Full steam ahead

10 March 2014

Tom is back on site with a vengeance and has sent through photos of his first few days on site.

As he puts it, he's 'had a good clean up' of beams, windows and floors. Note the oak pegs in the A-frame.

The down lighters are in place, thanks to Brian.

This is the kitchen window. Power points and switches are making an appearance...

Tom: 'The screed is drying out nicely and I’m very pleased with it.' Looks good from where I'm standing too, Tom.

This is the pair of windows overlooking the stairwell. We love them! They recall the fact that the wall of the barn stopped short of the roof along  this side of the barn.

And we are delighted that Tom has preserved the fragment of stone wall...

The guys have been working on the external bardage boarding (Larch wood) and managed to finish that by Friday. What d'you think? Rather a nice quirky detail, isn't it? 

Tom expects the window shutters to be delivered to site at the beginning of this week, when they will be all set to start fitting them, having got 'all the fiddly bits' completed last week.

It's all go chez nous.

Reaching the pointy end

16 January 2014

Of the project, that is. Since the work began on site after the Christmas break, there has been a flurry of emails (you knew, didn't you, that 'flurry' is the collective noun for emails?) back and forth between Tom, Brian, Phil, Gregg and us. The ten-hour time difference means that we wake up to find an email loaded with detailed questions and requiring Decisions to be made, preferably in time for the email to reach T, B or P before they leave home to head to the barn for the day on site (late afternoon, Sydney time). Which means that there has been a lot of phone calls between G and I (the collective noun for phone calls being 'a lot') during the working day... :)

Once again, we've spent hours poring over our detailed electrical plans and have confirmed or amended earlier decisions about the positions of light switches/light fixtures/power points. The drawings had to be updated and scanned and emailed off before a loooong Skype call with Brian, who is powering ahead (sorry) with his side of things.

After much deliberation, we have decided to go back to Plan A and have a ceiling downstairs. It was either that or live with the look of an ugly Sterling board (a really coarse chipboard) subfloor between the beams. Neither electrician nor plumber were disappointed about the ceiling U-turn; it makes life much easier for them.

One surprise since the last update was that Tom rendered the gable end wall on the driveway side upstairs. We had planned to have both gable walls pointed stone, but he misunderstood and had rendered it in readiness for framing and plaster boarding before we spotted it in a photo and realised. Give him his due, Tom accepted responsibility and offered to remove the render (several days' worth of work), but we decided to go with the flow. It's not as if we lack for stone, and it will make the end gable wall that much more special. And it will make upstairs brighter. And, well, we have justified the change such that we now wish we'd planned it all along.

Phil is busy constructing the stairs, and according to Tom, they should be installed mid-Feb. For some reason, I'm incredibly excited about the stairs! Tom has fixed a sturdy wooden structure to the stone wall (which will be hidden behind the plastered wall) to which Phil will attach his lateral (and only) stringer.

Gregg is progressing well with the job of salvaging and repairing the old barn doors, which will close over the new barn doors like giant 'shutters'. He is our 'shutters guy', and will be making all the window and door shutters for the barn. He is also going to be our 'cup-of-sugar guy': he and his wife have bought the empty and unloved house next door! They plan to renovate, and it's lucky - G and I happen to know of a good building team...and we've reason to believe that the neighbours are nice.

Charles is...well, he's plumbing the depths of everyone's patience. Sorry. Unforgivable, but a bit of levity is called for, when feathers on site  - and as far away as Sydney - have been ruffled. Suffice it to say that Tom has been required to move a stud wall, and he's not happy. A couple of extra-long phone calls to T, then C and then T again, and I think we're on track.

Where to place the hot water tank; where to situate the pressure reducing valve, main stopcock, stop valve for the outside tap and the hot and cold distribution manifolds; where to place the room thermostat; whether the underfloor heating in the shower room is worth the bother; how to manage the pellet boiler flue; whether there is headroom for the loo and bath upstairs under the eaves...all these and other practicalities to consider this week.

It's a rock 'n' roll life.