and today i have mostly been...

[steve_earwig]

Yeah, 'tis a bit too quiet

I'm about, popping in when I get a spare 5 minutes and feeling like Billy No Mates...

I've been a bit diy'ey of late, yesterday I cut the shelves for me pantry and I was just about to paint them white (to make use of the available light) when t'wife said she didn't want them white - whuh? Yellow, she wants them yellow. Yellow? I already bought the paint and now I have to paint them yellow. Why yellow? What sort of colour is yellow? Miloš said he'd just varnish them, and I guess they did look quite nice dark wood, and I just happened to have an almost full tin of varnish...

It's a bit dark in there but at least it's not yellow

I also spent some of this morning playing "pass the parcel" with breeze blocks. If you remember most of them got put on the flat roof of the boiler house but we weren't sure how strong the roof was, so 2 pallets of breeze blocks stayed on the ground. Well, Miloš had used everything from the roof yesterday, so I was passing them up to Miloš on the ladder, who pased them up to his mrs. who was stacking them, then he was passing them in through the window while his mrs. and me was stacking them inside.

Looks right weird up there with walls

[steve_earwig]

I have a Teatime on my lap so I'm a bit restricted here...

Brackets, all finished and painted

I started having them off to paint them outside but then it started raining and didn't seem like stopping, so they were painted in situ (with bonus splashes on the wall...)

Shelves fitted and varnished:

And we might get to use them this month, if the varnish would hurry up and dry...

Meanwhile:

Where'd the f*ck that wall come from?


From the bigger bedroom at the front looking towards the bathroom at the back.


The man himself, working on the bathroom.

One of the jobs I had to do was extent the existing loft wiring out of his way. There were just a couple of inches appearing out of the floor but I never could find the other end. Until...

What's that lump in the corner? A big hole with a tiny lid, right in the corner. Inside was the answer to many mysteries:

Like where all the cable runs meet up That's my block btw. All nice 2.5mm feeds into the loft, the switch feed (which is conveniently* plastered into the wall) and the power feeds for the loft and shed. Sadly the whole lot is fed off a 1.0mm feed from the fuse panel. I'm surprised that hadn't melted So now all there is is the light feed, which I've now been able to move out of the way. Stuff power in the loft and shed, for those there are extension leads (for now.)

And finally, for this evening's tour (because we've been out all afternoon and left Miloš to finish and lock up):

From half-way up the stairs:


Behind the front bedroom wall towards the front of the house:

(those are all the phone lines for us and our neighbours in that box...)

Top of the stairs looking across the house to the storage at the end (turn right at the end for the inverters and batteries):


First on the right, the front bedroom (looking towards the balcony):


From the front bedroom looking towards the bathroom at the back:


From the bathroom into the back bedroom:


Wot, no wall? Well, not yet as the window needs changing.

and from the bedroom looking into the bathroom:


Same spot, now looking towards the stairs:


And looking down the stairs:


It feels really weird, like having a house built inside our house

[GingerMagic]

Looks good, and its the first time I have seen blocks being used in a loft.

I always find a single chair in an otherwise empty room just a little bit disconcerting.....

[benczuk]

I would have gone with yellow...

Why blocks not studs?

[steve_earwig]

It could have been either but around the bathroom would have to be blocks so it would've been a mix. I tend to think of walls made of blocks and partitions made with studding and plasterboard, they always seem a bit flimsy to me, but there's probably not much difference all told.

[Doggy]

Looks impressive.

How much does that lot weigh?

[steve_earwig]

Ah, now I have a script for when people try to start me thinking in that direction.

Here it is, ahem:

Not as much as the old roof.

Ok? So this constant urge I have to run outside screaming "the structure cannae take it!" is purely irrational and would be best ignored.

[GingerMagic]

I'm sure it will be fine - if anything comes down then hide under the staircase where is safe.... oh wait

Today, I had my second 'scare' when delivering building materials...... First scare is here - viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22342

I have been to this site many times before with no problems apart from stupidly low phone cables, but I normally park elsewhere so I can get the stabilizer legs out. Unfortunately today there was a mahoosive hole in 'my' spot so I had to park by the hedge and hope I could reach over the fence.

Well, I found a lovely spot where there was a gap in the hedge to extend my leg and all was going swimmingly ( cables excepted ) and just as the timber delivery was over their harris fencing there was a very slow - even graceful - drop of the timber onto the fencing which then beat it to pieces.

Luckily no-one was near the timber, which is the main thing, but it turns out I found a ditch which was substantially* covered with earth and the lorry leg sunk into it..


