Bye bye garages

It appears work is finally starting on demolishing the garages at the back of our property and replacing them with three affordable homes for council tenants. This day has been coming for a long time, but we've all been caught on the hop somewhat.

This morning, a letter came through our letterbox informing us about the start of construction and the need to remove everything that's attached to the back of the garages (our back fence). Again, we've known this was coming, which is why I've already had one major clearout of the lean-to shed ahead of dismantling it.

Unfortunately, work to demolish the garages apparently started on Monday, 3rd March. Don't worry, though, because the letter isn't dated Thursday 6th March, the day it was actually delivered. Oh no, the letter is dated 3rd February, which is strange because until yesterday we didn't know the letter existed.

Now, this means I'm going to have to hope they don't start smashing up the garages today and then I can try to take down the shed over the weekend, yes? Well, no. Thing is, I had a minor op on Wednesday - nothing serious, all planned, but the end result is I'm technically out of action until next Wednesday. So now I've had to call in my father-in-law to help remove it on Sunday - he's 70 by the way, and really shouldn't have to get involved with this kind of stuff. I might also ask my next door neighbour to help - he's around the same age. Bit pathetic, me, 30 years their junior watching them do the work I should have been doing if I'd only been given even a fortnight's notice.

EDIT: good news. The site manager has been round personally to see me. Not only will I not have to worry about removing the lean-to shed this weekend, I won't have to worry about removing it at all. They've decided to keep the back wall of the garages when they demolish the rest - the height will be reduced (but only slightly, staying at around 2 metres), and the lean-to shed will be reprieved permanently. He apologised for the ham-fisted nature of the letters (written for five different sites, so totally generic) and the late delivery of them. While it would have been nice to have known all this from the start, I'm just happy there will hopefully be a silver lining to all of this. And once that work is done, we'll be secure in the knowledge no more development will be forthcoming at the end of our garden. And the height of that wall will definitely help!