Stairway to Heaven (well to the first floor anyway)


R organised the whole thing brilliantly. It went up so fast there wasn't time to photograph the actual lift.



1. Staircase waiting to be laid into it's space while they remove the wall that's in the way.




2. Staircase in place waiting to be lifted. Its bottom end is laid over two beams of wood which are the exact size of the distance between the bottom of the stairs and the opposite wall.




3. Three strong blokes lift straight up at the heavy end, and




4. E at the bottom pulling out the beams: the staircase then slides back along the floor against them, so it is exactly in place. The top end then rests against the vertical face of the first floor.



5. 30 seconds later, it's safe to walk under it




6. Et voila - R climbs the stairs one minute later - no fixings at all - held on by gravity.

It's all roof and stairs at the moment.

The roofer put the roof on in the same way as he put all other roofs on in this area - battens, counter battens, lay the tiles on top. But when the surveyor from our building warranty company came, it turned out that, in financial and insurance terms, this was wrong - they should have been installed in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions, i.e. with one tile clip per tile. Not every third tile, not the much easier nailing, but one clip each. So they all have to come off and be done again. None of the local professional builders we spoke to has ever heard of this being done before in this area.

So an insurance and financial issue, not a reality issue. But we will conform to it. And pay the extra!

Then the staircase came last week and there were errors so it had to go back and be remade. Anyway the new one came today and R is working out how to fit it in as the angle of the risers and goings in relation to the strings is not right (technical or what!). He's hoping to get it up today. An exciting photo to come!

In the meantime, here are some pictures of a couple of leprechauns who came to help with the painting!

Roof is all fixed - hooray! One heroic timber frame erector came and worked really hard for a day to get the two small walls up and the roof is now straight. So that's all right. R is a Man With a Mission, still building the wall - he reckons he is now about 25% of the way through. And I'm still taping the joints between timber frame panels to keep out every small bit of air.

We had extra help staying with us this week and here is a picture of her painting the false rafters / mini bird houses.


and, from below, the feet....


Here's a picture showing, from left to right: next door, next door's fence, the famous Wall, R with a brick, a whole load of bricks, the path, the washing, the caravan and a late rose. He did 120 bricks today, which I believe is more than Winston Churchill used to do, and is aiming for 150 a day, at which rate he could be finished in three weeks. Then he can get onto the house...

We now have a roof!! For today, anyway - turns out there are Problems with the ridge beam such that it has started to sag (a bit and you can't see it till you measure it) and the timber frame blokes are coming tomorrow to fix it. They forgot to put a couple of small but essential walls in to prop it up, so they have to come and Acrow it up from inside then put the walls in, which we hope will solve the problem.

Anyway, it looks very nice.It is finished now but I haven't been up there recently. I've been down below, on the ground floor, doing the airtightnessing - possibly that should be airtighting, airtightening - anyway it means stopping up the gaps. If I get desperate for new material, I'll put a photo of it on the blog but I think that could lose me a lot of viewers on the grounds of getting too boring. After a day's work I've done the kitchen, which is the biggest room.

The staircase is the next exciting thing to happen. This is Good Thing, for me at any rate. R can leap up the small metal ladder we have got in the place where the staircase can be but I am no mountain goat, so getting to the first floor for me means climbing the big ladder attached to the scaffolding outside, to the second lift of the scaffolding walking round the house and then scrambling in an undignified way through a first floor window (north side) and crashing onto the floor, hoping that there are no workmen there to see me. Then back again with whatever I came up to get. The plus side of this is the view from the scaffolding - treetops and fields - and a never-again-to-be-seen close-up of the roof and my little half-finished bird houses.