Hidden Corners

So, there's this thing where we bought a house without being able to see all of it. Three lofts without hatches, lots of mysterious boxed in bits in the eaves, and half a garden which seemed to be one thing and then turned out to be another.

The Other Stuff *shudders*

Joe has been hacking and slashing at the buddleia with gusto, and today Sven even got his machete out. Huge swathes of buddleia have been flattened in order for us to clear the way for the garden wall to be demolished and rebuilt (more on that in a minute), but there is still more to go. Much more. And once the plants have gone, there's the other stuff.

Previous tenants, or perhaps the previous owner, or perhaps previous builders working on the property, or perhaps all of the above, appear to have been using the garden as a rubbish dump for some time. Possibly all of the time. The ground level we thought we had is clearly not the actual ground. It's a sort of densely compacted layer of general building rubbish and household waste, upon which the buddleia have made their home. This leaves us pondering if our garden is heavily sloping, or perhaps even terraced. The rubbish is so deep, we can't tell. Honestly, it's disturbing.

This has led to a few more discussions about the whole private rental market, especially student and generally dodgy accommodation, such as our house once was before we rescued it. Somehow it seems to be a system set up so that no one cares enough to look after anything, so it feels good, if daunting, to be liberating this small patch of earth from it's use as a rubbish tip, even if it is going to take us forever to sort through it for recycling.

If anyone with a penchant for unearthing layers of tat, or generally hacking, slashing and burning stuff wants to come over, there's tea, and probably dinner in it for you, and there is plenty of work to go round :D

We've also been doing a bit more hand-wringing about what work we need to do and how we're going to pay for it, and we have two workshops scheduled for the next week to help us all to plan and understand things. Hopefully this will make us feel like we can forge on with some of the bigger stuff, and in the meantime, there's all that sorting in the garden to be done. After that will likely be the roof, and then... well, then, everything else under it.

In all seriousness, if anyone feels the urge to do get any building experience, we will probably soon be removing a couple of roofs and putting them back on, as well as lots of smaller DIY jobs. We're happy to cook for you and generally foist tea and biscuits upon your person, so if you fancy a holiday in Swansea or already live here and want to help out, do get in touch.

- Hannah