billdersbum's Diaryland Diary
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1st Sept
Quite a lot has happened since I was last here.
Last Saturday (25th) the concrete for the studio floor tunred up nice and early
L and Pete were in charge of tipping and barrowing
And Lee in charge of raking and shouting at Pete and L
A moment of panic as we realised that the plastic cable ducting was starting to float in the concrete. Spare concrete blocks were used as counterweights throughout – disaster averted!
Despite the risk of concrete burn, shirts were stripped off
Trev turned up just in time to supervise (aka ‘watch’) the tamping
A perfect finish. Lovely!
Once Graham had finished the electrics (Sunday), Sam and Trev turned up to help with removing the old gas supply pipes. (Gas was reconnected Saturday afternoon. Yay!)
Then Trev starts to take of “just a few” of the tiles at the front of the old garage. Just to see what’s underneath, obviously, not to wreck the whole house….
Half an hour later and Sam’s joined in. So then it looked like this
Once they’d finished ripping off the felt they found this – a huge and very heavy timber structure.
As its not needed for the final construction, and was mostly held up by fresh air (!), that had to go too.
L and Trev made a start
Then realised they needed more muscle. Sam, Graham and I pitched in to help. Trev and L formed themselves into a specialist removal team, known as The Gung-Ho Brothers and began hitting bits of timber very hard with big hammers. With my momentarily superior knowledge of the laws of physics, I realised that this would very quickly result in several people falling off ladders and being crushed by falling rafters. I insisted they stop and make a proper Plan of Action. Unbelievably, just as we had finally dislodged the bloody thing and were all balancing on top of wobbly ladders with two ton of timber in our hands, L starts moaning that I should stop helping and should go get the camera because we haven’t got any photos of the ‘grand removal of the fucking heavy bit of timber’. Needless to say, everyone except L started yelling “You ARE fucking JOKING!?!”, especially as I was the only one supporting the very centre of the fucking heavy bit of timber.
So we had to go photo-less until we got the damn thing down to ground level
With the timber removed, we could get a clearer view of the ceiling.
On Tuesday morning, the bricklayers came back from their holidays and started again on the front of the studio
Whilst Sam, Trev and L made a start on the ceiling
Once the ceiling was gone, we could see huge roof voids which we didn’t know we had – ideal storage spaces or possibly where we can fit all the aircon ducting. Anyway, a bit of a result as its given us loads of extra space
The joists are all pathetically inadequate and will all have to be replaced
Which gave L the excuse to put up a scaffold tower and rip all the old ones out. The blockwork ‘cube’ you can see is Eldest Daughter’s bedroom.
So. This is where we’re up to now.
Everything’s still covered in dust and mud and dirt. The front garden looks like a builders yard.
But we’re getting there!
Bill
1:34 p.m. - 2007-09-01
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