So what's it all about then?

The plan is to build what is effectively a three-car garage, although there is a vanishingly small prospect of ever getting three cars in there. Realistically, the layout of the driveway and access to the garage makes it nearly impossible for anything other than a tiny car to get into the rightmost slot. But that space is super useful for garden maintenance equipment and general "stuff". 

In addition, there is a rather elderly summer house built of softwood that is coming to the end of its useful life. Between the garage and the summer house is, practically speaking, wasted space, about 2.5m wide that could be made better use of.

The existing garage and summer house, showing 
the extent of the proposed new development  

The plan therefore is to demolish the existing two car garage and the old summer house and build a single story three car garage/sun room plus storage areas in the vacated space, overall some 12m x 7m. 

Architect's drawing looking 
from the south

Architect's drawing looking 
from the north

 

 

 

 

 

 

Architect's plan

The garage will have room for a good sized workshop and space for garden furniture, tractor, etc. Above the garage will be a large loft space which will no doubt get filled with junk in no time. The sun room section will extend up to roof level to give a tall open space with glass on two sides. Behind the sun room is further ground level storage. In theory there will be room for two cars in there somewhere.

Planning approval has been obtained and the structural design is completed. I've selected the builder and we meet next Monday to kick off the project, with a planned start date in mid-late April.

And then...

Thirteen years ago I had this sudden urge to develop Pennine View from the small cottage on a big plot of land into a somewhat bigger country residence. The project was a huge success and you can read all about it (or at least as much as I am willing to tell you) in the posts below.

I rather thought that I was done with big projects but it seems not. Nine months ago I was struck by another sudden urge, this time to get a little sports car for those nice sunny days that we occasionally get up here in Cumbria. Well that rather genteel notion was never going to suffice and so it was that I ended up buying a Jaguar F-type, all eight cylinders, five litres and 550 horsepower of it. 

Now the F-type, whilst great fun is a totally impractical car, being a true two seater with a rather small boot - but an enormous, E-type-esque bonnet to hide that chunky V8 engine. Not much good for carrying stuff, in other words. It's also rather low to the ground and some of my less agile friends do not fit into it well...

And so I became a two car household.

Pennine View does have a double garage but half of that is full of workshop, a garden tractor and other maintenance paraphernalia needed for a couple of acres of prime Cumbrian countryside. Then there's all the usual stuff that one acquires after 25 years of living in the same place. So in practice, it's a bit of a fight to fit just one car into the remaining space. I really would prefer to be able to get both cars under cover, especially during the winter months when it can get pretty wild up here.

And so a new project is born and this Blog awakens from its slumbers as documentary evidence.  

Pennine View in March 2026 - a view from my drone

The last post

Well the extension is all done and the rest of the cottage is completely refurbished. Outside the patio looks great and the landscaping has matured so that it looks as if it was always there.

For those that were following - I hope you found it interesting and informing. The Blog will remain as a record of the largest building project I've ever done. It was fun but I'm glad it's over!

Job done, Blog done, last post. Pennine View OUT!

Painting the outside

It's been a while coming but the outside is finally being painted. The new extension is particularly challenging, as it is rough pebble dash, in keeping with the rest of the house but, having never been painted before is something of a sod. It's amazing how a bit of paint brightens up the exterior appearance! I think it'll look really nice when it's finished, hopefully within the next week.

Before

Making a start

Looking better

Painting the black bits makes a surprising difference...

Nearly done... just in time for my birthday party!

Sorting out the utility room

Another issue with the back of the house being the de facto front nowadays is the utility room, added some time in the 1990s. It is a natural "junk" room but it's also, now, effectively the principal entrance.

A partition has now been built, dividing the utility room in two and creating a short hallway, convenient for wet clothes, boots, etc. between the back (front!) door and the kitchen. The untidy electrical distribution/meter area has also been boxed in to make it less obtrusive. Some plastering, a new paint job and LED lighting completed the project. At the same time, I took the opportunity to replace the horrid fluorescent tube lighting in the kitchen with LEDs. The entire house is now LED lit.

A new front gate

When Pennine View was first built the front of the house was on the south side, looking out over the fields towards New Mill Flatt, on whose land the cottage had been built for the farmer's family. It was before the days of widespread car ownership and so the back of the house opened out onto a back yard and not much else.

