Wednesday 27 April 2011

2nd stage reached

That's second stage reached, wind and watertight. No front window/door though as we need to get things in and out so that will be a while.

Saturday 23 April 2011

update

The house doesn't look much different since the last photo although a lot of work has been going on.
All the veluxes are in, the membrane is on and now the soffits and fascias are going up. The front is done and the back is nearly there, the dormers have to be completed too.
Once that is done we leave the house to dry out while we wait for the next inspection as 'wind and watertight' for the second stage of the mortgage.
We have a lot of planning to do for the next stages and we will need to get quotes for the electrical work and the blockwork. We also need to order the slate for the roof. The plan being that the blockwork and slates get done while the weather is reasonable.
Inbetween all this Iain has a job to do and is away for 4 days again at the beginning of May and we have a wedding to attend.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Foundations and soffits

After the membrane was put on the back of the roof Iain had to go away to a couple of meetings and while he was away he left me with the task of painting the soffits & fascias. We decided on a colour with preservation primer to be put on first. I put 2 coats of primer on the soffits (with a 3 hour gap between coats), then the next day went to sand them down but they were still wet (supposed to dry in 16 to 24 hours)
Anyway they were still wet when Iain got home, we think the temperature was too cold (below 10 C).

We had 2 friends coming to visit for a week (staying in the village) and they said they would help, so it was decided that the most difficult task we had for just 2 of us was the concrete foundation.
Concrete cannot be poured if the temperature/weather is under 4C, we made the decision with this in mind to go ahead and put the kit up with just hardcore foundations and we would do the concrete when the weather improved.
When Dave & Jill arrived we said we would like to do the concreting if that was okay and they agreed (none of us knew what we were letting ourselves in for).
Sunday was spent clearing the house out, all the soffits (now dry), fascias, tools, various planks of wood was all put upstairs.
Monday we started with the utility room, which gave us an idea of the scale of the job (not really, but we were kinda hopeful).
Tuesday we started the kitchen/dining room and realised how long it was going to take (already guessed at 10 hours) Iain went and borrowed the neighbours cement mixer, so we now had 2 cement mixers, it took 88 loads of concrete to do the room and we started at about 11am, took a break waiting for the rest of the cement to arrive and finished at 7pm.
Wednesday we had a day off and went into Inverness for lunch, shopping and tea.
Thursday we did the study and bathroom (all one room at the moment) which took 84 loads and not as long timewise. Then Iain, Dave and Jill prepared the living room for the ready mix which was coming on Friday morning, while I cooked tea. Each room had to have sand laid, wacked, damp proof membrane then rebar.
Friday the ready mix arrived and as it couldn't be put directly in the room from the concrete wagon, Iain had to transport it load by load in the digger bucket while the 3 of us tried to spread it across the room. 3.7 cube of concrete in 55 minutes!!!

Amazingly Dave and Jill are still our friends and our house now has concrete foundations :-)