Fast work

According to the original plan, this was to have been the end of Day Three of our loft conversion, but work started ten days early. Even so, the progress is remarkable and almost bewildering! Andy and Mike have worked flat-out over the past couple of days; supplying them with cups of tea (nice and strong; white; one sugar, please) seems the least I can do. They've been up and down that scaffolding with barely a break.

Progress inside and out over the past three days

What has been really noticeable today is the amount of daylight spilling in from the hole in the roof (the loft hatch is open all day, while they are at work). Er, also the chill. Because although it has been a mostly sunny day, it is – let's not forget – February! Still, before they finished for the day, Andy and Mike got the waterproof membrane on the new gable, which is reassuring, as wind and rain are forecast tonight. The weather forecast for the next few days is not brilliant, either, even if hardly surprising for the time of year...

Thursday
Rain clearing eastwards during the morning, leaving a drier day with sunny spells. Sharp showers are likely during the afternoon. Heavier rain possible Thursday night. Remaining windy.

Outlook for Friday to Sunday
Remaining unsettled, with a chance of periods of rain Friday. Showers or longer periods of rain Saturday. Drier and brighter Sunday. Overnight frosts becoming more likely.

Still, it's all been going very well; better than we had been expecting, so far.  What could possibly go wrong?  (Don't answer that: not even under your breath.)

Enough wood for an ark

This morning was bright and sunny, so Ian suggested we pop up the ladder to admire the view.  I again chickened out, but he boldly went, equipped with the camera, and clung to the top of the ladder with one arm to take a couple of pictures for my benefit. 

 


Work up above has been coming along well: we've now emptied the loft of our gubbins, Andy has the padstones in at both ends, and a very large consignment of wood arrived on Thursday. I elected not to watch the massive lorry backing in from the road and left Andy to guide the driver in past the brick pillars at the end of the drive.   
The steels won't be here for a little while, so Andy is going to be getting on next week with constructing the gable, which will involve a degree of destruction, of course – a gaping hole will have to be cut in our roof. However (says Andy, selling this to me with all his might) this will have an additional benefit, because it means that there will be a handy access point for the wood and steel, which will be craned in over the top of the house. (Eek!)

Work gets underway

Work has begun in earnest today: scaffolding is now up at the back of the house; Andy is clumping about in the loft, sawing away bits of the wooden joists to make way for the steel joists that have now been ordered. Andy could have done with the scaffolding yesterday, when he had to shin up and down a ladder to feed umpteen lengths of wood in through the hole he had (deliberately!) made in the roof.

Tomorrow should see the padstones going in on the south elevation; the ones on the north elevation, possibly on Thursday, weather permitting.  In both cases, Andy needs to site the foot of his trusty ladder over the boundary. Fortunately for us, we have nice neighbours, and this is going to be very important in a week or so's time, when the crane arrives with the steel and wood, because the men will be making a fairly sizeable hole in the roof to the north elevation, and then borrowing our north-side neighbours' airspace to lift the massive lengths of steel and wood up to the hole!
I haven't yet explained just what we're planning for the loft space, other than mentioning the view we expect to gain.  The view is, of course, the main thing.  And Ian and I feel we deserve it!  The original owner/builder of the house made some odd design decisions: for example, the two principal bedrooms are at the front of the house, enjoying an incomparable view of the road and the houses opposite, whereas the two smaller bedrooms look out onto the meadow.  This lovely view they share with the 11' x 11' bathroom (which is bigger than the smallest of the bedrooms, incidentally).  At least, they sort of share it: the bathroom window being glazed with obscure glass, the view is hardly exploited.  Anyway, my point is: while we've had the benefit of a nice, big bedroom with ensuite shower-room, we have not been spoiled by the vista from our window.
So here's the plan: master bedroom, ensuite bathroom and dressing-room.  The internal walls shown on the plan are just an indication; when the floor is down, Malcolm will get us up there and make us decide on the exact layout. This is some way off, of course.  

Fancy, eh?  Have you spotted the width of the window? We started out assuming we'd just have Velux windows throughout, but then someone wondered how much more it would cost to put a gable in for the bedroom area, and although the answer is that it costs a fair bit more, the gains to be made in terms of the view and the usable floor-space are immense.
When we were first considering our options – before we'd decided between the snazzy glass extension downstairs and the luxurious loft conversion – we looked into a couple of local firms for the latter. We warmed to Malcolm Charrett of Charrett & Sons right away and have not gone off him yet!  He's been recommended by quite a few people, including one of Ian's colleagues, which is reassuring.  Before we made a final decision, he also arranged for us to go and see a conversion his firm did a few years ago in Otterbourne. The layout, which includes a massive gable window, is not dissimilar to what we are hoping to achieve here. And the finish is excellent. All bodes well.

