Organised chaos

During the last ten days the timber frame has been virtually completed – apart from the sun room and porch which are still under construction at English Brothers.  This involved getting the main roof rafters in place in between continuing periodic heavy rain.  Holes had to be drilled in the upstairs flooring to allow the water to drain away – resulting in two or three inches filling the ground floor.

Finally the roof trusses for the studio room over the garage
were hoisted up with the Merlo and manually moved into position . . . 

. . . culminating with fitting the large south facing oak window.

A couple of days were spent tidying up the site and this morning we were awoken by the English Brothers lorry at 0700, the tilers at 0730, the hemcreters at 0800 and the electricians a few minutes after – closely followed by two reps – the start of three hours of organised chaos! 

The tilers found we had the wrong length nails, the oak feet for the rafter ends appeared to be too short and the electricians asked embarrassing questions like “did we have a copy of the designers brief on the kitchen?”  As of now the kitchen doesn’t even have a roof, let alone a design, as the main gluelam beam supporting the roof seems to have got lost - all 4 metres of it!

 Despite all this by just after lunch (who has time for lunch?) most of the house was waterproofed, the problems with the oak feet had been sorted, all the electrical ducting had been installed in the outside walls ready for hemcreting and two new trade accounts had been established with local electrical suppliers.

So despite a somewhat stressful start, a considerable amount was achieved – a tribute to 8 tradesmen working very well together.