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Work on the house

We did a bit of work on the house today. After a bit of shopping in the morning we got stuck in trying to finish of the bathroom wall. I put in a base plate to support the wall after pulling out the rotten pieces and the rotten floorboards. And all that is left is to try and secure in all the noggins in the floor as well as securing all the pieces of wood in the hall wall. Not much left to do, I think that we will meet the deadline for getting everything ready before the plumber is due to start

When the owners are away...

The mice will do a load of work!

That's how it has been today. After a weekend of slogging out plastering, grinding mortar and scraping bricks Peter and Dave got stuck in and opened up the chimney so that we can get a quote for installing a new fireplace, good news. Bad news, there appears to be no lintel or any releiving arch or brickwork so that may boost the price up a bit. Good news also is that the flashing on the side of the building is OK. Bad news is that all the gutters on the house are knackerd, well I kind of knew this already, I was just choosing to ignore the whole thing. Just another thing to add to the pile of things to get done. The fireplace has however been boosted up the priority list as it is starting to get a bit colder. I guess if we were sensible squirrels we wouldn't wait till winter is on the door step...

On the weekend Sarah and I had a go at sorting out the brick wall in the kitchen. We started off scraping out he mortar, but after a bit we decided to up the ante a load more. I got a cheap angle grinder from the hardware store and together with Sarah we attacked the mortar that was sitting on the bricks and also chasing out the top of the pointing. All I can say was that it was really dusty.  We put up a dust sheet in the hall, one of the old curtains, but it was as good as tits on a bull. The amount of fine black dust that came through and spread into the rest of the house was disturbing. It even ended up in the room in the attic!

Earlier in the day we took a break to go and support Julia in the Men's Health Challenge! 10km's of running with 10 obstacles to overcome, a bit of a army assault course. An amazing achievement and Jules finished the whole event.

Celebration for birthdays!

We went down to the pub to celebrate the recent birthdays. I will see how I feel tomorrow.

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A bit of house work for today

 So today we went to the house to try to finish off the floor. Sarah and I got an early start and got to work straight away. The main job for the day was the removal and replacement of the floor joists in the bathroom, also getting a few extra beams into the floor to take the extra weight of the larger bathtub.

We got stuck in opening up holes in the exterior wall to place the joists in, and not long after we had finished this Sarah's dad arrived on site to give us a hand. Not wanting to stand around we removed the second joists from the floor as I believed that the end had rotter away after sitting in the wall for over a 100 years covered in rubble form when the house was built. After cutting it down and ripping it from the ceiling it turned out that the beam was only slightly rotten on the top and we probably could have left it in place. Oh well, we had some spare joists and removing this second joist would let us install all the other ones easier.

The first beam went in not that easy. We were figuring out the trick to get the joist in so it took a bit longer than anticipated. After we got the second beam in the next couple, 3rd and 4th joists needed a good walloping from the hammer, or as i have started calling it, 'the persuader'. Giving the two beams a good whack got them into position and I was quite pleased with it as it was exactly how I had planned getting them in.





We had a break for lunch and decided that the final two joists would be an afternoon job. The plan was to get the beams and insert them in through the wall straight into the allocated place for them. 

 

This worked really well and it turned out that they were the easiest ones to get in place all day. If only I had brought home a Hilti from work then we would have been cheering all day!

After that I knocked a few noggins in place the sure up the floor and that left me and Sarah satisfied with a good day of work. All that is left to do is to bolt the joists together and try to get the new joists to match the amount of sag that the old ones have.

30th August 2012

We went to our house this afternoon to do a bit of DIY. Sarah got stuck in to wallpapering and I decided to hack off the back side of the bathroom wall, get rid of all the lath and plater in that section of the hallway. It was much easier to do this not worrying about mess, it piled up on the good carpet but then it was easy to shovel the mess away.

Yesterday the guys started on the underpinning of the house. The cut the concrete and started to knock down the outside toilet. By this afternoon the hole was dug and the area was ready to be filled with concrete. We will see what happens tomorrow when they get stuck back in.