De-cluttering

Semi-stuffed spare room

Stuffed garage (now even more stuffed) 

It's quite ridiculous, now that I can see how much clutter we've been keeping up in our loft. So many things we just couldn't bear to part with: children's precious toys, favourite old books, boxes of cards and letters from yesteryear, school and uni texts and notes, back-copies of Top Gear... And then there are all those things that might come in handy one day (and they really might, so we can't possibly throw them away). There are chairs, some of which don't even need fixing to be useful, numerous pairs of curtains, and then there are those bits of wood we've acquired: some sapele that used to top the quite remarkable 1970s 'rustic' brick construction that once framed the gas-fire in the sittingroom, and several lengths of teak that were almost stair-treads from a 1970s power-station, but which turned out to be surplus to requirement. Well, you know how it is. I'm sure everyone's loft is hiding stuff like that. Oh yes, and don't forget all those boxes of Christmas decorations, not to mention boxes and boxes and boxes of... well, just boxes. 

So this was Weekend 2 of the great clear-out. The spare room and the garage are filling up with stuff to be kept and stuff yet to be sorted.  Oh dear! So much precious clutter! I can see how the next couple of weeks will be spent. Yesterday was charity-shop day: boxes of books, VHS videos and audio cassettes were sent off on their travels. Today was dump day: mostly empty boxes, but also a load of glass panes that the previous owner had left as a somewhat dangerous surprise up in the loft. And we've put a load of Dymo tape and the amazing 1970s chrome Dymo label-maker on Ebay.  (James has had fun testing these – the child of the high-tec age fascinated by some thoroughly low-tech gadgets.  It calls to mind the hours he and his sister spent playing with my Dad's old Olivetti typewriter.  And that's another of the items that comes under the heading of 'precious clutter'.)

Meanwhile, because the company we have contracted to do the fabulous conversion have finished their previous job early, work – of a sort – has already begun. Andy, who is 'ours' for the next goodness knows how many weeks, has been very relaxed about all the clutter still up there, accepting that we thought we still had another weekend in which to empty the loft, and he was kind enough to bring down a box with him every time he emerged last week.

Plenty of room at the top

So far, all that's happened up there – apart from the clearing – is that Andy has begun the very laborious job of marking out where he has to cut through joists in preparation for the insertion of the massive RSJs that will be going in when the job proper begins. But you can see what a big space we'll have (and the image is from the hatch, so it shows only two-thirds of the loft area; there's one-third as much again at your back).  You have to use your imagination quite a lot at this stage.  I'm not sure whether I am more daunted than excited right now. 

Making (and unmaking) plans

The back garden

It all started with the garden, which stumbles downhill in three tiers that have been diligently undermined by moles. It's roughly 55' x 85', so a good size.  But a challenge.  I used to love gardening.  However, this plot – and the hens we kept for three years – has broken my gardening spirit, at least for the time being. So, last spring, seven years after we'd moved here from our little cottage around the corner, we started thinking about Doing Something with our north-east-facing patch, and we weren't short of ideas.  But we thought we'd get someone in to advise: we approached Stuart at Urban Forest for help, because we liked the transformation he had worked on a friend's back garden
And, sure enough, he came up with some appealing plans, including a large seating area that would be sited on the west side of the middle tier, enabling us to enjoy something of the afternoon sun.(It's forsaken the patio directly behind the house before 2pm, even in the height of summer.) He also had some suggestions for the patio.  
"Ah, but we really ought to get the patio door sorted out, first."  True. From the moment we moved in we'd been complaining about the sliding door, which doesn't so much slide as slice off a sliver of metal as it grinds open. And closing it requires a run-up to get enough force behind it.
Within a matter of a few weeks, we'd progressed from looking at neat, almost frameless glass panels that fold back on themselves to seriously considering a massive (and beautiful) glass extension that would add about 12' x 12' to the sitting-room and take in the pleasant view (once you got past the messy garden) over the fields beyond.  If you are ever thinking of something along those lines, Apropos are not cheap but they are fabulous, and their local architect, Tom, took a lot of trouble to work out what we wanted and to translate that to a design. We felt really rather bad when, someone – this someone, I'm afraid – said, "But what about the loft?"

Misty morning in October 2013

We have a considerably spacious loft.  You can probably tell that from the picture above.  The house is a late-70s self-build, and the original owner had always intended building up into the loft at a later stage.  We knew that the view from up there would be amazing, because Ian had been unable to resist the lure of the scaffolding when the chimney-stack was being repaired after a hard winter a few years ago.  (I passed up the chance, knowing that although I am good at climbing ladders, I appear to have a psychological difficulty about getting down again. I don't fancy coming a-cropper, like Ibsen's poor old Solness, thanks.)  And the views from the first-floor rooms at the back have given us a taste of the prospect.  I'm forever leaning out of my daughter's bedroom to gawp at a beautiful sunrise or just admire the vista of fields, trees and sky. She's been longing for me and Ian to stop breaking into her room while she's trying to laze about in bed, and to get our own view. So, although we hardly need the space, and although I am going to be embarrassed every time I have to confess to what we're doing, it's decided: we're going up!