It was just Dane and me this week as Stu was having a week’s holiday.  Miami, Melbourne, Monaco, who knows where Stu spends his time off!  Dane and I made our way back to our recent single storey extension to erect some decking and a pergola so the job would be finished off.  On Monday we set the posts into the ground with Postcrete and let them set over night.  We were putting in the posts as we were doing a raised decking.  On Tuesday and Wednesday we were putting in the joist hangers and the timber joists to form the base of the decking and we also made a start on fixing the decking timbers, and on Thursday we fixed the pergola joists into position and then fixed some roof sheeting into position on the Friday as we finished the job off.  It was a nice gentle easy job and week for Dane as we go through his transition from pen pusher to tradesman, or that’s the plan anyway!

We started where we left off last week by continuing to put in the new structural timbers and bolting them together. On Tuesday Dane finished off bolting the last of the timbers for now and then set about putting in all the timber noggins, while Stu and I went about putting in the second Velux window.  Wednesday was spent carrying out some investigation work into how we were going to knock through a 500mm thick stone wall right next to a chimney stack and through into the loft conversion area we were working in.  Once a plan of action had been put together we then fixed into position a new wall plate timber for the floorboards to fix to and then we put down a number of the new sheets of floor board.
 

Thursday was an entertaining day.  We had a very large Velux window to install into an area of existing roofing with a very steep pitch and we were working on top of a glass roofed lean too and then throw in the fact it was on and off with heavy showers during the day just to spice things up further.  The one and only scare of the day was the fact that I thought the window size I had ordered wasn’t actually going to fit into the area I wanted because it was too big.  After some discussion with Stu and Dane we revised our plans slightly and after all that worry the window went in a treat, and it really made a difference internally by flooding the landing and stairs with lots of natural light.
 

The last job of the week was to actually knock through the 500mm thick wall and get our five concrete lintels into position.  This was easier said than done and turned out to be one of the worst and trickiest openings we had done.  The opening was right next to the chimney stack, and after taking off the old plaster we exposed a load of brick work that was all over the place.  Some of it was tied into the stack, some tied into the wall and some just sat on the stone.  To create our opening so we could slide in our lintels was more akin to a game of Kerplunk!  One false move and we could have had the whole lot down.  By the end of the day we had the five lintels in and pointed up with cement, but we decided it was best to let them settle and do the actual knocking through at a later date.  It had certainly been a squeaky bum day!

We had a new member to add to the team this week, his name being Dane.  Unfortunately Stu will be moving onto bigger and better things in the near future so Dane who is an architect by trade has joined forces with me.  But for the month of July the three amigos will be getting on with a loft conversion in Castor on the out skirts of Peterborough, work that we received via new amigo Dane.

On Monday we did our usual on the start of a new job, especially being a refurb job, and we made up a shopping list of materials and then went for a ride about town to get them.  We also had the toilet, skip, roof ladder and alloy tower delivered to site.  The following day we had a delivery of timber form Jewson and then we set about stripping out the loft area which was a lovely job on a nice hot day.  We also removed the facia and soffit and stripped back several courses of the slate tiles so as to give us access for passing through the new structural timbers.  We then made a start on getting some of the new floor timbers into position.  The rest of the week was made up of putting in the new structural A frame timbers and bolting and screwing them to the existing timbers.  Although the hot spell of weather we were enjoying was nice, it is not so nice when you are in a loft space.  It was like a sauna up there and poor old Dane who is used to an office environment was finding the going a bit tough.  He was sweating buckets!  We also installed one of two new Conservation style Velux windows.

I couldn’t finish this week’s blog without a special mention to the new amigo Dane.  Stu and I have worked together for three years and never had any major incidents while working on the job.  Dane had only been on the job for three days when he nearly disappeared through the kitchen ceiling to the floor below!  Fortunately he only got as far as putting his foot through the ceiling, but it still shook him up, much to Stu and mines amusement!  He was also fortunate that he didn’t too much damage to the tongue and groove kitchen ceiling which we put right later in the week.  So Dane’s first week on the job went well and hopefully he learnt a few lessons, some harder than others!

This week Stu and I were over in Northampton doing some block paving and putting up some replacement facia and soffit.  We had some scaffolding erected at the end of the previous week and our first job on the Monday was to take down all the old facia and soffit and when that was done we set about putting together a shopping list for all the materials we would need.  We decided to do a half day and pick up all the materials on our way home back to Peterborough.  On Tuesday morning we had to put in some additional timbers to take the new facia and soffit and in the afternoon we set about fixing the new facia and soffit into position.  The following day Stu remained up on the scaffold to apply all of the finishing touches to the facia and put back the guttering.  I chose to dig out the earth for the new block paving which we were putting in so as to provide a new parking bay.  In the cooler morning weather the thought of a day’s hand digging didn’t seem too bad, especially as I only had to dig out an area of around 10 sq metres.  Come middle afternoon when the sun was beating down and the temperature was in the high 20’s and I had dug about three tonnes of earth and was quickly running out of energy, my decision to hand dig didn’t seem such a good one after all.
 

Thursday was the start to a new day and after a good night’s rest I had the remaining earth out and the skip pretty much filled.  Stu had finished the facia and soffit and we both got on with putting down a six inch layer of hardcore in the base of the paving area, and then Stu ran over the area with a whacker plate to compact it down.  Next we put down a two inch layer of sharp sand which we levelled off ready to start laying the block paving.  We then layed the majority of the block paving so that we just had the edges to finish off on the Friday.  By lunch time we had all the cuts put in and the edges finished off.  We filled in all the holes with some kiln sand and then Stu finished things off with a few more runs with the whacker to settle everything into position.