Anyways, quite the update today. Just when I think things are meandering along I get surprised by a sudden burst of productivity from our builders. Mind it's all relative so it could just as easily be said I'm used to them doing feck all so any positive movement is a plus. And they had plenty of opportunity as I was at the hospital with the wife attending a pre-natal course for 7hrs. Yes, 7hrs! But that's an excrutiatingly, mind-numbingly, boring story for another thread.
Anyway, to start, the driveway...
This caused a lot of head scratching. I wasn't quite sure what to go with (particularly after seeing the impressive stamped concrete look in another thread) and I was always kinda keen to have it take up as little of the yard area as was possible.. Initially we were going to match it to the existing drive. But that's the problem, you can't match it - it would always be a slightly different colouring/shade. So what we went for is this:
The 'inter-locking' tiles. The idea is that the grass will grow between the hollow sections and camouflage it to an extent. Here's a close up of the sections to get a better idea of what I mean:
Of course that's the idea. In practice it will probably only be horrible, scraggly old weeds that grow there, the tiles will subside and crack, and we'll be left with an absolute bloody mess that we'll have to rip up and replace with stamped concrete like we should've done in the first place. Oh well, the important thing is that if it does all go pear-shaped it's our cock-up so we can live with that.
And while I'm on the topic of cock-ups...
I have to admit I think we've made a mistake here with the window. I don't know what changed my mind but instead of going for three central, hinged, windows I went with a single sliding one. It may have been slightly less practical but, meh. I just don't think it looks very nice with one big single - a bit too 'commercial' if you follow? Could’ve easily been rectified by having the side windows open but we didn’t think of that either. Brilliant.
Then again it doesn’t look to bad from the inside – but that’s the key I guess, it could’ve looked better:
The door is ok, but then again you sorta have to put effort into attempting to cock that up. It simply matches the style of the others in the house:
I have already been parking my car in the carport and the good news is that the Measurement Faries didn't magically subtract a foot or two in the building process so it fits as was intended.