Week 42-44 - Making and Installing River Windows

Its finally time for some river side windows! My inpatients for this has been quietly growing for a few months now, as they are (in my mind at least) one of the best new features we are adding to the building. 

As you saw in the last post where the river wall was prepped for their install, the two middle windows on the gallery floor have been changed to doors and all four now wrap around into the roof.

Unfortunately I cannot claim these windows were a low cost option and to be honest were a pain to make - so they did need to look the part to make it worthwhile.

I think they do, even if i do say so myself, and most the dog walkers in the park seem to agree.

When you walk up the stairs to this floor instead of (as before) being vaguely aware that the river and park are out there (although I admit this wasn't helped by the 30 years of dirt on the old windows). You are now confronted with the full range (bottom to top) of river/park/tree canopy/mountain top/sky, its great, and we never seem to need the lights on anymore - so eventually they'll pay for themselves! Assuming the price of electric goes insane anyway.

Downstairs windows to match all the rest, the most posh workshop windows I imagine I will ever have. Id like to thank my merry band of muscle men for the help fitting these windows. I did have to get the missionary chisel out a few times to tweek them into the reveals and we were all overly paranoid about dropping them into the river, but 'alls well that ends well'.

 I wont bore you again with how to make windows as I did go into this when we made the road side glazing. (above) Gluing up some of the lower level workshop windows, (below) dry testing the aluminium glazing system for the roof windows. This system did take a day of prep and working out in the workshop but once on site and fitting it was extremely straight forward and I am impressed with it. We also went for self cleaning glass for the roof, it is a little more expensive but will not be easy to get to these to clean them, so seemed worth it - and you know... laziness!

All 4 window frames fitted into a non existent roof. We now board up roof sections between windows and get some glass in.

Each panel is passed out through the opening from the inside and clips into a grove that holds it in place while you attach the glazing bars to permanently secure and make it water tight - good system.

All three panels of glass in one window with top glazing bars attached

All roof glass installed and roof boarded out between, doors and window sashes to go

Week 39-41 - Structural Work to River Wall

Until now, nearly a year into the project, we have yet to do any real work to the river wall of the building. If anything we have made it look a little worse - I think it’s time to rectify this.

But first on a vaguely related note... We made friends with an otter!

When the river is low there is about a meter wide bank on our side of the river that you can stand on. Graeme and I were down there cutting down the bushes etc while we had the chance when suddenly the little guy hops up on the bank with us to inspect our handy work, gave me a fairly emotionless look (otters dont have eyebrows) and then jumped back in the river for a swim. It. Was. Wicked.

I thought about leaving all the cut down branches on the bank to make him a new home, but i released it would be wrong of be to deny him the pride and reward of building his own house - he could call it the 'Otter's Mill' and sell miniature ottoman chairs and...... (i cant think of another otter pun).

[O wait - 'Im all otter puns!' BOOM]

(anyway) As we plan to tank (water proof) the whole bottom floor of the building we have to reinforce the wall with steel so the flood water doesn’t push it over/in - which would obviously be less than ideal (DAM! - literally)

You can see in the picture above the bottom half meter or so down to the river foundations of the wall are actually the original old stone walls (thankfully all previously concrete underpinned at the river bed. First we need to notch out this wall at each steel possession and then cast a complete concrete ring beam for the steel work to sit on. I know it doesn’t look much but this actually took well over a ton of concrete to fill.

We are now ready to fit the steel work to the wall. These steels not only strengthen the wall against flood water but they also counter leaver the balcony over the river. So I need to make holes in the walls for these new balcony steels to protrude through. There are 6 upright steels across the back wall with the middle four having horizontal protruding steels to support the balcony.

View from park of the balcony steels, currently with timber used as spacers between the each horizontal until we are ready to fit the rest of the steel structure.

Next stage is to build the new inner blockwork skin of the wall, which encases the steel inside. This inner face will be the surface to be waterproofed. Big thank you to Mr Paul Weller for coming to help me do this brick work, pulling yet another skill from his back pocket. I will henceforth be referring to him solely as ‘the block father’.

First we needed to block up the 2 existing doors as they are turning into windows instead, and add an extraordinary number of extra stiff wall ties to hold the two skins of the wall together.

After bricking up 2 doors down stairs into windows I now need to make two of the upstairs windows into doors (joy). Below you can see my head laborer Graeme (!) removing the old windows while I lengthen the window gaps to full length (just staring on the second in this picture). This turned out to be a lot harder work than I was expecting as the old wall is very strong. Now its done and my solders no longer ache I am very pleased about this fact – on the day of demolition, not so much.

View from the park with all old windows removed and all new window and door apertures made.

The last major job in this phase on the river wall was to finish fitting the rest of the steel to the balcony structure. Frustratingly someone has put a river right where we need to be to do this work (idiots). The obvious solution is a rather large crane from the road side or some sort of JCB etc in the river. Unfortunately with these two options there is large bills and large bureaucrats involved, and these are both things I want to avoid. Instead we went old school and called in Keswick Mountain rescue! A huge thank you to ‘Big Chris’ and Graeme Wilson (now onto his 3^rd job title of the project – head laborer, waste/recycling officer [self-appointed!] and now rope rigger) for setting up a beautifully simple yet elaborate array of ropes and pulleys that Heath Robinson would have been proud of, so we could get the steels into place. Sorry for the complete lack of photos of any of this – I was too busy having fun swinging on ropes and ladders over the river to take any. My bad.

