I've got wood!

You might remember the sort of wood-sticking-out-of-the-ground thing I had going on from the last bit of concreting. Looked like this:

And then I started to make the actual decking. Given the overall haphazard nature of using oak sleepers cut in half and chucked in some holes and pouring in concrete, getting everything square and level was going to be a bit of a faff. That car jack you can see in the below is actually a precision lifting device, enabling very accurate setting of level:

Basically I worked out that making a square of the timber that I was using, and then making all the joists meet that, rather than trying to do it the other way around was the way forward:

And this is where we are today - there is actually bits of decking on top of the frame!

The timber is all treated, an as it's above the ground, it shouldn't rot from underneath, but the sun will really go to town on the topside. In any case, my assistant put a coat of preservative covering on the underside:

There's a fair bit more to do on the decking, but I'm pretty pleased that we are where we are with it - at least there's no more lugging of heavy timber about (joists are 8 x 2's at 4.8m long). The adding the decking on top is a bit monotonous though.

The kids zip wire thing is coming on. It also started as a few bits of oak sleeper sticking out of the ground:

The above is the 'landing zone'. Or the 'other end' of the zip wire. The launching pad is the bits of wood sticking out of the ground to the left of the jetty:

Making the landing zone. In my last post, I showed this pic:

Which is the cross beam for the zip wire. The wire goes through the middle of the beam, and it's this that holds the whole lot up. The two things bolted to the back are where the diagonal supports will go from. They'll go from there down to the the bits of oak sticking out of the ground. Of course, it's very heavy, so trying to lug it up to about 2.6M height would be pretty hard. So a bit of ingenuity and a crappy old Jeep Cherokee, plus a willing father-in-law gives us:

 And with the various bits cut off etc. The arch is supposed to be sort of lopsided - it is a design feature - honest:

The launch pad is basically a 3 storey tower. It's about 4m from ground height. This is it going up: The bracing is necessary to stop it wobbling all over the place:

The floors are 4x2's with decking on top.

Here it is with the actual wire attached to the tree- you should be able to make out the line a further 2m higher than the platform itself.

 And down it goes to the landing zone:

There's a load more work to do on the safety railing, and the recovery system for the zip wire trolley. That yellow cord you can see will recover it back to the platform, but it's a not very elegant solution. It's also the case the zip wire is very fast. A better recovery system will involve some more pulleys which will hopefully add a little bit of a braking effect.

I've bought a few tools along the way which enables me to make this stuff. Here's a little view of the (one of) the workshops:

I've also started to accumulate the necessary materials for the new outside office:

So, still plenty more work to go....

Doing stuff outside....

We left last time with the chimney issues. We needed to get on with that, so off we went:

One down....

Onto the next one....

Finished article. Well, not exactly finished - a decent coat of paint etc....

We also decided that we needed a garden wall. There was a fence, but our intention was always to change the way the house was accessed - the garden gate was just on the road, meaning that people stopped on the road and chewed up the verge. And it was a bit dangerous too.

So the house used to look something like this:

Which doesn't look so bad, I suppose. Other than the pics are estate agents ones, taken on a fine day in May.

Now we've demolished the fence, and put in the footings for the new garden wall. The chimneys have gone, and you'll also note that the porch has changed also, with a brick bottom half.

It doesn't help that this is a shot taken in winter, and after we've driven a digger all over the front garden. Never the less, you get the idea that the profile of the house has changed a bit with the removal of the chimneys.

House looks kind of small face on.

We've also been messing about outside a fair bit. I decided to use the shelter as a chippie's workshop, and to that end decided that the far end could do with a bit more shelter:

... and a bit more sunshine! Anyway, this keeps the wind and rain out much better. Needs a lick of paint now.

Small update to outside loo door.

More wood. More carpentry...

More building stuff, A luxury chicken apartment.

Another shed extension. This pic is it sort of half-finished:

Has doors and the other side now - needs painting!

My air compressor is currently in the workshop near the house. It takes up a ton of space, and it's not even wired up. Annoying. I don't want it cluttering up the garage, so it's going to live in its own little shelter on the back of the garage. I've also left a bit of room in designing it to put other odds and sods:

The ends will be covered in mesh, like the chicken house. The compressor needs air around it to keep it cool. The 'lid' will be felted.

The greenhouse is being fixed. Some idiot (me) drove a digger through the back of it. And in moving the greenhouse from near the house to where it is now, a few more panes were broken. It needs a good clean up and replacement glass. I'll actually use perspex instead of glass.

