October 2007

October begins with work starting to the first floor!

Within a couple of days the walls are built up to roof level and the windows moved from the existing house walls out into the newly built walls. But as you can see here, the old external walls are still there, so nothing really structural has happened yet to the existing house.

That safety blanket is soon removed! The old wall to the right of the property is the first to be removed completely to the lower level. Acrow props hold the old floor joists shown here whilst this is happening. Mind the gap!

So you can now see right throught from the french windows, at the back of the house, directly through to the old kitchen at the front of the house.

This picture shows looking up inbetween the gap of the old and new parts of the house to the first floor level - you can see the upstairs wall still in place being held up by the strongbouy and the place as more and more of the old walls are removed. This shows where a window would once have been.

This one shows the view in the other direction from front of house to back of house through new extension.

This is all good on this side where there is a door in the new extension, but on the otherside of there is nothing apart from a tarpaulin to keep people, foxes and cats out! The reason being the special sliding folding doors have been ordered but take six weeks to arrive and then about two before they are installed.

But even more worrying, there is major disagreement about the steel beams that will now go across the back of the old house to hold up the existing floor and stop the building folding in on itself!. Wait, wait and more wait! Again the padstones under the beams are also the wrong size again they need to be manufactured onsite using a special concrete mix. Again they will have to approved by building control as they vary from the plans.

Whilst the beginning of the month was great, the end of the month was very disappointing.