The leg as you can see has dropped a bit - it should be about 4' from the ground to the beam but only 2' was showing...


If you look closely in the picture you can just see the yellow rope which is the handle of the foot-plate - it is on edge in the hole - and its an 18" square block..!!


So, as this is a relatively new lorry it is a bit health and safety mad, so as soon as the lorry tilts a bit then the crane cuts out - so how do I get the crane back in then..!! I managed to move it for about 2 seconds when the crane finished its hissy fit - which is about a 30 second cycle - I was there for quite some time. I eventually got the timber on the pavement and then had to boom the crane downwards to lift the back of the lorry off the floor to get the leg out of the ditch.

All good now though, we bent the fencing back into shape and the ditch has been filled with some old bricks.....

[Welly]

Oo-err ginge seams you just missed the solid* pavement with the footpad thing. Did you have to tell anyone back at base?

Wiggy - that roof space is cool, like another property upstairs

Are you able to extend the window there to full height? would be a nice feature affording views of the garden etc:

[steve_earwig]

A definite "ohhh shiiiiiiiiiiiit!" moment there

Welly - It would be nice to make the window bigger yes, however I'm concerned that it would change how it looks on the outside too much - it's not the planning permission that's the problem (especially if the house looks no different from the outside, with no extra windows looking over other people's property) but we would get hit with bigger rates for the extra rooms. The window is actually between the two rooms, bedroom and bathroom, so it would be nice to stretch the bedroom window but there's only a foot or so before it hits the eves - a lot of work (including having to remake the facade) for not much gain.

[Welly]

I see you put your foot down re: Yellow but be careful; something else Yellow will need to be welcomed into the house to balance this lack of yellowiness. Keep an eye out over the next few days, be wary and keep your ear to the ground/sleep with one eye open that sort of thing.

Keep safe my friend

[steve_earwig]

I can't think of anything else that could be yellow, we already have a silly yellow car (well, ok, glod).

I finally figured out how to get cold water into the new bathroom upstairs. A few years back t'wife had me fit one of these daft bathroom/sink units. I had to change the plumbing for the tap from on the wall over the sink to underneath. There was also a cock I had to blank off because it wouldn't have looked good poking through a mirror and I really didn't fancy chasing the pipe all the way down the wall to fit another (wishing I had now - the only other one is in the manhole outside). I couldn't remember what it looked like before so I had a look in my archives and, as usual, I've taken lots* of pictures... well, ok, just the one:

but it speaks volumes.

I couldn't tell how much higher up the wall the pipe turns left, I dug a bit out but according to my metal detector, the pipe carried on up until it reached the ionosphere. So I gave up.

Today I've had it all out again and it turns out the pipe turns left just above the point where I gave up. So I've carried on up the wall and through the ceiling

and the pipe comes through the floor nicely in the corner by the chimney.

Note the upstairs floor, it's insulated with 5cm of polystyrene and 5cm concrete over that. Obviously this is now redundant but it gives me plenty of room to run the plumbing.

Obviously any plans I had to fit a cock further up are out. If this wasn't all steel I could pull the unit out, make a hole in the wall behind it and stick my cock in there but there's little chance of finding a convenient join anywhere nearby.

I did take a couple of pics of that window for Welly but I'd just been having a go cutting the floor with Miloš's diamond bladed disk cutter, it cuts through the concrete like a hot knife but, by christ, does it get dusty! So you'll have to excuse the fog:

[Welly]

See what you mean about the windah probably not that much to gain without major work really.

You say the insulation layer is redundant but I'd say it's still a benefit to separate the two floors, that's a point what are your heating 'solutions' gonna be up there?

[steve_earwig]

Well, maybe not redundant, as such, but I won't regret cutting holes in it as there's far better insulation in the roof itself.

Heating solutions? Umm, see in the last pic, below the lhs of the window right in the corner on the floor? That's a loop from the c/h with an air ejector on it. The c/h pipes go through the house with pipes running down to the radiators and usually pipes running up to one of there. For some reason this house has 3 of them - I'm not sure why as usually it's just the one (my house just has one in the corner of the loft). Possibly from when this house was planned as a 2-storey? They seem quite fortuitous anyway as it'll just be cut pipes, add thread and stick a radiator on the end.

Which reminds me, I have a tool for cutting pipe threads but it's massive, I need to bring it here and see if I've got enough clearance to use it. Otherwise I'll have to get a real plumber in who can weld this crap

[Doggy]

Maybe you could set up your big* tool outside and do your screwing al fresco?

Remember - measure twice / screw once.