After a nice relaxing week off, Dane and I headed over to Papworth on the Monday to a regular client we do work for.  Our first job was to find the issue that was causing damp on the utility floor.  There was a single piece of skirting that had started to go rotten, and after removing it we found a large area of damp in the screeded floor.  With the skirting off, I created a larger hole in the plasterboard in the boxed out stud wall and put my hand through to the soil down pipe to find trickles of water coming down the pipe.  The pipe had an en-suite and bathroom waste pipe work feeding into it, so it was just a case of finding out which room the leak was coming from, and then which piece of bathroom furniture was the cause.  Potentially we could of had ceilings down, floors up and created all sorts of havoc.  But after some clever detective work we found out that the bathroom shower was the culprit, and we only had to make an eight inch by eight inch opening in the plaster board.  The boss strap fitting onto the soil pipe hadn’t been fitted properly, and this in a house that was only three years old.  Builders!  We stopped the leak and made good our work.  You wouldn’t even know we had been there.  It was one of those things that we could have spent a lot of time, effort and expense trying to resolve, but the client was very happy the situation was all sorted, and even happier we only took half a day to put things right. 

Our next job was to paint four exterior dormer windows on the second floor of the property, about seven metres up in working height.  Because the windows were set back by about two metres from the facia, we couldn’t work from a ladder, so we had to hire an eight metre high double width alloy tower.  It can be all fun and games when you are five metres up trying to erect these things, and it was Danes first time putting one of the these towers together, and its fair to say he had a few squeaky bum moments!  It took two days to do the job, but it only took four hours to actually paint the four windows.  The rest of the time was taken up moving the tower about and taking it apart and then putting it back together so we could access the one window to the rear of the property.  Fortunately the excellent summer weather we are having was on our side.  It just rained over night and spent most of the day threatening to rain.  Just what you want when you are exterior painting!

We had a week’s holiday last week, but before that we were bringing the loft conversion works to a close.  Me and Dane’s first job of the week was to insulate the loft conversion, putting Cellotex insulation between and over the timbers.  We also called the Building Inspector out to sign this stage of works off and that’s when things nearly all went pear shaped?  The last Inspector we called out and signed off the works had subsequently left Building Control to go and work for Bovis Homes.  But he had left no notes on his file, so the new Inspector wasn’t happy with things and started to suggest alterations to things and also wanted new calculations for some of the structural work, although as far as we were concerned it had all been signed off and approved.  If things weren’t sorted asap it could have potentially held us up.  So after some frantic phone calls and negotiating by Dane (its handy havening an architect actually on the job) the issues were resolved and we were in a position where we could progress with the job.
 

On Tuesday we had Damo helping me and Dane to plaster board the loft conversion, while John and J the plasterers were on site plaster skimming the bedroom and corridor wall and the newly created opening.  The next day John and J were in the loft conversion plastering that room out, while Dane and I put all the facia, soffit and slate tiles back onto the kitchen roof area.  Thursday was a winding down day prior to our week’s holiday.  We worked through our snagging list of jobs and then set about clearing the site down of all rubbish, debris and left over materials.

This was our last and final week as the three amigos.  After three years of great service Stu is moving onto other things.  But before he left we had a full week of varied jobs to carry out on our Castor loft conversion.  Our first job of the week was to remove all the stone work from the new opening we were creating knocking through from the bedroom to the new loft conversion.  After the fun and games we had putting in the lintels this was even more fun and games, much like the game Kerplunk, one false move and the whole wall could come down!  Fortunately it didn’t end up like that, but it was a delicate job as we carefully took away stone after stone until we were happy everything was safe and we had our opening.  On Tuesday I spent the day putting up a new stud wall in the bedroom area creating a new corridor access to the loft, while Stu and Dane went about putting in the last of the structural A frame timbers, and much to ours and Danes relief, they fixed down some sheet floorboards.  No more putting feet through the kitchen ceiling for Dane!
 

The following day I was putting up some stud work walls in the loft area while Stu and Dane did the last of the bolting together of the A frame timbers.  On Thursday Stu then set about pointing up the stone work on the new opening, Dane was let loose on plaster boarding and insulating the newly formed bedroom stud work while I was erecting another stud wall  and door way in the loft for the boiler and water tank.  The last day of the week was spent by Stu and Dane re-felting and batoning the exposed roof area while I finished off a few snagging jobs inside.  Then come lunch time Stu downed tools for the last time and called it a day on his three years with Blueberry Property Services, and Dane, Stu and I headed off to the pub for a farewell lunch. 
 

Stu joined me just as the business was finding its feet and Stu has played a major part in making the business the success it is today.  We have learnt a lot together, had some struggles, had successes and had plenty of laughs.  In the last couple of years we have produced two extensions and a new build house to our names along with numerous other jobs and had many happy clients.  I wouldn’t change the last three years for anything and I can’t have asked for a more loyal, trust worthy and dedicated work colleague.  Cheers Stu.