Maybe 7/8 finished outside project?

Left it last time with the roof boards on, but nothing covering them.

Since then the roof has been covered in felt, with an extra layer covering the roof's ridge.

Also did the barge boards at the front of the roof, and the soffits at the edges. Bit of a lick of black paint too. I need to work out the colour for the inside (probably just that wall with the window in it, to be honest). The black is in danger of it looking dingy in there.

Also extended the floor a bit - got an extra 2 foot, which is probably 30% extra area or so. This is part of the missing 1/8th. The floor needs tiling to make a moppable surface, and the wooden piece needs painting with decking paint for the same reason.

 In the above pic you can see the range of cooking devices. There's a Weber kettle (57cm version), a Weber Spirit gas grill, and a wok burner. Wok burner works for fajitas and so on in a cast iron skillet too.

The boy being put to work - hot soapy water the thing here.

And the gas grill too....

That's it until next time. It needs guttering and a few more finishing touches. Then I can get to kitting it out. Fancy a bit of a worktop in there. Perhaps a sink, and definitely a fridge. Electrics required then....

More half-finished outside projects

There has been a bit of progress inside the house, but I haven't taken any photos, and we've not actually finished anything. The dining room is the closest, it's one glass shelf, and a door hang away from being done (although a couple of radiator covers would also work well). Anyway, it's not done, and I've not photographed it so....

On the last post, I showed a picture of one of the concrete pads. This is at the back of the outbuilding at the left hand side of the house. You can make it out on the extreme left of this photo:

As before, the barbecue gear was on the pad and was working nicely, albeit in a bit of a scruffy kind of a way.

We got into the outside cooking thing a bit more over the summer. I bought a wok-burner, and a couple of cast iron pans and made fajitas, something that is verboten indoors (smell, grease etc. bah...). So this, combined with a "can't be bothered to put the BBQ stuff away" led to "why don't we put a roof up over this area and see about using it year round?"

So, dug some holes:

Made up the beginnings of some supports:

You're probably wondering why so short. Well, I didn't know at this point exactly how high the roof was going to be. I'd sort of vacillated between a sort of lean to effort, and a fully pitched roof, so this was me not really committing. You can see from the rafter set in the background that I had decided by this point.

Next was to get the main frame up.

You can see now the design of the supports and why they're made of 2 6x2 pieces, rather than 1 6x4

The pitch is very close to the original outbuilding roof. I've bolted the back supports to the outbuilding wall using resin anchor bolts.

Now it's a question of getting the other rafters up and getting the roof covered.

Like so.

Should be OK in here....

This is where we are today. The roof covering will start as felt (budget constraints), but it's steep enough and strong enough to be tiled later if we need. Maybe cedar shingles... dunno...

Still lots to do to smarten it up and finish it. But it's taking shape, and with the felt on at least we don't have to put the barbecue gear away!

Odds and ends

We've made a bit of progress here and there, but have been remiss about taking pictures!

Here's a few random ones to show we're still alive.

Here's the family in the snow in the garden - it's still snowing in this pic - we had about 8 inches in all.

Here are the kids on the Dakota fire pit that I've made in the garden (if you don't know what one is, you can find out here.

The above has some house progress in it - warming gloves by the log burner! You can see the granite hearth that's now in. This is the sitting room (see previous post)

This is the view up the garden in the spring. You can see that the trees haven't got all their leaves yet.

And this brings us up to date - this is one of the concrete pads from this year's outside projects. I'll build a lean to over the barbecues - saves messing about with covers for them, and dragging them in and out of the stables at the end of the garden. And we can barbecue anytime!

The Hokey Cokey

We had a bit of bad news recently. Recalling that the fireplace started like this:

Was demolished, and put back together like this (note sturdy wooden lintel):

Was plasterboarded, plastered and decorated to look like this:

Then we had the man around to quote for putting the planned log burning stove in. 

"Can't do that", he said to my wife. 

"What?" said she.

"I can see a wooden lintel in there - they change the regs last year. And you can't have that plasterboard there either."

"Eh? That plasterboards the fireproof stuff - look, it's pink"

"Doesn't matter - can't be there. And if you want that wooden lintel, the stove would need to be tiny - there's minimum distance it can be from the top of the stove"

"Balls".

Hence the Hokey Cokey. Not in celebration - but with lintels.

Having put yer wooden lintel in, take your wooden lintel out: 

Concrete one in, out, in out (it wasn't the same size at the wooden one, and wasn't going in without some more surgery on the hole) ... anyway, you get the picture.

Of course, this necessitated another visit from our friendly plasterers (and we got the floor in too):

And this is how the fireplace is today:

It's a clearview stove - very controllable, and very warm. It's sitting on a couple of pieces of black-ish granite (one at the back, in the chimney opening, and one going across the front). And that's where we are now!

Front of house

We got new gates. So front of house has gone from:

Through:

To:

Sitting Room (again)

The sitting room has been subject to something of a blitz. I often get asked 'why don't you just do one room at a time - surely the rooms don't take that long?' Well. We started from here (this post inevitably repeats earlier ones):

The fireplace:

The double aspect room. The curtains are doing a fine job of shielding the paintwork on the shutters which is so yellow that it's getting on for brown...

Smash the place up:

Fireplace and glorious 70's lighting effects out:

Supporting beam for fireplace in:

 Room cleared and ready for plasterboards, holes cut for first fix electrics:

Plasterboards up over fireplace, also hearth cast in concrete:

More first fix electrics and data points for CAT5E:

Random 'floor up' pic:

This bit I didn't do - lack the skills - but plasterers in, and plaster on walls:

You can really see the browness of the wood work in the above pics. We've also now taken out the old electrics and filled the holes in the skirting boards where the plug sockets used to be.

Starting to paint, but find damp patches on the wall. This is what you get with old houses - surprises. Often unwelcome.

That damp patch corresponds to the chimney on the other side of the house, so exploratory work starts. The little circle of filler in the pic one above this one is where I drilled through the wall. Duh.

Another brown woodwork pic above.

First coats on:

 Picture rail up, sockets on walls. These three pics are where we are now: