March 2008

March comes and I thought we'd never get here - I almost have a house that looks like a house now.

The central heating system gets installed (although not tested yet - not all the radiators are on the wall)

The new plasterboard walls in many of the rooms get plastered. This includes, all of the three bedrooms, the upper hallway, the kitchen and the lower lounge.

The bedrooms and upper hallway are all painted. New doors go on for all of the rooms upstairs.

The electrican completes the circuits for upstairs - we now have lights and power to all the upper rooms.

The under floor heating goes in in the kitchen.

The new kitchen floor tiles are laid and grouted.

The kitchen and bathrooms arrive on site (OMG where am I going to put everything!).

The paint starts going on the outside.

The kitchen starts to go in.

The electrican completes the initial phase of circuit provision to downstairs. We now have light and power to the power floor as well!.

February 2008

Well, as February 2008 starts, the house is coming on a treat - i.e. resembles more of a house than a building site.

The majority of the main roof tiles are on and the builders are starting the lower roof.




All too quickly, the top roof gets completed and the lower roof soon follows.
















In completing the lower roof, the electrically operated velux window also goes in.

Next, the suffit and soffit boards go into the upper roof.

Next step being guttering and downpipes, followed by external rendering. Inside, the first fix of the electrics to the upper floor goes ahead and in the loft the insulation and boarding continues apace.

Inside, the first fix of the electrics are also finished to the lower floor. Space heaters and dehumidifers are brought in to dry out the walls ready for plasterboarding and plastering in light of cold weather.

The roofs are finished !! Hooray!!

First bit of the external render goes on!

The suffit and fascia board are then extended round the side of the house together with the guttering.

This covers up the blocks and will match up the external finish to that of the rest of the house.




The other side of the roof is treated to a bit of a spring clean too, all of the moss and other rubbish that had been living on the tiles on the old part of the roof has now been removed.






First coat of the render is now complete all the way around the new build part of the extension.







The second and final coat of render has been "flicked" onto the walls now completing the external render.







From an electrical perspective, the first fix is now complete. However, let's hope that everything becomes a lot clearer when they try and sort this out at the point of second fixing.

Next comes the walls and ceilings - completely awash with plasterboard!!

PS - The pink plasterboard is by design, it's not a fashion statement! It marks the place where the steels are. These need to be covered in two layers of fire rated plasterboard (rather than the normal stuff).

Also, you can see the radiators have started to go in.

All in all, a very productive month. Starting with a uncompleted roof and ending with almost complete rooms ready for plastering.

January 2008

This month got off to a slow start - builders and Xmas holidays, etc.

But whilst waiting I plasterboarded the new downstairs cloakroom and installed the toilet. Also, note the new incomming mains water main (with stop cock). By the way, the strange floor colours are the result of breaking through the existing floor to relocate the water main. Finally added new door.

















When the builders did return they decided to start with the roof for the new kitchen. The picture shows the rafters going in together with the ridge fixed into the wall to stop it being able to come back out again.























Eventually, the lower roof construction gets approved and signed off, ready for the installation of the breathable felt, battens and eventually tiles.










But then comes the main roof, the old tiles are removed and discarded. Then the new joists to take the weight of the hipped roof are installed. This, togehter with a new ridge and wall plate are also installed.















First steps being the new ridge of the hip, at 90 degrees to the main roof, followed by supporting rafters, purlins, etc.

As you can see, by the end of it, it becomes quite congested inside!














New joists go in to both provide the ceiling to the new part of the house, but also strengthen the whole roof structure, as these now run from the front of the house to the back - in addition to the old ones.

The building inspector - she say YES and signs off the main roof construction!!! -

So with the main roof construction signed off, the house can be covered in breathable felt followed by battens and counter battens, ready for the tiles!.
















Inside, the insulation has now been put into the kitchen lower roof (apart for the space for the velux window).







Togehter with the lounge roof

December 2007

The first thing in December to get done was to apply bitument sealant to the concrete block floor to stop water ingress from below and then cover this with celotex insulation.














Then came the 8th of December!
A very important day, remember about 8 weeks ago, I had placed the orders for the doors well today they were installed. They fitted like a dream (which consideering my history was a major surprise) and worked brilliantly opening up the lounge and bringing in a lot of light!.

The upstands of celoxtex are installed around the edge of the rooms (to ensure a cold spot is avoided between floor and wall) and a damp proof membrane goes down. This is then followed by the concrete floor to the lounge side of the extension.





This is then followed by the same process to the new kitchen side of the extension.

