New Workshop - Getting there

Things have continued to progress on the workshop over the last few weeks.  We now have the patio doors fitted on the house side and we have replace the neighbours fence we removed during construction. We have also done several tip runs so things are beginning to look a lot more tidy.

Building control have done the final inspection and although it will take a couple of weeks for the paperwork to go through they have verbally confirmed its passed. I just waiting for sign off from the planning officer.

The biggest change since last time however is that the internal painting is nearly completed. Once again big thanks to my Dad for all his hard work painting! The blocks are really soaking up the paint. So far we have used about 50 litres of paint on the walls, but we will need at least another 10 litres maybe 20.

Hopefully next week we will get the floor painted, the roof insulated and maybe even get the power hooked up. Looks like I might even get everything done by my dead line of the 11th of July after all!

New Workshop - Doors to Manual

Once again its been another busy week on the workshop and we have made much progress. Finally we have guttering up which worked out well although rather annoyingly I messed up and was short on a couple of bits.

The big progress however is that we have now fitted the segmented garage doors.  I opted for these over a roller shutter as they are both more secure and offer a much better seal against the weather.  The only real down side apart from the cost is that you do lose a bit of head room to the track.


Hopefully by the end of next week I will have the double doors fitted at the other end of the garage and thus we will finally be waterproof.  I also hope to make good the fences between my garden and the neighbors.

New Workshop - We have a floor

Sorry the updates have been a bit thin on the ground of recent times, as is often the case work and life got in the way.

Over the last couple of weeks we have made loads of progress, but the big one is that the floor has now been poured and is slowly curing.  I opted for a power floated floor in the end and I'm really pleased with the finish. Once its cured I think I will be painting it if only to help keep the dust down.

Hopefully by the end of the week the segmented garage door will be fitted and we will finally have some guttering up.

New Workshop - Feeling Drained

I had an unexpected call from the ground works contractor to say he would be able to start work on the floor slab and drainage earlier than expected so thing have once again started to move ahead.  This week they got the drains in and on Monday they will be digging the soakaway.

Big thanks to my dad who came over on Saturday & Sunday and made a start on painting the render. Also to Steve for coming round with his ronnie and drilling the foundation for the power cable.

Hopefully by the end of next weekend we will have a nice concrete floor and maybe even the guttering and downpipes.

New Workshop - Rendered speechless

Just another quick end of the week progress report on the workshop.  I am really surprised how much things have progressed this week things have really moved along. The soffits and fascias have been installed and the rendering has been completed which was no small feat considering the weather has not been great.  We didn't get the guttering up but all in all things have moved on nicely.

Things will slow down now as I am waiting for the concrete floor to be poured and the drainage installed which the contractor can't fit in until the end of the month.  Once that done the doors can be fitted and we will be about done other than the fit out .

New Workshop - Roof

Just another quick end of the week progress report on the workshop.  This week the roof has been tiled and pointed so other that the lack of doors we are finally water proof.  The remainder of the beading and scratch coat has been applied so things are moving along nicely.

Next week we should be getting the soffits, fascias and guttering up. If the weather holds off and with a bit of luck we may even get the render on.

New Workshop - Scratch That

This will just be a quick progress report, largely to help me keep track of progress. Things started slow this week but really picked up as the week continued.  The scaffolding has now been taken down giving for the first time a feel of how big the space is. Some times it feels huge others a bit narrow, but regardless its much bigger than the old one!  Work has started on the rendering.  Nearly all the beads are on and both end wall have received there scratch coats. 

The roofing membrane is now in place along with most of the tile lath. Friday afternoon the tiles arrived so all being well the roof should be completed by the end of next week providing the weather plays ball!

New Workshop - Roof Structure

Evolution EVOMAG28 Magnetic Driller

Made loads of progress on the workshop over the last few days, despite a last minute hick up on Tuesday afternoon. The steel supplier announced that they would not be delivering the steel in the morning as agreed and that I could either take delivery in the next hour or sometime next week. Thankfully a couple of my friend and colleagues, Mark one of the developers from Asptech and Steve our heating engineer volunteered to help unload so with a lot of effort and foul language we took delivery.

First thing Wednesday morning my new magnetic driller arrived, man this thing is good.  I have hired them before but finally decided it would be worth buying one in the long term.  We took the opportunity to drill the steel whilst it was on the floor.  Unlike when drilling by hand I did all the holes with a single bit, we didn't even need to drill a pilot hole.

Then came the really hard work, getting the steel into position. I hired a genie hoist to provide the bulk of the heavy lifting but we did still need to use my old trusty chain block to raise it over the wall. Well that and Dave and Steve's inhuman strength. It does not matter how many times I put a steel in, moving something that heavy, that high in the air still leaves me feeling very nervous.  I was very glad when we had it sitting in its final position on the pad stones.

On Friday morning we bolted a timber to the top of the steel using the holes we had drilled on Wednesday.  With that in place we marked up and cut a template for the rafters, luckily everything was pretty square and even so we could cut all the rafters identically.  Thing were a bit slow going at first but after lunch we really got into our stride.

We got the last of the main rafters in just as it started to rain heavily so we decided to call it a day (we had nearly run out of timber anyway, as I had not though we would of got so much done).  So thanks to Gareth, Jonathan, Rich, Rob and Steve for all your hard work and hopefully we will be able to get the barge board rafters in tomorrow.

New Workshop - Walls

Just a quick progress report on the workshop / garage build. Yesterday morningI sat around waiting for the lintel to support the masonry above the segmented up and over door to arrive (it was meant to arrive Friday, but it finally turned up Saturday morning).

So as we stand all the walls are up to eight foot high and the lintel is in above the pedestrian door and the lintel for the garage door is ready and waiting.  Next week we will hopefully get the second lintel in place, build the gable walls up to ridge height and get the ridge beam installed.  If we get everything done and the materials arrive in time works out we will be framing the roof over the Easter break.

New Workshop - Foundations

The shored up trenches awaiting inspection.

Once again all of the below took place a few months ago but my day job was so busy I never got round to posting. Finally I have had a quiet day to write this up, Hopefully this post will bring things pretty close to up to date.

Having had a couple of false starts I finally found someone to do dig out for and then cast the concrete foundations for my new workshop.  Fitting the building on the site proved more difficult than I was hoping as the site is both not square and out of level.  With a bit of work we managed to get it on site with only a slight reduction in size from that planned.  The reduction being required do to the fact that the plot has a slight taper, getting smaller from front to back.

What with the wet weather, the ground being a little on the soft side and the closeness of a neighbors building  we  had some unexpected expenditure shoring  up all the trenches whist we waited for the building inspector to sign off on the work.  Sadly despite everybody's hard work when the building inspector arrived she was not willing sign off as she had concerns about a tree that used to be on the site. After a few days she finally came back to me and said she would require the trench depth to be increased by 50mm, which was a shame as we had now shored up the trenches and this would now require doing by hand!  Whether the 50mm would really make any practical difference I do not know be needless to say we complied with her request and thankfully she was happy to accept photographic evidence so we did not need to wait for her to come back out.

Trenches full of concrete.

So with the sign off, we cleared the site of rubble and the soil from the trenches and ordered the two truck loads of concrete which came in at just over a thousand pounds which was a lot more that I was expecting!

Since then we have got the walls up to dpc level but I will save the pictures of them until my next post when hopefully the walls will be up to ridge height. Hope fully this will be in the next few weeks providing things warm up a bit!