GBJB's Garage / Workshop Build

Got to love neighbours.

Back in '82, we bought a terraced cottage in a small semi-rural Cheshire town, although it was always referred to as a village. Then, it was very much a working place with two paper mills, a cotton dye-works, a large foam factory, farms, all sorts. Local people could work locally and afford to live there. Oh, and it had over twenty pubs.

It wasn't somewhere that "incomers" often came in to but, we were skint and the cottage was cheap, so in we moved.

I remember the deep suspicion with which we were viewed, especially by the then 70-year-old lady, Martha, who lived next door, who we became great friends with. However, when they realised that I wasn't proposing to build a twenty storey block of flats, complain about the sound of roosters crowing, drank in the local pub, had dogs and, possibly most importantly, got my unpasteurised milk from the farm 20 yards up the road, delivered by the farmers elderly sister from a crate on a sack truck, we were in.

Old Harry Perkins, ex-navy and rum-monster, who inducted us onto the Red Lion domino team, did warn us that it would be 25 years before we were considered, "Local" though!

Good days and great people, although now, sadly, it's not somewhere I'd really want to live any more.

Anyway, loving the garage build and house plans, even if YOUR neighbour's not too sure yet!

Our little terrace has neighbours either side who are also incomers - 18 months one side and 19 years the other - so I don't feel too bad!

teaboy - how about taking the slates off one half of the roof and the concrete tiles off the other side and swapping them over? Still not a cheap 5 minute job, but it'll cost next to nothing in materials? At least then each face will match.

Our roof is 3/4 repaired but we can't get the last part done because bats are roosting inside. They're coming in and out of some small holes in the roof, so I think when I get the roof done I might add a Velux so that I have enough tiles left over to replace broken ones without buying new ones that won't match. Be a few years yet though, bats can apparently keep coming back for up to 30 years...

Depending on how its done I think the uneven weight on each side might cause it to fall over.