Also been busy building a zip wire for the kids. It will have a sort of treehouse at one end, and the usual kid of stopping device at the other. These pics just really show the foundations. The treehouse thing won't be directly built on/in a tree. More like next to it. The sleepers are oak - they're just cut in half, and set in concrete. They are in there solid!

This is the other end - the sort of arch here will be the stopping end....

This solid looking effort is where the cable will terminate. Probably hard to envision, but more pics after more progress...

Used the same sleepers for a raised bed - my daughter was insistent we had a veggie patch. So we have one now:

This is the same idea as the zip wire going to have a deck that goes out on a cantilever over the pond.

This is the pad for the new outside office. I am supposed to work 2 days a week from home. My wife, who's in the same line of work as me, is supposed also to work from home. However, we only have one office in the house, so....

Small amount of painting means that garage part of the building under the cat slide roof is smartened up. Need to clean the cars now...

Starting to green up again for spring - can see the work the tree surgeon did here.

Off we go again...

Into 2017 we go. Year number 3 of the house project. I suppose if you'd asked if we would be still doing major building stuff at this stage, I'd have said 'no'. However, we are! In decorating the the Dining Room, we noticed that there was water staining on the wall. However, as per previous post, that looked like a damp chimney problem - except that when we had particularly heavy rain, the water was coming in through the hole that we'd made to supply electricity to lights that we plan to have in the chimney alcove. So the best solution is to remove the chimney. And while we're at it, the one on the other side of the house, as in my son's room, the wall is damp also.

The two chimneys are pretty obvious in this pic, they're those two rendered monstrosities at either side of the house. We'd no plans to use either for real fires, so down they need to come. Obviously needs a scaffold etc.,  so not going to be cheap.

In other news, we are a bit further on in the Dining room (first pic is a reminder of what it looked like when we bought the place):

The paint was so caked on the shutters that they've been dipped. Unfortunately this makes them swell, so they've been hung up now for about a month, but we've only just been able to open and shut them properly, signalling that they're ready for paint. Even though they're dipped, they'll need a rub down. Part of the dipping process is to jet wash them, so that can really rough up the wood. You can see the water staining in the second pic. There's a bit more to go on this room - radiator covers, woodwork, some floor finishing, bit of furniture making and lighting for the chimney alcove, but it's taking shape.

The boy's room is one where we need to go for a full strip back and build up. The procedure will be the same as the daughter's. Take all plaster, lathes etc. off the walls, fill the stud gaps with insulating batts, go over them with 50mm Celotex, plasterboard on top of that (sound deadening on the internal walls) and then the usual plaster and paint.

Here it is when we bought the place:

And now:

Expect progress to be reasonably rapid - the work looks serious, but actually it's straightforward for a couple of blokes who know what they're doing. Then decorating, sparks and plumbing. At the same time, need to get the wiring in for the room below, which is now only one of two where we've not touched!

We had people to stay over new year (we have very tolerant friends), so that meant some frenzied activity in the area of the ongoing list.

A little more progress in the guest bedroom, which now has a bed (which will need to come out to do the flooring, sigh), and a rather neat bi-fold door to the en-suite, which now has a loo seat (imagine that - luxury!), and a shower door to go with the working shower. It also has curtains, which are hand-me-downs from our previous house, and as they're triple lined silk efforts, courtesy of my wife's fair hands, they'll be adapted for this one!

 

The wardrobe belongs to the boy - it's out of his room at the moment. We have other plans for wardrobage in this room.

We also made a little bit of forward motion upstairs in that all the doors have been dipped and hung. Some will need to be re-hung, but we'll take that one at a time as we paint them. We also had to do the selection of colour for the hall, stairs and upstairs landing. We decided on a cream colour, that might seem a bit boring, but we have to balance the need for a warm colour and the necessity of it being light. The house doesn't have much window space, and it would be too easy to suck the light out it, and with it the sense of space. You can see the experiments in colour in this pic - cost us a fortune in sample pots!

You can also see other progress in terms of the ply'd floor, and additionally, the trappings of a family house - a reminder that throughout all this chaos, crap and mess, we have to live here too! Note the dipped door at the end.

With Christmas and New Year, it was important to have a lockable, functioning downstairs cloakroom. So we have that now! Again, lots more work to be done in terms of painting the door, sorting out a threshold, some cupboard doors for the inside which houses the main switches and fuses etc. But, nonetheless a functioning bog!

It's quite a flash throne - it's self-supporting. It also means that the loo seat cost a fortune, as your generic soft-close effort won't fit. Ah well, it's nice to be comfortable....