FINALLY...

...this roof is finished !
Well almost, the felt is clamped in place so the edges are sharp and the corners tight.
All i'll need to do is trim the excess off, tack the edges, and gutter the front et voila !
...

Blue summerhouse...

... and Emily perched on a wobbly chair...

Felt adhesive: one of the nastiest products you can work with...

Yuk, this is gooey, sticky, smelly, toxic and only cleans with white spirit...
I HATE this stuff, but it's the best way to stick the felt and cover a flat roof, sadly.
Almost finished anyway...

Waffle morning...

Alice, i did warn you, you missed a nice waffle session !
Golden and crispy they were yumm ! (and still blurred, damn mobile phone !)
Emily is apron-ed to the neck in a desperate bid to safeguard her nice and new Zadig&Voltaire garment...
STOP - operation SaveTheJumper successful - OVER

Felt progress (pun intended...)

Underlay stretched and pinned, and overlay ready to be unrolled.
(lovely blurry picture :( )

Sanding the summerhouse...

Following our paint trial (see post on Wed 26th), the summerhouse has to be sanded prior to suitable decorating...

Notice the lovely safety goggles !

Sanding the summerhouse

What's left of our kitchen...

Our minimalist kitchen, that's all we've got left, but we were keen on keeping it, even if it means I had to build a platform above it so the builders can work safely, and without trashing it.

Compromise, compromise... (we even kept our dishwasher going, now THIS is luxury !

Biggest tomato in essex !

Check this out !
Alright, we've got only one this size, sadly, and the other plants suffer from late blight (FR: mildiou), but we're managing to save about 2/3 of our modest production, enough to spruce up our salads anyway :-)

The harvest

Harvested some carrots today, some of them affected by a few maggots from the carrot fly.
Not too bad though, and GREAT taste !

Roofing the shed

I've got to finally put a roof on the small shed, it's been sitting there for 6 months now, with nothing but a temporary roof made of marine ply (which I partly removed prior to taking the pic). Got to cut this ply to size, screw it to the rafters. and on goes the felt.
Not looking forward to it...

Just about dry...

WE got a huge downpour yesterday, the kind of storm you get in the tropics. Well with the wind blowing and all, some of the rain definitely filtered through the sides of the green netting. The felt on the roof got a bit wet, I'm glad I asked them to leave it on for the week-end.
I think normal rain would be OK, but these thunderstorms, no thank you...

Tiles coming off (contd.)

one side of the roof stripped bare, now...

Tiles coming off...

Our two roofers doing a smashing job, removing (and reclaiming) the existing tiles...

Mini rubbish guttering

In a bid to save the planet (no less !), I have fitted some guttering to our 2 garden outbuildings, shed and summerhouse, and will later add waterbutts to collect the rainwater.
For the shed, had to melt the half-round gutter so I would be able to curve it around a dodgy 120degrees angles, for which no "off the shelf" solution exists.
Using a blow torch, I melted (BURNED, oops !) the plastic, which kinked, of course, rather than taking a nice bend, but hey, did the job, although it does not look very nice (you know me, that'll probably give me nasty dreams at night!).
Stacked underneath the overhanging roof, you can see the lovely white cast iron downpipes reclaimed from a building site in London. 14 pipes in all, 1m80 (6ft) each, and approx 25kg each. Carried them all in the boot of our car, do the maths, the rear shock absorbers in our fiesta are probably dead by now :-(



Guttering the summerhouse is more satisfying, but I suppose it better be acceptable, as this was a straight stretch of guttering, after all...
Look along the edge of the roof, you can hardly see the gutter (some would rightfully argue THIS IS THE POINT)

By the way, you can see that the inside of the said summerhouse is a (little) untidy, as it's always been. We're not really the right age group to go spend 2 hours in there enjoying our cuppa with our elderly friends, SO it was said that the summerhouse was going to have to be used for storage (shame about these big windows, can't hide anything !)
Also for those who are wondering, the blue staining to the top right is a paint sample, we will probably paint the front of the summerhouse that sort of colour, to refresh it a bit...

Thrilling, innit ?

Big ugly green hat

Here we go, scaffolding complete, we've now got a huge top hat above our house, with rainproof netting and all, so rain or shine, work will go ahead regardless.


View from outside...



And from the inside, 2nd "floor", high above the existing roof...

Ok what went on today...
Was in London today working in a flat, a tenant was moving out, so repairs needed to be carried out like removing picture hooks, filling, painting etc.
While I was busy, well scaffolders were as well, and our project manager had to sort out a little misunderstanding with the architect (a little bit of a heated discussion apparently) hopefully nothing that will cause trouble between them in the future...
I'm in tomorrow so any trouble, send it my way :-)
Scaffolding due to complete tomorrow, and i'll be putting a gutter on the shed, plus various bits and bobs...

Scaffolding almost finished

Serious Progress...

7 hours later...

Buried alive...

Just checking if the footings (FR: fondations) are deep enough.
And yes they are, 1m deep to be precise...

Glamorous assistant ;-)

New kitchen playground

Look what emily's done to my new enclosure !
ceiling removed so I can hang about the joists...

SO IT BEGINS...

Scaffolders on site, constructing a "top hat" above our roof so it can be just simply removed (!) and then re-built a couple of meters higher...

Finally it is all set

Good morning and welcome to our blog, hope you enjoy it, we'll try and make it kind of entertaining and kind of up to date.
The main purpose of this blog is to record and publish to you all the works on the extension being build to our house in Essex.
So bear with us for some juicy pics from the guts of our dwelling...