Building Work (Week 4) – Site clearing

Before I start on week 4 there was some work completed in Week 3 which I managed to completely miss.

Down Loft Ladder

If you look at this photo of the loft hatch which Dad and I installed last summer you’ll see there is a wall behind it, that wall is load bearing as it holds the purlin up.  We need to put an opening in this load bearing wall for the shower (to the right of this) so that little lintel you see spanning the corridor had to be removed, a much bigger one put in to span both the corridor and the new shower opening and the wall above it completely rebuilt.  When I was at the house in the morning the builders were chatting about doing this and also about how big the lintel actually needed to be (there was talk about taking it all the way over the the chimney breast) but when I went to take a look the following day, it looked pretty much the same, so I figured they hadn’t.  I even snapped this half hearted photo into the eaves as a ‘before’ (I wasn’t about to climb all the way into the attic in my work clothes).  During week I kept trying to make suggestions to make the lintel business easier (moving the shower closer to the outside wall etc) until it was brought to my attention that the lintel was already in.

Loft LintelAnd yes, I think that is another vodka bottle!

Okay, so on to Week 4.  In week 3 I managed avoid photographing the enormous pile of rubble which had been produced from the demolition.  Even though they had saved quite a few bricks to reuse and we’re planning using some of the rubble to fill in the floor, there was a lot of rubble left.  So week 4 mainly consisted of clearing it all.

This photo wasn’t taken until Tuesday evening so you can imagine how much there was!  The needles and acrow-props have gone now too.

Rubble

There was a concrete bed outside the patio doors, I was told the mother of the previous owner (who lived at the house in the 80s) had a greenhouse on there at one point. Sounds a bit odd to put a greenhouse right outside a window but it is the sunniest part of the garden so maybe.  I didn’t want it to stay as I’ll have to have a patio outside the bi-fold doors and I don’t want too much of the garden concreted. This is what it looked like last April when I was building pallet fencing (don’t ask).

Green house base

and this is what it looks like now!

Greenhouse foundation gone

It looked like it was extracted with the aid of one of my trees 🙂 I think there is still a sling tied around it now. Here are the big slabs of concrete in the trailer.

Greenhouse base in trailer

By the site is at the end of the week the kitchen floor (quarry tiles on a cement and rubble base) had been broken up and the foundations had been dug.

How cool are my ten foot high ceilings?  I wish it could stay like that!

Foundations Dug

Foundations Dug 2

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