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…

Rendering the end wall…

The end wall has been getting damp because rain drives on to this wall and goes through cracks in the render and doesn’t dry out.

We’ve had it all taken off and redone. Looks much nice, we will lime wash it eventually a warmer colour.

We helped to the extent pf getting sand and lime, but we cannot claim to have done any of this ourselves. Expert plasterer was needed for this job!

Before

During

After - it will dry a lighter colour than this…

This is the rest of the wall below the out door kitchen roof. It’s not quite finished yet, but gonna look great! Will be nice not to have sand and rubble falling off the wall all the time too!

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

Not doing the house

 We are meant to be getting on with doing the house…

But instead we had covid and now trying to catch up with outdoors work for the animals and land… aaaaaany moment we will get to it.

Did a tiny bit of preparing for some work we will do at the end of July with an artisan - to extend one of the doors. Not the clearest picture, but the closest door on the house. This will be a large door in the dining room.

We can’t go quite as high as we were thinking as there needs to be more space for the lintel, but all good!

Last day of (paid) work for a while

I have been very lucky to work remotely for a UK company for the past year. Corona made it possible! Nice to get some benefit from it.

But today was my last day. People are getting back in to the office 2 days a week, and we are keen to get on with renovating our house which hasn’t progressed at all for a few years.

We finally have agreed the floor plan (and laminated a copy to encourage NO MORE CHANGES)

We will start with the upstairs and the living room and progress from there…

It was sad saying goodbye to the lovely people I worked with, though quite strange never having met any of them in person. But looking forward to time not spent at a desk… 

Storage storage storage

Our next mission on the house is to organise all our possessions so there are as few as possible in the main part of the house. Everything is going to have to get moved around as we do the work, so the less there is of it the better.
First port of call is the tack room in the stables.
Beeeauuutiful shelves

Bedroom ceiling progress

Doug slaved away while I was away enjoying myself in London, and has nearly finished putting up the plasterboard. Still needs taping filling and sanding, then painting then lots of other things before we can move in. But all progress is good progress!

It is starting to look like a real room now.
The pink plasterboard is more fire resistant than the other and there is going to be a corridor of it to allow safe exit in the hopefully unlikely event of a fire. It is too expensive to use everywhere.

I didn't get great photos of this room when we looked around the house because the previous owner kept beehives in here so it was rather dangerous.

This window is now floor length and the horrible cladding was taken down some years ago by Rob. Looks a million times better now even not finished.