Rear stone work finished and walls come down in Kitchen

The builders have finished the block and stone work on the rear extension and it just awaits the roof. They have also took out part of the wall in the kitchen which opens it up a lot and gives us more room in the kitchen...when we get one installed.

It's taken them longer than expected as all of the stone used was stripped off the original outside wall of the house and needed backing off and corners making, but now they can move back onto the right hand side extension which they have already started to do.

There is still about 3-4 weeks work for them, including the internal alterations still left to do.

I am in the process of getting some prices for electrics and plumbing at the moment.

The house is starting to look like a house

The right side extension with walls going up on first floor

The new gable end is coming together too

The stone on the new rear extension. Best angle I can get at the moment.

The kitchen has opened up by removing the wall

How it used to look

And how it looks now

The master bedroom gets more block work

The window to the front of the house

Stone work goes up on rear extension

The rear extension is flying up now with block work almost up to the joists and stone work not far behind. Steel is on order tohold it all up.

View from kitchen into new section of kitchen

The wall on the right will be coming down to open up the kitchen

Stone work on the outside not far behind the block work

Block work on the rear extension

The block work is going up on the rear extension that will extend the kitchen and create a new bathroom.

Front of the house, roof is on and scaffold down

Roof still to go on entrance porch and right hand extension

Block work on the rear extension

View from the kitchen into rear extension

Concrete at the back and roof is finished on the front

Jebson's have had to dig out the floor of what was the storage shed as the floor level in the kitchen was lower so we would have had some levelling issues. Building inspection checked the area dug out and it was approved for concreting which the builders did yesterday (8th March 2012).

They have also fitted guttering to the new front extension as the roof has been completed and taken the scaffold down so we can see much better how the house will look when complete. It still needs the entrance porch completing.

I have a window coming from Nu-Fit in Elland on Saturday to check the colour is what we wanted. We are going to have them sprayed to blend with the stone work, so better to purchase just one and find out now than buy them all and find out later that the colour is not what we expected.

We also had a temporary electrical supply put in by Jebson's electrician so they can do the internal work and I can then use it when I start doing bits on the inside too.

Confidence is high that the building work should be complete within four weeks. Ahead of schedule!!

Scaffold going up to finish off the side extension

The new concrete for the new section of the kitchen.

The remainder of the lower section of vrick will be removed and the stone on the left stripped out

The view from the kitchen to the new concrete

Having to use the flash on the camera now as the roof is done on the front extension

This will be the third bedroom

And this will be the en-suite

More progress and starting on the rear extension

Now the builders have started on the smaller rear extension as our next door neighbour has some landscape gardeners in so the builders need to get onto his land before the gardeners begin on that section. They have knocked down the storage shed that was previously there and begun to knock the wall down that seperated the shed from the kitchen.

Where the storage shed used to be

This will become part of the kitchen

This will be built up to be the new bathroom

The view from the kitchen, you can see where the wall will be removed

The builders have also started to move the rest of the rubble from the gable end and fireplace in the living room so it's looking a lot bigger.

At the weekend we managed to clear out all the insulation from the loft to replace with brand new when the time comes. You can see bags of it above.

Roof timbers go on the front extension!

So with a mini crisis hopefully averted the joiners were moving on with the roof timbers on the front extension. The ceiling will be installed above the two wooden purlins to give the roof a bigger feel but the whole house is really taking shape and we can see how good it's going to be in a few weeks time.

Pictures below

Side of the house

Front view where the new roof timbers are

And here are the roof timbers from the inside

The ceiling with be pitched at the sides and flat between the two wooden purlins

The door cut out for the en-suite. The sloped ceiling should be a nice feature.

The supporting wall in the main bedroom that was built on the steel beam below.

This looks toward where the en-suite will be. The roof will be pitched in here also.

You can see where the window will be in the bedroom and the view we will get.

The bi-folds that have the problem lintel, but not for long!

A little snag!

It seems when the plans for the house were done there were no structural calculations done for the bi-fold doors. Basically nobody had seen that over a three meter span there should be some sort of additional support by a steel beam. Fortunately I contacted the structural engineer to question if the new bi-folds would be supported by the installed concrete lintel and catnic as they were top hung and would put extra load on the lintel.

At this point, I was told there were no structural sums for this opening as he was not requested to do so on the drawing. I found this quite unbelievable that a trained structural engineer would just not bother to do a calculation on a three meter hole in a gable end that would need to hold the walls and roof up!

So as the builders have been getting on pretty well with the job so far they had already put in a concrete lintel and catnic as the general building notes advised re-inforced concrete lintels were required over all window openings unless specified to engineer's detail. As they were not specified the builders carried on.

Luckily it had been discovered before the whole side of the house was built up. The structural engineer and builders have discussed the lintel issue and will have to remove the current lintel and replace it with a larger one, but keep the current catnic. Needless to say this will cost us a little extra, but oddly the structural engineer will take no responsibility for this error as he was not asked to do the calculation on that opening. I'd be interested to know who's responsilbility it would have been if the whole lot fell down?

Anyway it could have been a lot worse as it was spotted early, I just hope that's it for nasty surprises!!