Going up…

After the two men had finished work yesterday we had rain, rain and more rain. It was still raining when I went to bed and although it had stopped by the time I got up this morning, everything was wringing wet. The two workmen turned up shortly after 9.00 am and it wasn’t a very nice morning to be working outside as although it wasn’t cold, it was dull with a heavy mist.

I left them to it as I had things to do in the caravan all morning so didn’t go up to see how things were doing until after they’d left for lunch and here are some shots of what I found. They’d made some progress on the walls at the bedroom end but there was still another course of blocks to go for the most part until they were fully up to top-of-window level.

However, my biggest surprise came when I arrived at the top where they were working and found this.

I knew that as soon as the walls were fully up with the lintels in place on the tops of the windows and doors and the rest of the walls brought up to the same level, it would be time to fit the roof. However, I didn’t know that the roof trusses would be arriving today, but there they were, all ready for the next phase of the build.

My main disappointment was that with all the rain we’d had yesterday, the trusses were outside either ready to be loaded or already loaded on the truck for delivery, with the result that like everything else, they were saturated. I’ve been telling people that this was my biggest fear of a winter build and now my fears had been realised and I just hope that before the trusses are covered by the waterproof membrane that’s going to be installed and the tiles fitted there will be a sufficient dry spell for them to dry out.

Other than that I was pleased to see that the walls were going up although between you and me, I don’t think that the work being done by the current pair is as of such a high quality as that of the two workmen who’d started on the job last week.

The other thing that disappoints me is that with all of the rain we’ve been getting and with the concrete oversite not being completely level, there are now some large pools of standing water. This won’t do any harm for the time being but I hope that they’ll have dispersed by the time the roof goes on and the house is sealed.

I didn’t go up again to check on things until after the workmen had left for the day at the end of the afternoon, by which time the light was beginning to fail and the mist was beginning to thicken again. I was very pleased to find that despite the conditions today, they’d completed the build all round up to top-of-window level.

So the day ended with good news. Now that the walls are so much higher and the blocks are being removed from its inside, the house is beginning to appear more spacious than it has done up to now. Tomorrow, hopefully, they’ll be able to put the lintels in place over the windows and doors and block out the rest of the walls to the same level. The exterior walls will then be complete (in less than a week!) and it’ll be time to move onto fitting the roof. If the weather holds out, I think that there’s a good chance that might be completed by the end of next week, but as usual, we’ll have to wait and see.