The young mans have arrived

I didn't know what a young man was in relation to the building trade, but two arrived today.
Trevor asked for them, and we managed hoist them up to the top floor, even though they were nearly seven metres long.

They are actually extra long and strong scaffold boards and Trevor wanted them so that he could build above the staircase.
This afternoon I asked him if two of them are called young mans or young men.
He thought it was a very funny question and said that you say 'youngmun' so the plural is youngmuns.
Well, at least we know now, and I won't embarrass myself again at the builders merchants.

Coping stones lift

We have spent a lot of time this weekend moving very heavy coping stones. Each one measures 600 mm by 500mm and are 80 mm thick at the widest part.
I don't know how heavy each one is, but Daz reckons that we moved around three tonnes worth in total.
They had to be lifted individually underneath the hoist, then loaded on at ground level. One of us then had to climb up to the top to operate the hoist, while the other steadied the load before also climbing up.
We then walked it to the top of the parapet and slid it down a little wooden ramp. We climbed over the parapet and then lifted it into a resting place until Monday.
I think that we did that 40 times, but we are all set up and waiting for Trevor to mortar them into place.

We also put a cavity closer into place to keep the cavity extra snug and warm.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it was blowing a gale all day Saturday so that added to the stress of the situation!

Measuring up for our triple glazing

We have been anticipating the visit of the glazing measurer for a very long time. We had lots of questions for him and once he saw our house he had lots of questions for us too!
He suggested that we start at the top of the house, which I thought was a bad idea, but at least we could get the worst problems out of the way.

We are missing a few walls, which made measuring up difficult, but what we decided upon is to agree a size and then we would make sure that we build to match it.
The staircase was also a problem, and we have lots to do before any window can go near it.

I am only showing the worst bits here, and lots of the windows are straightforward, but one last photo of the current state of the front bedroom window.

We have about ten weeks to get it all built and ready, and I am confident that we will hit the target.

Empty car parking space

Thinking back to the summer, we ordered 24 pallets of bricks, and only 10 of them fitted on our plot.
The remaining 14 were put on a nearby parking space, and there they sat for a very long time.
Gradually we started having them brought round on a fork lift, and at the start of this week there was only five pallets left in the parking space.
I arranged for two pallets to be put up on to our loading bay on Monday and Trevor has been working really hard and has used all 1,100 bricks.
This afternoon we put two more pallets up, and that just leaves one pallet that is now resting in the front garden.
So the fantastic news is that the parking space is now empty.

Okay, that's not the most exciting photo ever, but we are very pleased.
In total we ordered 13,200 bricks and I think that we will have about 700 left over once we have finished.
Well I hope so anyway.

Final scaffold lift

This morning we had the final scaffold lift and its looking good. It is very high and I don't like it yet, but I was scared of the last lift and then got used to it after a few days, so hopefully I will be alright.

It's more important that Trevor is okay with it as he will be spending much more time up there than me.
Apart from the time when me and Daz fit the roof, but that's not yet so I will try not to think about it.
We had another big delivery today - the coping stones for the top of the parapet.
There are 58 large ones and they are very heavy.
We will need to hoist them to the top and it's another thing that I am not going to think about yet.
At the moment they are sitting on the pavement to the front of our plot and we have had to extend the fencing around them.

New stud wall

Busy day today, and Darren has made a start on the stud wall on the top floor.
We only have one room at the top and one wall is brick, the back wall is almost all glass, and the remaining two are wooden stud walls filled with insulation.

The first four panels are up and are currently a bit unstable, but we have braced them as much as possible and it is not due to be too windy in the next few days.