Finally managed to get started on the pathio tiling despite setback caused by rampaging horses.

I guess I should have closed the gate when we moved the cows - but I was a bit distracted by the cow riot that started when I opened the gate resulting in all the cows running off in to the woods bucking and snorting with me in slow pursuit (fast pursuit just makes them run faster) 

We’ve had a lot of rain so been hard to find time for all the dry weather activities like tiling

 

So much work!

So much work!

We need to rerender the front wall now the new windows are in (it is cement and doesn’t breath). To do that we need to take up the old path, so we are replacing it with a bit of a better one with a little patio in it for some outside lounge chairs and umbrella.

Will be fab when done, but painful now!

Moulinex pain doré bread recipe

I just bought a breadmaker, because although I enjoy making bread I hardly ever manage to fit it in around the house building schedule, or when I try to I fail to make it back in time for the next step and it goes wrong…

190ml warm water (warm enough to warm the milk to room temp) + 60ml milk

(or 240ml water + 4tsp powdered milk)

1.5tsp salt

1.5tsp sugar

25g butter

400g bread flour

1.25tsp yeast

Program 1 (though I did 3 by mistake!)

Browning 1 if you want to use in sandwich maker

Weight 500g

Adding a garden tap

With people coming to render the front wall with lime (it has cement based render at the moment which doesn’t breath and also  it is a mess with the new windows), we need to add an outside tap so they can get water.

It took a bit more excavation than we had hoped to find the pipe!

Now it all needs filling back in…

Getting rid of the wall by the stairs

We were suffering from covid when the window guy announced he was coming a month earlier than expected. This wall needed to go before we could clear stuff out of his way to install all the windows. It was a bit of a trial tbh! But so glad to have it gone. There is another one the same the other side of the stairs still to go. Boo hoo hoo.

It looks fantastic now it is gone. But we are sticking with the plan of having a new wall here eventually to keep kitchen smells in the kitchen, plus a large part of the kitchen units need to be against that wall!

Funky joists

 Many of them have gnarly funky bits on them, and a lot are too short for their space. Doing our best to use them rather than new teplacements as they are super solid despite a few funky bits…

Breeze block wall demolished!

 Before

During

After

We also had to remove the hot water tank that replaced the death trap gas boiler that was here when we moved in and move the giant washer dryer combo we have to handle all the bedding from the apartments.

Lots of memories about living in this part of the house when we first arrived and how uncomfortable it was…

Having removed various bits of insulation we can now clearly see the crack between the original internal wall (left) and the front wall (right). Bit of a worry!

Looking down through the 3rd section (of 7). Next thing is to replace any joists that need it and then lay the new upstairs subfloor.

This is the rubble from knocking down part of the breeze block (very not original) wall to open this up to it’s original 6x6m size

 It will eventually be kitchen/dinner with a small seating area as well. We have decided that the 2 beams need a little support from below to take out bounce from the floor upstairs and stop the beams sagging further (there is an 11cm difference between the ends and the middle) so there will be a couple of pillars in the downstairs room. Details of the design still being looked at..,

On to 2 of 7

 Sticky out stones trimmed back (though we still have the scary part of removing the acrows…)

Moving the table, chair, keyboard and freezer in to the section we have done (to the extent of new subfloor upstairs and prepared walls for further steps later) so we can do the same in the next section…

The polythene doesn’t exactly stop the dust, but it reduces it a little…

Back at it…

 We both had colds over Christmas and New Year, but now recovered enough to get back to work!

This is Doug chipping old crumbling plaster off the wall. We have also removed a lot of rotten stuff from the beam on his right.

This is the little bit of new subfloor we have done upstairs. With the old joists from this section on the left and new ones for the next sections on the right. The pink bit is insulation in what will be the full length window.

Brushing off the walls ready for eventual hempcrete insulation (there’s a lot to do before that though…

I’m not sure health and safety would find this to be acceptable working conditions!

Lots of joists

 The old joist are still very solid, except at the end where they went in to the wall

So sadly we ended up having to replace them all

Now on to laying the subfloor, sanding the beam and taking some plaster off the wall before moving on to the 2nd section of the 7 there are to do

Fixing up the floor

You’ll notice some of these don’t reach the wall, not ideal for holding up the floor. There was a chimney breast here and we had to have it removed before it collapsed, which is why the joists are hanging like this. 

The floorboards have basically been giving this bit the strength to stay up. They are pretty rotten and are coming up. We can then do something about replacing these joists with ones that do reach the wall…

Windows/doors structurally complete

Unfortunately we are now going to have to board them up for. while until a few things are finished so we can put the new windows and doors in…

View will be amazing!

Still got to remove these acrows and clean up a lot of rocks and rubble…

It’s going to be amzing going from here which will be the kitchen in to the outdoor kitchen…

Nearly finished (hahahahahaha!)

 Work in progress…

Just a tiny bit of squaring off the edges and a bit of a hoover to clean up the mess, and job done!

Not one, but three…

The front opening is the biggest and the most stressful - because of already having been mangled about and huge amounts of super hard concrete in there, but there are two others being done at the same time…

One here in the end wall from what will be kitchen/dining in to the outdoor kitchen

One upstairs in what will be the living room

The supports are in for both of these now too. Just waiting for the lime to dry a bit before hacking them out too…

Destroy! Widening the door…

 Graham the builder seems very confident, but I am a nervous wreck! I don’t want my house collapsed and I don’t want Doug to be squished (in reverse order of priority of course…)

That beam you can see on the left is just supported by 3 acrow props. It holds not only the floor upstairs up but also the A frame supporting the roof. Glup!

Building back better - 2 of the new beams in place. Feels less scary now. The old beams will sit on these new steel ones. The door won’t be this high in the end as under the beams there will be a roller shutter and fly screen.

Nearly ready!

This is part of why doing anything takes so long! It took 2 half days going to Bernard Page to get the I beam needed for the 3 doors/windows.

They were very helpful though and now we have them (after minor setback when we turned up to collect them and they had done 3 x 4m lengths instead of 4 x 3m lengths. That would have been a super large window!)

The big beams for the window at the front weigh nearly 100kg, it’s going to be a good job getting them in to place!

 

Frenzy of preparation!

A builder is starting work next week (working with Doug) to add a new door and window and enlarge an existing door. We have been in a frenzy of preparation for what feels like years now.

Taking some floor boards up because we need access here to support the wall while we widen the door below.

Ceiling below that gone too

This is the door to be widened downstairs