The whole house

Some slightly ropey photos today. Here is the whole rear of the house. You can see the full scale of the extension at the right of the house


Here you can see the front of the house. The window lintel isn't on yet, but should be up tomorrow.
Rob is now here full time bricking and Geoff has him working on the front and gable walls so the main roof can go on soon. We need Howard the structural engineer to work out whether the RSJ along the side of the house is up to the job if we go for a traditional roof (as Geoff suggests) rather than a modern truss job. The trusses would sit on the front and rear walls whereas a traditional roof will load the side walls as well. Once we know the loadings, RSJ sizes and cost comparison we'll decide which roof to go for and Geoff can order it straight away to put it up (hopefully) the week after next. Then we should see the glass going in and the extension made water tight (excluding the porch). Time to get the valuer back and get the next load of money! £12K left at the moment.

Next door have also got into the act with a dormer (and a similar side extension later on)....

Roof

The rear roof has been built now - you can see the outlines of the 3 Velux windows across the roof. Next step is the felt and batten (I believe), then the felt is cut to insert the Velux flashings, then the tiles, then the windows themselves


This is the new rear porch. Rob is having some fun building the pillars either side of the door as they are quite small. We may consider using a conservatory corner - with uPVC panels instead of bricks/blocks - we need to check if we can do it.


Geoff is back from holiday on Thursday. Time to talk about the time to get the main roof up and the windows in - then we get the valuer back and try and get some more money out of the bank. Also time to see if it's time to get the new boiler and tank installed. The new boiler is gas and nPower want £350 to do their bit of the gas supply, we'll need to excavate and run the rest of the pipe to the house and install the box, and nPower will fit the meter. Hopefully we can plumb the new boiler/tank into the existing rads and hot water supply then we can see about getting the old boiler and the oil tank removed.

Window lines

Here is the rear of the first floor. You can see the outline of the bathroom window on the left - we have lost about 3 courses of bricks at the bottom of it for the new roof. You can also the master bedroom window - this is now 7 inches wider at the left after we had the outer leaf of brick removed. You can also see the ground floor door/window opening with the CATNIC beam bricked in. Also on the left is the new opening from the extended rear porch into the house.


Plenty more beams waiting to be installed - These are for the first floor windows. I think there is still one more to come as we have the bathroom, master bedroom, en-suite and front bedroom windows.

This is the front elevation - the bedroom window is getting to lintel height.

Geoff is going to order the roof this week, so hopefully it will start going up next week sometime. Hoorah!

Busy(ish) week

Well, I was off work this week to help Sarah look after the kids. The builders have made steady if unspectacular progress this week. Lots of scaffolding and lots of labouring for Pete getting blocks and bricks up the scaffold for Rob to lay them.

The front and rear first floor walls have some definition now with openings for the windows - the one at the back looked huge at first. Also, The extension is tied into the house on top of the beams now so it looks like one house, not two (These were taken yesterday):

The beam for the rear windows/doors is sat on the brickwork and lets you see the size of the opening - although it looks quite low, Pete has 8 inches headroom, and he's 6'2".

This will be our dressing room (or spare bedroom) window. It is offset as the en-suite is tucked in the left hand corner.



The whole thing - you can see the en-suite window on the gable wall and the tying in at the front.

This was mid-day today:
There are two more courses of brick, a damproof membrane and a couple more courses of brick on top of the blockwork on the beams - more piccies tomorrow when it stops raining! The bedroom window has been boarded up as well now - it's like the black hole of Calcutta in there.

First Floor.....

Progress has been slow but steady this week after all. We have been waiting on the structural engineer so Geoff can set the new RSJs and link the outside wall (below) into the existing house. This was as of 5/8/07


This was the 6th:



And at the left hand side here you can see where the new wall needs tying into the existing house. The outside beam is about 6 inches higher than the inside beam which was a touch confusing and also the reason the pillar has a step and we need the engineer. Speaking to Geoff today, he explained that the outside beams are to plan - the joists sit inside the I profile of the beam. The inner beam is lower as the rearmost beam would protrude into the bedroom through the floor otherwise. If the outer beams were lower, the joists would need cutting to fit into the and the floor would be too low.

At least the front of the house is coming on! This is the bay window in the kids playroom. The lintel went in today. They have used blocks above as the small veranda roof (seen just right) will extend right across the bay hiding the blocks. On the extension it will also be a bit higher as the extension is set back 300 mm so to line the front edge up, the roof will go further back and hence further up the wall on the extension.



Fingers crossed the engineer comes tomorrow morning as agreed. Once he verbally okays the pillar for the internal beam, the first floor can go up apace. I'm hoping another week or 2 will see the brickwork for the first floor up and another couple of weeks should see the main roof on but I'm not sure about the single storey roof as it ties into the rear porch which is quite complicated with the two rear pitches being aligned, a turn and a conservatory style 45 degree chamfer for the rear door so the roof has a lot of angles.