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Tuesday 24 April 2012

This blogger is fantastic, the moment you finally get used to their layout they decide to change it all around again, making it almost impossible to find the right buttons!! Grrrrr Mr Google you make me so angry at times!

Anyhow, quick update.

 Rest of one side of the wall has disappeared.

 Cleared away the rest of the soil I was using to rest planks on to avoid damage to the newly poured foundation.
 Yet another pile of bricks, just from this one section of wall (Honestly, this isn't the same picture as the last lot, its a fresh pile.)
 Channel cut through the soil for the electricity cable (Again)
 Covered with sand, then a bit of soil to protect it from the mortar/soil/bits of brick from all the rubbish that came off the walls, the grey pipe is to go inside the new foundation so it doesn't become entrapped in the concrete.
 And levelled out again.
 Here you can see the shuttering in place and the grey pipe that the electricity trunking runs through.
And pouring bit by bit...
Few wheelbarrow loads later.... very annoying as I didn't shore the bottom up well enough and I now have a outward trapezoid foundation on one side, the other is still perfectly straight.
Bit of a shame as I usually shove in posts to stop the sides moving, but the concrete foot slab stopped me from doing that effectively.  Ah well, the top is straight-ish, and its 2x as wide as it needs to be for the wall that will be built in the middle ontop of it, letting it cure for now whilst I finish off all my school projects and thesis!


*edit* oh, almost forgot to mention, materials arrived. This should be about half of what is eventually required.

 7 pallets of Ytong, 2 300mm lintels (More to follow, they were out of stock), a garage full of near enough 50m2 of insulation (80 and 100mm), a heap of planks for the ceiling (they were on offer), 35 bags of cement, and a heap of reinforcing for concrete floor.
And 9 tonnes of 0-16mm aggregate.

 Someone seems to be enjoying the new playpark in the backyard :)

Saturday 14 April 2012

Progress part 2

Few pictures to keep it rolling :)

 All the render knocked off the wall between the bedroom to be and livingroom to be, you're looking at the old chimney within the wall here.
 and to the right of the last image.
 Started knocking down, you can see the roof beams supported slightly by acro props, although they don't actually need supporting as the beams are tied into each-other, better safe than sorry!

 Different angle.
I managed to get the whole wall to swing in and out when pushing against it, almost like jelly.. not very strong!
 And where the chimney used to be at until late this morning when it vanished, also more acro props helping support the roof beams just in case the joint holding the beams together decides it no longer wants to work.
 And the wall between the lounge to be and the livingroom to be, the hole in the wall is where the electrical fuse box thingymebob with spaghetti is on the other side, I removed the wiring for the livingroom to be so I could work on the wall safely. The old chimney is on the left.

 My ever growing stack of nice clean re-usable bricks which I'm sure will come in handy at some point :) My girlfriend has finished her studies so has been helping cleaning the bricks up from old mortar. (all the top ones are from the chimney stack above the wall)


And another hatch quickly created to keep the rain out. It started raining lightly just as we were removing the last bricks off the roof where the chimney used to stick out.

Onwards we go!

Monday 9 April 2012

Wall removal 2012!

Pressing onwards again. This was done single-handed on 2 or 3 afternoons, and a Saturday.


End of day one, 3 hours of wrecking and getting set up.
From the other side.



 Another 3 hour afternoon.
 From the other side.
 All the waste render and mortar (Mud!)
And the stack of bricks.


 And the end of the Saturday, wall gone!
 Looking onto the outside wall, scary stuff...
 And the hole for the new foundations, you can see the new footing in the bottom curing.
 Quite the heap of rubbish, insane for one wall, I was planning on using it as hardcore under the floor but with the other wall yet to come down its wayyyy to much!

And the final stack of bricks, all the ones at the front are properly stuck together in blocks of 2x2 or 2x3. I rather suspect these bricks were salvaged somewhere, as they were all near the base of the wall at the bottom, clearly too heavy to lift high up in the wall to re-use!

Now, onwards to the other wall, but we need to shift the stack of bricks away first or I'll have no place to store them. I don't want to store them outside as 3 lorry's should be coming relatively soon, one for building material, another for aggregate and yet another for the new chimney.



Thursday 5 April 2012

Progress part 1


A long overdue quick dump of pictures. 


Parket lifted off floorboards.

Floorboards lifted, no sign of rot anywhere!

Rotten beams removed.

Slag/Vermiculite stuff all removed and digging down to bottom of foundation to see how deep it is, and also determining where the new foundation is required.
The new wall between the bedroom and livingroom needs to be shifted by approx 30-40CM in order for the new chimney to fit between the roof beams. The existing chimney is integrated inside the wall and there isn't' enough space to build the wall in the same place and then place anew chimney next to it.


Rest of the soil dug out and removed, electrical conduit rolled up and out of the way again!
Second big hole, approx 60CM wide 90CM deep.  This is for the new foundation for the wall between the kitchen-bathroom and bedroom.
bedroom-livingroom hole
Bathroom/kitchen-bedroom hole.
Existing foundation requires widening by about 20-30cm. Holes were drilled into the existing foundation and sections of rebar were stuck inside the hole and glued in place.
Lengths of rebar on the sections and all tied together.
Concrete with shuttering in place.
New foot slab at bottom of new foundation, 15cm thick, 50cm wide., it will carry a 20-30cm foundation ontop of this and then a 15cm blockwork wall ontop of that.

And shuttering removed :)