Week 63-65 - Internal Walls

With all our external walls and doors now on it time to turn the attention to some internal walls and doors (or at least doorways) instead.

I have to admit I was feeling rather apprehensive about this: the first thing we did when we bought the place (which seems a very long time ago now – probably because it is!) was to strip the place out completely, including all the internal walls, ever since the building has been 4 large, uninterrupted spaces. Big enough to ride a bike in, play fetch with the dog or even have a full scale Irish jig rehearsal, so I was a little worried about losing the scale by dividing it up, where are we going to play fetch when its raining outside?

Luckily however it has just turned into rather more, very good size spaces and for the first time you can really see the different areas of the building and how they will interact with each other.

The ground floor walls, as with everything else in the building to keep in line with our flood defence plans are blockwork to the lower half and then timber above. I am still far too proud of myself for now being able to (very slowly) build a blockwork walls – I’m sure I will get over it soon, I promise! But I did have fun pretending to be a bricky again.

Above is the view into and then below is view out of the new clean/finishing workshop of the MOS Furniture main workshop, eventually there will be a pair of swing doors dividing these two areas. The eagle eyed among you may also find a ‘hiding Sophie’ in this picture.

The corner of the upper MOS workshop has also had the bike shed built and divided off. This is to store (as the name implies) bikes/motorbike/camping stuff etc etc. Basically anything you would normally keep in the garden shed.

You can also see the dividing walls around the customer staircase up to the gallery. This wall will have the main internal door into the workshop and viewing windows so you can spy on what I am making.

The lower blockwork wall separating the 2^nd downstairs workshop off is also built; this will also eventually have viewing windows into the workshop to the upper section.

A new stud work electrical cupboard for the main workshop fuse box has also been built in the corner.

Upstairs in the gallery level we have built the studwork the divides the residential flat off from the main showroom space.

To the right of the picture you are looking at the hole for what will be the back door to the top floor flat. On this level there is a small hallway, a utility cupboard for washer and dryer and the main bathroom, the rest of the accommodation is then up the half flight of stairs on the top floor.

The left hand side of the studwork, set back a little is a kitchenette and toilet, doored off the gallery for public and commercial tenants use.

This floor has a 4 meter ceiling height which is just not needed in the bathrooms etc so I have introduced a secondary structural ceiling to this stud area which will give use an equivalent of a loft space.