Tyvek vapour control going up... (monday)

floor REALLY WELL INSULATED

with 2000mm of insulation !!

Celotex rigid PIR insulation boards

(notice the beautiful blue sky...)
lucky, lucky, we haven't had any heavy rain for weeks...

View from the top of the ridge...

Celotex 110mm insulation ready to go on, after we lay a layer of vapour barrier...

Sprockets in place ...

... and almost in line.
We made the final adjustements and they were aligned perfectly with help from a piece of string.

Sprockets going in...

In a traditionnal construction, the rafter ends are left overhanging and thus showing under the edges of the roof.
Because we are insulating over the rafters rather than under of between them, the roof will be really thick : 160mm or so on top of the rafters.
These sprocket fillets , nailed at an angle, will give this modern roof a traditional look, to satisfy the planning authorities (and us).
(refer to next post for an overview)

Sprockets fillets (see next post)

Breaking off the old wall...

Old daub and nice hazel wattle, I'm recuperating most of it to repair some other portions of the wall on the inside.
The beauty of daub (FR: torchis) is that however old it is (this one probably a good few centuries old), you stick it in a bucket of water overnight, and you can reuse it !

Our ceiling viewed from inside

We are really pleased with the result, hope you are too :-)

Noggings in the wall... 90mm nails

Yeah I know I forgot the ear defenders that Emmanuel was wearing on the previous post...

Paslode IM350, courtesy of eBay

Yet another new toy...

Timberframe house building involves using an incredible amount of nails. The first part of the roof (the pine boarding you see in the foreground) was done manually, with hammer and sweat, but meet our new friend the gas nailer !!
big orange tool, uses gas cartridges and a battery to create a spark, ignite the gas and fire a pin which can send a 90mm nail through an oak rafter in one go !
Nailing the plywood to the roof was SO MUCH FUN !
We'll also need to nail some ply on the walls, then all the battens on the roof, and so on, hence the investment...

Drilling the holes in the metal beams...

... to allow for pipes and cables to go through the floor structure up to where they need to be. Satellite (Sky), network, electricity, central heating, etc.
For those of you who like tools (Pierre + Chris that's you guys :-)  ), this is a nice drill with a big electromagnet which sticks this heavy machine (prob 10kg) to the metal beams to be drilled. Switch one button to "ON" the electromagnet gets powered and the drill litterally sticks to the beam. Another ON/OFF switch turns the drill on and off.
Obviously there is DANGER: if you turn the magnet ON, and then the drill ON, you're OK, but things can go fishy when turning things off:  you need to turn the drill off BEFORE you disable the magnet otherwise you'll have a 10kg spinning drill trying to obey gravity and crash on the floor below... Same story (Even worse) if you turn off the magnet by mistake thinkin you're only stopping the rotation of the drill... Better not be anything below if this happens...

Model: Evolution ME3500 magnetic drill

NAIIICE !  (c) borat

Nailing the last few boards on the ridge

Perilous job...

Happy nailer (no pun)

Nailing the tong and groove boarding onto the oak rafters.
I previously primed it and applied 2 coats of varnish, so they are already finished and ready to lay !
3 advantages to painting them first-hand :
- it's obviously much easier to paint them at waist level than when they are on the ceiling
- you don't have to be careful to not put any paint on the rafters
- If we did do the above two points, when the rafters shrink (as they do when they dry, a couple of mm in 2 years), they would have revealed whole strips of unpainted boards

(Ingrid, the deliberately exposed left thigh is for you ;-)  )

WHERE IS OUR WINDOW ???

Yeas, the rectangle in gay pink is where our bathroom window should have been !!?! (i think it's bigger than that :50x70cm, anyway)
They'll have to break the gable, and re-do the frame, another half-day wasted :-(
Oh well, everything else is going fine, so i'm not going to hammer their heads off just yet...

Rectangle in red shows the doorway between the new extension and the old part of the house.. We are leaving it in for the time being, as it leads directly into our bedroom and we are keen to keep the little privacy we've got left...

Nice perspective...

... which we'll never see anyway, as the pine rafters on which my glamorous assistant is standing will be plasterboarded on their underside.

Roof structure now finished

First half in oak, exposed in the bedroom, second half made of cheap pine, and hidden behind plasterboard...

And finally...

Up to date with today, picture taken a couple of hours ago, picture taken from the corner of what will be our bathroom (one day...).
walls are up, as for tomorrow, cheap (= pine) roof structure going up and more...

CLoseup: the window frame

Beatiful joinery work from Peter, you can see the frame which will receive our rooflight (Velux type but all steel and sitting flush in the roof to satisfy the listed building people)

Trimming the bolts

Yeah I know, this roof structure is not 100% traditional, with steel bolts used throughout.
(They won't be visible though)
It gets the whole structure to be stronger, keeps the oak beams from moving too much when they dry and retract and best of all, it speeds up the building process...

He's awake ! :-)

Oak roof structure almost in place...

Our busy plumber !

Emmanuel brother sleeping with the love of his life: his professional blowtorch !

Well well well, where are we at ? ...

Beautiful "A frame" up and ready (almost) to support the roof...

The mighty ridge beam

Took three men to lift up to where it is now
I did tie the rope up there, one nice double 8 knot (Pierre knows what I mean : ) )

two rafters are already in place, they just need the bolt through the top of them, to secure the frame together.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Orleans to come back with Emmanuel first thing on Monday (1pm, which is 1st thing for me)
And together we'll get CRACKING (or not)