The old kitchen door is blocked up as this space in the hallway will now become a downstairs cloakroom (the foul sewer pipe that was in the kitchen has been extended into this space down and filled in).

The upstairs has now been framed out ready for the new walls, you can see some of the first fix of the electrics has also gone in now, although we are still working on temporary lighting and no other electrics or heating!






Some more windows are installed upstairs!








Unfortunately, the contracted roofers decided not to start and despite going through about seven other roofers, it was not possible to get any of the roof constructed before Christmas, so afraid it's Christmas in the Garden Office for me!


A temporary roof is put onto the building to try and keep it water tight whilst the builders are on holiday over the Christmas period.


Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!


All in all December turned out to be a little disappointing. The plan was to be in the house again (although not in comfort) before Christmas. So electrics and heating engineers had been arranged and choices made on some of the final fittings, all to no avail.

November 2007

This month saw both me and the builders take a holiday.



Upon my return I discover that all the electrity to the Garden Office has been cut and everything is dark! Basically the cable between the house and the Garden Office has been severed somewhere and I am completely buggered now! However, the emergency electrician soon gets me back online by running yet another cable from inside the house back out to the Garden Office, but this time it isn't sunk into the ground.


Also, I come back to the contents of the kitchen (cupboards, etc.) being removed from the kitchen and dumped on the floor of the extension. The ceilings in all of the rooms have been completely removed (this should be the kitchen!).









Finally the floor of the kitchen has been pulled up ready for the laying of a new sewer pipe which has just been left inside the old kitchen at the moment.
























As you can imagine the house is in uproar! These pictures show what should be the storeroom for all my belongings and also what the lounge ended up looking like when I got back!

The house is still as it was from the outside, but as this picture shows, the first of the remaining 7 steel beams to hold the rest of the house up has appeared. Hoorah!









These are the beam over the lounge (biggest), the beam over the dining room (middle one) and the beam joining the new study to the engineered pier once the existing chimney is removed (oh what fun!!!).












Very quickly, the beams are installed on it's appropriate padstones as shown here. These are inspected and approved.










But the Council are not happy with the existing floor joist being sunk into the web of the steel joist, they want a "face fixed" solution, so the web of the steel is filled with an appropriate piece of timber fixed at 450mm on centre M10 bolts as shown here and then face fix hangers are used to connect the joist to the actual timber inside the web of the steel. Again these are inspected and approved.












This means that the builders can move to the first floor, which up till now has been supported by the strongbouys and acrowprops still.



Now, the first floor walls go, but only after more props hold up the roof joists. Once again, mind the gap!









Wait, wait, wait again for more steel beams to arrive, this time the two over the bedrooms, the post connecting upstairs and downstairs and finally the two which will take the hipped roof over the new bedrooms!



Again, more disagreement though after the beams turn up and we discover that the architect has designed the beams actually sitting lower than the exiting ceiling line within the bedrooms meaning that you will have a bulge in the ceiling. After long discussions with the structural engineer, I decide to allow the existing plan and not demand a change (due to problems with the actualy way theroof would need to be constructed otherwise). But this means that the post shown above is wrong and needs to be amended.

By this time, temporary boards have been put over what will be the sliding folding door entrance.

The post is adjusted and quickly the beams are installed siting on their appropriate padstones (which - yes yet again -are sizes which are not commercially available and need to be fabricated onsite). Yes, and again require variation approval by the Council's building control officer as they breach the gap between the wall skins and Yes, Yes again, the Council come out to approve the beams in situ before we go any further.

You an also see in this one, the box lintels have now been installed over the windows on the first floor too with a temporary tarpaulin roof to try and keep out some of the rain.

The next problem is connecting the box section beams for the hipped roof. These are not connected by bolts (like all the others), but they are to be spot welded a little later.

Anyway, some real fun! now all the walls to the upper floor can come down! Yes no walls!!

The joists now support everything and stop the building folding in on itself. Even so, just incase the picture shows the acrow props still in place (but these go soon too).

The tank in the foregound soon goes and all the pipework handing down from the loft also goes as the existing tank systems for both cold water and central heating are being replaced too.

The pipe is the flue of the chimney (or what's left of it!). The room in the backgorund is the third bedroom which is staying as is and the only other room which is left on this floor is the existing family bathroom.

Downstairs the fireplace is also being removed

All too soon, the fireplace is completely removed including all the pipes for the old central heating system.

What started as a bit of a nightmare month actually ended up being amazingly productive!