ugly pretty quickly after this!

Do you remember those "simple, straightforward, "just-for-now" alterations" I mentioned in a previous post?  Well, one of those was to replace the old shed with a new shed/storeroom.  It's not that obvious in the photo above, but the shed was in a pretty bad way.  There was woodworm in the roof beams, the double-doors were falling apart and the lower lengths of siding had rotted away.  Initially we had thought that the old shed could be repaired, a window added, and be easily converted into a craft room for me and additional storage for various "shed/garage"-type stuff.  Alas, that turned out not to be a viable proposition and the decision was made to have a new outbuilding.

Adrian and I had many a long discussion on what would be the best option to replace the old shed.  After getting a couple of quotes, we decided that the way forward was to have a block-built and rendered shed, rather than a wooden one.  Ease of future maintenance was our primary focus, especially with living in a place that has such a wet climate!  

The first job was for Chris to take down the old shed.  It had an asbestos roof so had to be handled carefully ~ thankfully, the sheets were all whole and remained so during the demolition.  The taking down of the wooden structure didn't take much doing at all!

We were left with a big messy space but at least the ugly, falling-to-pieces old shed had gone.

We then had something of a dilemma.  The space in our back garden was rather tight, with narrow paths and dangerous, crumbling steps.  It's on different levels, as I've mentioned previously, and the grass you can just see the corner of in the photo above was a fair bit higher than the path from the side gate to the back door.  This higher part of the garden was held back by a single-thickness block wall, which was leaning outwards rather dramatically.  Chris and George were going to need access to build the concrete base for the new shed/storeroom, so the decision was made to take down the block wall and level out this area of the garden.  A section of our boundary wall also had to come down, so that the mini digger could get into the garden.  Mind you, this section of wall was in rather bad condition so we weren't too upset to see it come down!

 

And that, my loves, was when the drama began!  George had taken down the block wall (which really didn't need much "persuading" to fall down) and was digging out the soil when he uncovered a portion of the mains electric cable to the house!

There was a metal pipe running across the garden, beneath the raised grass area, which exited out the side of the retaining wall near the kitchen extension.  I suspect that the electric cable had originally been run through the pipe because the plans that the electricity company had show the cable in this area, running into the house through the kitchen ~ in other words, coming straight across that part of the garden.

Now, this photo shows where the cable actually did come into the house, and it wouldn't have been at all unreasonable, to my mind, to assume that it ran along the house wall from the access path we share with our neighbours.

That, however, was not the case.  It was actually running in a loop from the house, under the raised part of the garden right over to the corner of where the old shed base had been, and then back down the garden and out into the shared access! 

The guys spray-painted it green to keep it highly visible, and we had to get the electricity company out to re-route the bloody thing.

Not only was the cable in a completely different position to that shown on the plans, it was also underneath the sewer pipe!

The guys had to dig out a trench during awful wet weather.  Please don't think me disrespectful, but the garden by this point resembled The Somme!

Concrete had to be cut through.....

.....very thick concrete out in the shared access!

So what had been going to be so simple and straightforward turned out to be anything but.  It delayed work considerably, and the poor weather didn't help matters either.  I am just so very thankful that nobody was hurt ~ I still shudder to think what could have happened if George hadn't spotted the cable before the digger went through it.

In the end, we had four skip loads of soil and rubble taken away.  Thankfully, we have very kind and understanding neighbours!

I think the excitement got too much for Chis 😉

Let's end this post as it began, with another beautiful Orkney sky.  Breathe and relaaaax.....