Having A Rest

It's been quiet on the blog recently. The weather has put the shutters on the work for any length of time because it has been so cold. We have managed to do some more bricking and have finished sticking the bricks around the garage plinth ready for pointing.

Thanks to Gramps who noticed that in our first section of bricking the bond was wrong. The lines of mortar join up on the left hand side of the picture which they shouldn't do. If this was a 'real' brick wall it wouldn't be very structurally sound. So, Dad was the Bad Cop and broke the news last week. Darran took it quite well in the end, realising that he had been thinking about the brick system as a jigsaw puzzle rather than a brick layer building a brick wall. And from then on it has gone a lot better....we hope, unless you've spotted anything else Gramps?!!

We haven't worked on the house physically since Christmas, we decided we needed a break. Darran has been researching the electrics and plumbing and seems to have got on well there.

For now though, wishing everyone a Happy New Year and thanks for your interest this year. Much more to come next year.

Underfloor Heating And Screed

Right. We're back. It's been a bit quiet recently and that's because we have been sorting out the underfloor heating and putting down the floor screed.

The underfloor heating went pretty much without a hitch. We didn't have quite enough pipe for the ensuite, thought we could join in the wall, but then decided to rip the pipe up and put some more down that would make one continuous loop (each room needs to be on it's own loop or 'zone' to those of you who are underfloor heating geeks!).

I found putting the pipe down had really good comedy value, but as it was pointed out I wasn't the one holding the reel and trying to twist is around the corners. We nearly had the slinky effect once when Darran let go trying to lean the reel against the wall, but we rescued it at the last minute. It went down a lot quicker than we thought and we're pleased with the result.

We put the screed down last week. Darran did really well as he hadn't done screed before, and a huge thank you to Dad for driving the truck back and forth to the readymix plant to get the screed, I think we now owe him a chiropractor appointment!

We only have the front bedroom and some of the hall left to do and are hoping to take a day off over the next couple of weeks to finish it. The aim is to get all the screed down before the 13th November which is when the windows and doors are delivered so we're not shovelling screed over new frames.

We have also confirmed and placed the order for the Eurobrick system which should be ready for delivery the week of the 16th November so that will give us something to do over Christmas - temperature permitting.

We're now on to finalising plumbing and electrics, ready for the next stage as if it's not the weather for sticking bricks we can be doing something inside.

Roofing (with Mother In Law!)

Site took on a different atmosphere today; Darran not only had me as a helper (well, more of a sitter and supervisor today), but Mum too. It was apparent that a 'mummy' was on site as a pot of Carex hand wash and hand towel appeared at the stand pipe.

Mum was up on the scaffold with Darran painting the rafter feet (the ends) in Weathershield paint. She was soon promoted to helping to stand the trusses which was a great help.

(Getting instructions - above!)

They got on really well, and we now have a roof that is almost finished.

(The black bits you can see here are the rafter feet that Mum painted.)

It's hard to get the true feel of it as all the scaffolding is still in place. There are still the hip-ends to finish (where the roof slopes down to the end wall) and ply to put around the bottom of the trusses to aid the roofers, who should start next week.