By the 1970s the bungalow had been extended with the addition of a kitchen to the north side and the back yard had become a car park, with a rather awkwardly offset entrance made in the hedgerow on the northern edge of the property. With most people now arriving by car, the back of the bungalow had now effectively become the front!

The old gate was at an awkward angle to the driveway and not especially wide. Improvement was called for. The new gate is 18" wider and the awkward angle has been more or less removed, making access considerably easier, especially for larger vehicles. New gateposts had to be erected and the opportunity was taken to reverse the opening, further improving access.

With the new gate installed the road side access was tarmacked and new limestone chippings laid on the drive side. The result is quite pleasing!

 

Two years ago...

... Pennine View was a completely different home. What started out in June 2013 as a relatively simple, if quite substantial extension morphed into a much wider ranging programme of improvements to the rest of the house and its grounds.

Most of the work was completed by autumn 2014 and nothing much happened during the winter, which brought a little snow.

The intervening six months gave the new landscaping time to settle in and afforded the grass seeded areas the opportunity to become established. A few minor cracks started appearing in the plaster, mainly around the join between old and new and the pointing work on the patio suffered a bit during the winter.

With the arrival of spring the final touches are now being applied. These are:

• Adding a wall to the utility room, to create a hallway for the back door into the kitchen
• Installing LED down-lighting in the kitchen and utility room
• Fitting a new wrought iron gate at the side of the bungalow and improving the wall behind the summer house
• Fitting a new, wider front gate, straightening the access line into the driveway and generally tidying up the front of the property
• Fixing those cracks
• Reworking the pointing on the main patio area, which suffered a bit during the winter frosts
• Painting the exterior.

More on each of these shortly.

Landscaping

With the completion of the patio area and paths around the newly extended Pennine View, the last few weeks has been occupied with landscaping work. A particularly dry June/July meant that the soil was too dry and hard to be easily worked but early August brought quite heavy rain and with it the ability to rotavate and grade the soil.

There was just enough top soil to grade the lawn from field level up to the new pathway level, some 2ft higher, in the SE corner of the property. The whole area has now been seeded with a rye-based grass which should establish itself during the autumn and over winter.

Whilst I was at it, I also reseeded two areas behind the garage that were used as a storage area and for mixing cement, etc. I've also rotavated and graded the area by the septic tank, which is where we stored the top soil during construction work.

Unfortunately, the local mole population seems to have discovered all this good work and sees it as an excellent opportunity for easy tunnelling and, presumably, a plentiful supply of worms. Not much that I can do about this without doing further damage until the ground firms up. The indigenous rabbits have also been having fun digging holes in my nicely graded top soil. The vicissitudes of living in the country!

Nearly two years after the first thoughts about building an extension emerged, I'm finally getting to the end of this odyssey. There remain a couple of small work items that will be done as and when materials and builders' time are available. Much as I would like to get the outside painted, I now suspect that will be a job for 2015.

High speed broadband @ PV

Not really related to the extension project but going on alongside and improving the property, I now have high speed broadband at Pennine View!

For the last ten years or so, the best broadband speed I could get was around 2.5Mbit/s. Ten years ago that wasn't too bad but the rest of the world has moved on and rural Cumbria has not. Well that has all changed with the installation of a Lonsdale Network Services wireless node here at PV.

I am now getting broadband speeds in excess of 60Mbit/s - far faster than most town dwellers get on their telephone line-based service. The intention is for PV to become a relay node, beaming high speed broadband down into Sleagill village, so they too can benefit from this excellent service.

Patio nears completion

It's taken a while but the new - and very large - patio is more or less finished in time for summer. Including the paths, some 80 square metres of terracotta stone has now been laid. Big job!

The pathway to the back door is also finished and graded into the driveway area with stone chippings  - a great improvement. Steps down to the garden from the southern edge of the patio is the next job, some time next week. After that I'll be able to get on with grading the lawns up to the patio using all the soil that was displaced by the extension work.

In other news, the last of the old-style windows around the north side of the cottage have been replaced with four new hardwood frames and modern double glazed units.Should be a bit warmer in the kitchen during the winter months!