No deck or anything yet but all the structure is now in for the balcony, It may only be 120cm deep but it is long (7-8 meters), I recon we can have at least 15 of us lined up with beer and cocktails of a summers evening. Bring a fishing rod and we can catch our own dinner…

We have also replaced all the slate external windowsills for tall the river windows

Week 36-38 - New Residential Entrance

I've been waiting for Sophie's legs to grow an extra 2 meters, but no matter how hard I pull, its just not happening. Plus I'm getting a little tired of being constantly asked "why there is a random square half way up the wall", so its time to crack on with the new stairs up to the front door of the residential area. (Which FYI - is obviously what the 'random square' is!)

So this is what we started with - you can see the line of lead already in the render on the wall to seal the new stair roof into the building, but that is about it.
Not on the original plans, but since the floods last year with have decided to keep anything timber or porous well off the ground, so I am making the bottom 3 steps out of reclaimed stone from the building and then start the timber structure from there.

This is now my second go at stone walling and although my technique doesn't seem to of improved much, i was at least a little quicker.
Now I fully admit this has more of a ramshackle, found half way up the fells look about it than a freshly built, crisp stone wall. My only real response to this is that this is 100% the look i was going for - and you cant prove otherwise! (so there). I like to think it has the look the 'cool kids' refer to as vintage... and im nothing if not 'down with the kids'

Timber structure then does on top of the stone base and attaches to the wall at the top. Please note (or at least pretend to me you noted) the unsupported double cranked stringer on the side closer to us in the picture. This has some quite complex custom steel brackets uncased in the timber to give enough strength that we do not need any posts coming down to the ground underneath the stairs. It took a bit more work but it means we dont have any pillars blocking the front door.

Timber framework and outer skin goes up and then the roof (corrugated steel to match the rest of the road side) does on.

Another (and thankfully final) staircase made and glued up in the workshop.

Finally the outer skin is battened and bitumen painted. This will then be timber clad along with the front (blue section) at a later date.

Week 33-35 - Road Side Ground Works

There has been getting on for a 2 month break on site while I caught up on some other work, but now it is time to crack on....

We are now doing all the digging up for drains and other landscaping works to the road side of the building - you know, while its the, erm... nice dry summer weather.
My over optimism is this was tested instantly, made worse by the fact that unless you are in the habit of completely wasting your time, you should be digging you new drains exactly where the rain water likes to head to once it has hit the ground. So it gets quite wet.
Having said that it does give you a live/real time test that you are digging in the right place - you've got to find that silver lining.

 New front wall to 2nd ground floor workshop. New window frame and entrance door to the right clad in slate we reclaimed from inside the building where we had to adjust the old roof line at the river side. Have also build a bin store in front - its top/roof still needed to be finished in slate roof tiles and all the brick and block work you see will be rendered and painted the same as the rest the road side of the building.

Finished new threshold to the main front door to the building (Further away in picture) and separate entrance to 2nd ground floor workshop. These 3 brick pillars still need to have there flood gate channels added and then rendered and painted.....
...and then obviously some doors would help too!

 First we are putting a slot drain right across the the front of the property. This will stop any water working its way underneath the large by-fold workshop door at the front and the bulk of any water running off the street onto the parking area and to the main front door - as these areas all slop down away from the road.

Second we are digging a new front door threshold around the main entrance to the building. The internal floor height is actually lower than the ground outside the door. Before you stepped down a single step as you went through the door. This was awkward and very unhelpful for trying to keep rain water out. So i have decided to dig a 1.5m square area out in front of the doors to the internal floor height and surround this area with slot drains.
Now this is all finished and concreted back in with the drains in place it is only about a 250mm step down. Unfortunately to get enough depth for the pipework and a 100mm concrete depth on top I actually had to dig out about 2 ton of mud and stone, which I failed to really think through and appreciate before starting the task - ignorance WAS bliss.

 (Above) Pipes and drains laid out and connected ready for concrete to be poured over.

(Right) Bottom concrete set with shuttering ready for second pour on top to create the side walls of the area

Old windows and structure removed and the new inner skin of block work gone in to create the new window frame with doors to the left. I am increasing the height of this wall so it can be tanked to the same height as the rest of the ground floor. There would have been no point water proofing the whole perimeter of the ground level to 5 ft high only to have all the water pour in at the front window during a flood.

Week 30-32 - External Render and Guttering to road side

Although far from finished the external rendering and gutters to the road side of the building are now finished. So the largest and most expensive climbing frame I've ever had could come down and we can finally see what we've been doing.

 Looking back at the 'before' photo to write this post - I had honestly forgotten how much of a wreak she was! Certainly looking a lot more proud now, Im very pleased (and realise why the neighbors are too).

There is still all the front ground works and drainage to do, the staircase up to the front door of the flat (currently just hanging out, floating in the middle of a wall). Which is to be clad in oak along with the front section under blue cover, and the front doors and windows into the two ground floor workshops. So a lot! No time to hang about patting myself on the back anyway.

Before the render was applied the building had to be prepared for it. All render on old masonry parts of the building had to be stripped. Then all the new timber frame sections first has to be painted in a bitumen paint then coated in a wire mesh for the render to key into.

The mesh comes in long, quite narrow sheets and was time consuming, but a straight forward job. The black and steel mesh did make the building look very space age for a few days too - although it also turned it into a giant cheese grater. Or more accurately a giant wrist and elbow flesh grater.

We also had to fit all the lead work to seal the new flat staircase into the building once built. This means I have to stick to the exact plans now!

 First scratch coat applied and edging beads around the windows revels are fitted

I got a wash and first full coat of paint onto the render while the scaffolding was up but it will get more once the other work is complete. We haven't decided on a final colour choice yet, but it wont be white - front runner at the moment is a pale grey/blue. So it will be less Miami vice - just call me Crockett