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!
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