Stairs

While we disappeared for a short holiday, Andy and Mike were mostly redeployed at another big job the firm is working on down at Ocean Village, but they still had time to lay the floor and put in the ceiling joists over a couple of days. So when we got back we were straight up that ladder and examining progress.

It's so good to be able to wander around freely up there 

From the gable towards where the bed will be

Ian with one foot in the dressing-room and one in the bathroom

Over the weekend, we were up and down that ladder several times, trying to work out where we want the partition walls and where the bathroom fixtures will best fit.  Still not really worked that out, although we did make a useful trip to City Plumbing in Millbrook on Saturday.

This morning, Andy and Mike were on the doorstep bright and early, and Andy spent some time talking through the positioning of the walls, Velux windows and radiators with me and Ian before the stairs were delivered and Ian headed off for work. 

stair bits

Dust sheets went down on the landing, the stairs and the hall floor. Then came lots of noise as they sawed through the stairwell ceiling. By the time the chaps stopped for their lunch, the stairs were beginning their ascent....

At about 4.15, Andy tapped on the dining-room door and asked to borrow me for a moment. He wanted me to be the guinea-pig! 

All the way to the top! (Hurray! No more ladder!)

     

Taking shape

Ian's week away slipped by, and suddenly he was back – and so were the offspring. When the latter were last at home, we were in a frenzy of loft-clearing prior to the start of work, and all they'd had to go on were photos and the earlier posts in this blog. So they – and Ian – were eager to see the progress for themselves.
The room is starting to take shape...

Looking into the corner of what will be our bedroom, at the gable end

  

The bathroom will be to the right; the dressing-room to the left

But it was clear that the main attraction was the temporary balcony afforded by the scaffolding.

and the view, which I believe I have probably mentioned, once or twice.

In the week that followed the mass return, Andy and Mike got on and finished laying the new wooden joists. And the carpenter who's building the staircase visited again to finalise the position of the top-floor landing (which Andy needed to know, for the joists and floor).
We're at the point where we have to make some decisions. Always tricky! (For example, we did think about having glass walls in our little eyrie, but we've decided against it.) So we've confirmed how many lights and sockets we want – that sort of thing. We also decided to change the two pendant lights on the first-floor landing for four recessed lights. Might as well get that sorted out now, while there's no difficulty in pulling up the floor of our nice, new loft room! 

Ian and Andy check the plans

What happened to that stack of timber

At the end of the last blog, the steels and a load of wood had just gone in through a remarkably small (temporary) aperture in the roof. All very exciting, and the next few days seemed rather dull and uneventful by comparison. Ian flew out to the US on the Saturday, leaving me with orders to keep him updated as to progress, but there didn't seem to be a lot to show him in the first few days. One fine day followed another...

Many cups of tea were consumed. There was a lot of sawing, as Andy and Mike refined some of the cuts they had made in the existing joists before the steels went in. And then there was some swearing (although I only know about this because Andy apologised when he next came down) as they repositioned the steels to perfection. (At least I think that was the cause of the language.) And after that there was more sawing, hammering, drilling, and on and on. Quite possibly, there was more swearing, but I couldn't hear it above the noise. 
About halfway through the week I took a few pictures and sent some to Ian, so that he wouldn't feel left out...

Lucky him!  Pictures to illustrate progress; no soundtrack.
An electrician came to work out what we will need in the way of lights and sockets and smoke detectors, and to check that our fuse board will be able to cope. This was not ideal, as the fuse board is in the garage, and the garage is in a mess.  

However, it turned out that he only really needed to be able to see the fuse board to verify that the additional load would be fine. By then, though, I had spent some time trying to reorganise the piles of boxes. Bother!
And what did happen to that enormous stack of timber that I (with customary hyperbole) claimed was enough for an ark? Well, it dwindled.

And by the time Ian had returned at the end of his week away, there was quite a bit to show him. But I'm saving that for the next post, because this one is quite long enough.

Serene amid the (controlled) chaos

Last night, while Ian was engaged in a 9pm phone-call to a tetchy-sounding colleague whose afternoon in The States he was evidently spoiling, I was making space in our bedroom for the ceiling props. While I thought of it, I stowed away my treasured Royal Dux figure well out of the way of potential falling ceiling... just in case. She fitted – just – beneath the dressing-table. Perfect! She was completely unperturbed by the sudden change in her surroundings, an attitude I endeavoured to emulate earlier today.  Her market value may not be great but she means a lot to me. 

Ian and I were on hand to spectate this morning, when a gang of eight turned up to get our steels in. I'll say one thing for these guys: they have never yet turned up late; if anything, they tend to arrive earlier than expected. So we were sort of prepared when the lorry with the steels pulled up shortly before 8.00am; Ian had only just moved our cars off the drive and parked them in the road, where they were shortly joined by the cars of our workforce. I wonder how much credit we have now used up with our neighbours?

Cups of tea all round while we waited for the crane-driver ...  

and a brief hiatus for me and Ian while the rest of them dashed about, opened up the hole in the roof (at the front – a change from the original plan and also from Plan B) and prepared for the next step. Then the crane-driver got to work, lifting the massive steels from the lorry parked in the road...

... and up and round to the area just in front of the house, avoiding the various overhead cables. I wish Andy hadn't mentioned that it was the crane-driver's first day. Not that anything went wrong; I'd just rather not have known till it was all over.  

Very soon, there was a neat stack of steels in the drive. The crane was turned around so that the driver now had a clear view of the stack and the hole in the roof, and in the steels went...

... followed by more wood than you could shake a stick at (for the joists).  

Many cups of tea later, with the steels all in place and the wood tidily stacked, they departed. Tomorrow, Andy hopes to work on the gable and give his back a bit of a rest before he breaks it on laying the joists. 

Steeling ourselves for Wednesday

The weather forecast for Thursday and Friday turned out to be overly pessimistic (for a pleasant change); at any rate, while there was wind and rain, we were spared the worst of it, and Andy and Mike were able to make excellent progress on the gable. Here's how it was looking by lunchtime on Thursday. 

With the RSJs due to arrive this Wednesday, they spent much of Friday afternoon preparing the ceilings upstairs – the massive steel beams will be craned in through a hole in the roof and carefully rolled into position, and the ceilings below need to be propped up, just in case of mishaps.  

Our bedroom and the bathroom will be left until first thing on Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, we're managing not to trip up over the props on the landing – so far!

Yesterday – the first day of March – was a glorious day.  In meteorological terms, it was the first day of spring, and it could hardly have been more promising.  So I got out there with the camera to get a picture of how the gable is shaping up.

It's looking good, don't you think? And behold – blue sky!  I was supposed to be sorting through yet more boxes, but it was just too nice to go straight back in. And the bumble-bees thought the same.