Kurt the Destroyer

We've owned the house for six weeks now, and I'm still amazed at the speed of things.  The roof is almost done, but we lost the whole week except Monday to the weather - annoying when it would only take three days perhaps to finish.  The electricians started last Friday, and the ground floor installation is almost done.  Neil the contractor employs a younger chap called Kurt; he is really very good and likeable, but this week I have discovered that he is really "Kurt the Destroyer".  Chasing the runs for the cables into lime plaster walls produces prodigious quantities of dust and debris, which covers everything including the kettle, cups, tea bags, first aid kit, my glasses etc.  He just doesn't notice or care, it seems (what is his own house like?).  Feeding cables down the walls from the joists above means that he has to lift the upstairs floorboards and so makes a mess works both upstairs and downstairs at the same time.  He also broke a window in the French door (which is going to go eventually, but not yet) by trying to get a massive tool store in through it, which was NEVER going to fit.  So, the entire place is a real mess, and we have invited the neighbourhood round on Sunday for mulled wine and to have a gander at our work.  (The real reason is so that when we finish they will appreciate what we have done all the more!)

I had some success this week; the front room floor joists are virtually finished, and I have ordered some reclaimed floorboards which are to be planed to size. In the meantime, in preparation for Sunday's visitors I have re-laid the old floor boards (without fastenings), and the whole room feels better.

I have also constructed a loft access hatch.  This might sound simple, but when you have suspect and not necessarily parallel joists of various sizes, with a rotted sill plate (due to the roof leaks) which I had not noticed before, it becomes decidedly complicated.  I had to design and construct a new pair of joists to support the sides of my hatch as I did not trust the existing joists to bear the additional weight.  This is a view from the hatch along the new joists:

This is the new bit of sill plate (the bit of wood on which joists rest), made from the bit of joist which I had just cut out for the hatch space.  There is a real joy in immediately finding a use for a nice bit of oak which you have just made redundant!  I was quite surprised to be able to lift the new joist (on the left) with my shoulder whilst slipping the new sill plate underneath.



In case you like roof timbers, here are a couple of views of the A-frames inside the roof:

So, before the roofers cover the membrane and it is lost to natural light for 40 years, I have been able to make the loft hatch.  At least there was a benefit of the bad weather!