On Monday Stu and I had a day laying the footing trench blocks on the extension job, before moving on and starting a bathroom refurbishment job on the Tuesday.  Our first job was to strip out the existing bathroom furniture and to take up, and replace, the floor board that had seen better days.  While the floorboards were up, Stu ran in some new pipe work and moved some other pipes about.  On Wednesday we put in a new stud wall, put the bath together and fitted it into position and tiled the floor area.

While Stu plumbed in the bath on Thursday morning, I put the taps and waste onto the sink ready for its installation.  I then plumbed in and fitted the toilet while Stu set about getting a new radiator and towel radiator ready for them to be fitted.  Friday was a fun day all round.  Stu had to plumb in a new shower with a new shower pump unit, which doesn’t sound too bad, but when there is a big large hot water cylinder in the way in an airing cupboard space it makes things that little bit harder.  So while Stu was doing his best contortionist moves, I was fitting a product called Mermaid board (decorative bathroom panels) around the bath.  Come late afternoon I had all the boards fixed into place and Stu was nearing the end of his shower fitting.  He got all the pipe work completed to the back of the shower, then we got the shower unit fitted to the front and tested it for any possible leaks which there wasn’t.  It turned out to be a long day, which we don’t need on a Friday, but we had got everything done we had planned to do for the week.  So we were on track to be all finished off by Tuesday of the following week.

We were back on site on Monday morning with a full day’s hand digging in the trenches to look forward to.  Last week the Building Inspector wasn’t happy with the depth of the footings so we had to go down another metre.  We made a start the previous Thursday, but the weather was against us on the Friday.  The weather was good, blue skies and sunshine. By mid afternoon we had broken the back of the digging, and we had found the bottom of the existing footings and started to level the trench out.  Tuesday morning we called out the Building Inspector once again to take another look at the footings.  While we waited we tidied up the trench and made it look presentable.  Late morning the Inspector duly arrived and passed off the footings straight away.  Two days of labour intensive digging all for a sixty second site visit and a yes!
 

I had provisionally booked in the concrete delivery for Wednesday earlier in the week, so we were all systems go to fill the trench with concrete.  Stu was on mechanical dumper duty, having the concrete poured into his bucket and then driving to the rear of the property and tipping the concrete into the trench.  I was on rake duty, very technical.  I had to try and push the concrete around the trench to keep it level and even as it filled up.  Which doesn’t sound too difficult, but bearing in mind it was nice and sunny, I still had my thermals on and we had 12 meters of concrete delivered, which meant the sweat was pouring off me and my arms felt like Popeye’s, even if they didn’t look like them!  As we got near the end of the load, Stu was on and off his dumper helping me out.  After about three hours of filling we had the trench filled and all levelled off, job done.
 

Thursday was about clearing the site of all the excess earth we had.  Stu was back on his dumper and I was on the digger and by the end of the day we had filled two large 8 yard skips with about 14 tonnes of earth.  That was that stage completed, next stage is the block and beam floor.

Two weeks ago we were meant to be starting on a bathroom refurbishment in Sawtry, Cambridgeshire.  The client had purchased all the bathroom furniture and units, so we were just going to replace like for like with some additional tiling to be donw.  Unfortunately they had also bought some bathroom decor panels which their primary use is for shower areas, but the client thought they could be used around a bath.  This was not the case.  So we were now in a position where it was extremely difficult to carry out the refurb without these panels or at least having a viable second option.  The client decided they wanted to continue with the decor panels, but they would have to order some similar panels which would work around a bath.  The earliest these could be delivered was the following week.  So Stu and I were in a position through no fault of our own where we now had no work for the week, plus it was going to spoil our plans for starting an extension the following week.  Fortunately the extension we were due to start on was also in Sawtry.  So after a few phone calls and some re-arranging we managed to make a start at our extension job, with our first job being to dismantle and dispose of the existing conservatory that the extension was going to replace.  This only took us a day, and there was little else we could do until the following week when the plant machinery arrived, so we ended up having to take Thursday and Friday off.

On Monday we were able to start on the extension work proper.  Our first job was to dig up the conservatory foundations.  The digger and dumper duly arrived during the morning, so Stu and I set about filling the skip with the conservatory’s foundations.  Once the skip was full, we couldn’t do any more until a fresh skip arrived the following morning.  The next day we measured up and set out the footings.  The skip was exchanged and we made a start digging out the footings.  The only problem was that we were filling the skips quicker than the skip company could change them over.  The skip was due to be exchanged on the Wednesday, but the skip company could not do this until late afternoon so we ended up losing a day as we had no new skip to fill.  We were back in business on Thursday and were going to have the trench dug out.  I called the Building Inspector out to have the footings checked off and had the concrete provisionally booked for a pm delivery.  Everything was in place and ready to go.  That was until the Building Inspector decided he wasn’t happy with the depth of the footings and wanted us to dig down further.  You can’t have the footings signed off until they are virtually finished, by which time there is not much chance of getting the digger back into position if you do need to go down deeper, which we did.  So this meant we had to dig out the remainder by hand.  We had to go another metre down and we had twelve metres of trench to dig.  Roughly, we were going to have to dig out nearly six tonnes of earth by hand (actually with shovels, but you know what I mean).  Great!!  We had no option but to get started.  The weather reports were not looking good for Friday with heavy rain forecast, so Stu and I thought it was best to give Friday a miss and look forward to more hand digging on the Monday!

This week was one of our easier weeks.  On Monday and Tuesday we finished up at Northampton by hanging the last of the doors, fixing all the architrave and skirting and putting in a new loft hatch.  After that we had a good tidy up and we were all finished, for now.  We have a new front door to go back and fit in a few weeks time.
 

On Wednesday and Thursday we were doing some repair work to a roof in Peterborough and fitting some new facia and guttering, and then we had a long weekend by having the Friday off.  Next week we will be starting on a bathroom refurbishment in Sawtry, with a single storey extension lined up after that.  So we have the work coming in to keep us busy.