Week 56-58 - Replacing Gallery Floor

Now our cantilevered scaffolding platform over the river is no longer attached to it, it is time to rip up and replace the whole middle floor of the building. I must admit I had hoped this may be something that wouldn’t actually need doing and we could stick with what was there, but it’s become increasing obvious that it is not really up to the job and we wont get another opportunity to do it. 

Also, what if, in a few years time I decide to commission a replica, life-sized Greek marble statue of myself to position right in the middle of the gallery? The old floor is just not strong enough to take that kind weight and I am not prepared to have that ego maniac option taken away from me! You know?!?

So anyway, yes, the floor is being replaced…  

As we would then have no way of actually moving the joist around to where we wanted them easily or anywhere to put all the stuff that is already stored on this level of the building, I decided to take the floor up in a few staged areas.

Above: Middle section of the main gallery floor

Below: Front road facing section of galley floor

As you can see below the new floor joists are a fair chunk bigger than the old. We have also added a lot of lapped noggins in the opposite direction to the joists. Once the floor boards are on top and the plasterboard on the underside it will create a ‘torsion box’ effect over the floor. This basically means the timbers are all interlinked so load is distributed over the whole floor not just directly beneath a heavy item. I.e. the weight of my statue will be spread evenly over the space! 

 As shown in the last post about tanking, we built two new internal blockwork walls down each side of the workshop below. As we have raised the height of the floor by about 150mm to maintain the same head height below after the new slab pour, and used bigger timbers, the old joist pockets in the walls are no longer at the right height for our floor. So our new internal walls below are now designed to carry the floor at each edge.

Equally all the old pockets in the main floor beams the joist sit on top of, are no longer any good to me. Not to mention these very large, old timbers have only vague memories of what it was to be straight, level or true in their youth. So they have been sandwiched both sides and bolted though with new timber to the new level floor height.

Sophie merrily bolting the joist together where they meet on top of each beam



Joists and noggins going in at each of the side bays of the floor

Finished floor

The 4 small drop outs in the floor at various positions are for plug and networking points to be fitted. When the final floor covering is fitted these will become seamless apart from a small 'finger-pull hole and cable exit

Week 54-55 - Tanking

Tanking? Yea I think it’s a weird name too! It is basically waterproofing the wall (and/or slab) of a building to make it water tight against ground or flood water. In the same way as a fish tank or petrol tank is, so you can kind of see where the name comes from. But those things are designed specifically to keep water in, whereas we’re trying to keep it out – so really it should be called inverse tanking (no?). Anyway, stupid name, let’s move on…

In simple terms all we are really doing is spraying, rendering, painting, spraying again, painting again etc etc the downstairs walls of the building with a vast array of expensive chemicals, pastes, renders, emulsifiers and anti-sulphates. Most of which I only have a very vague understanding of how or why they make it water proof, but I am assured they do. If you are interested there are lots of websites that explain very well, I’ll leave you to educate yourself in your own time – its as dull as you’d imagine.

First I had to build new inner block work skins the the two side walls of the building. This is because the tanking needs a smooth even surface with no cracks to adhere to. The old stone walls are none of these things and have cracks and gaps a whole families of borrowers could live in. I admit I am far to proud of these two walls for what they are! But I had never done any block or brick laying before this project and always wanted to. I have definitely seen a good improvement in my skills since the first blocks I laid at the beginning of the build. 

Above you can see the first coat of the K11 slurry going on to the right hand side and prepared area for coating with all other chemicals applied to the left.

Finished river wall now waterproof up to just above window level

The middles stone wall of the building was rendered first before coating rather than blocks as the sides. As it is internal and only needs to withstand water pushing up from below not direct attack.

And finally the concrete floor around the main entrance, the only part of the old floor that was not covered by the new waterproof concrete floor was also tanked.

Week 53 - Velux Roof Windows

We negotiated ourselves a dry week with the powers that be, so we took advantage, cut some holes in the roof and put in some roof windows.

We are putting in 3 Velux windows into the roof above the residential area of the building. Two above either side of the bed in the main bedroom. These two will eventually have remote controlled blinds on them so you can set them to open up in the morning to wake you up – which I must admit I’m rather looking forward too.

The third is in the 2^nd bedroom/TV room above the mezzanine area. This one actually has the top pivot option. So as well as opening and swinging from the middle of its length like most Velux windows do, it will also hinge from the top edge so you can stand underneath it and look out in the rain etc. You know – pretend you’re in some romcom film.

View from outside once reveals have been cut out. I must admit this would of been a much easier job if it had been done at the same time as the roof was being done in the first place. Unfortunately we just didn't have the money to actually buy the windows at the time.

The frames and flashing kits fitted to the bedroom pair. The velux products and flashing kits are really very good, and once you have them in your hand and actually doing the job, straight forward enough. I have to say tho, the instructions are absolutely terrible.
I do understand that they sell these things worldwide and therefore dont ideally want to print the instructions in multiple languages, but the endless 'happy and sad' faces and word art ticks and crosses that these purely image based instructions go through to explain something that would take 5 words did drive me to the point of insanity. Maybe just go for the big 3 languages guys?

Week 51-52 - Pouring New Concrete Slab

We are pouring a new concrete slab over the entire split bottom floor of the building. These areas do already have a concrete floor but it is no more than I thin skin over the hard-core foundations at points, extremely uneven, cracked and in multiple sections. All in all no good and more importantly we need the floor to be water proof for our new flood defense plans, so we are pouring a new waterproof concrete slab at a minimum of 10 cm thick over the whole floor. Unfortunately the old floor is so un-level, to get our 10cm thickness in the highest corner we are actually pouring 28cm in the lowest. All in all we have poured 24m3 which is well over 50 tonnes of new concrete. Now this stuff doesn’t grow on trees (I assume mainly for gravitational reasons) and this has been quite depressingly expensive… ‘yay new concrete floor!’ doesn’t quite have the same ring as ‘yay new motorbike!’ does it.

Having said that…… look how smooooth it is…

We poured the two different levels of the floor on two separate days, the first being the lower river side. It was just Graeme and I there to do the leveling, solely and completely due to this comment made by the concrete sales rep:

“This is self-leveling, free-flow concrete, we’ll pour it in through the window gap at the far end and it will pretty much spread itself out on its own: you’ll barely have to do anything.”

This was the biggest lie I have heard since this blond toff drove round in a bus telling us that leaving the EU would save £3 million a week. While it may have been ’more’ free flowing than your average concrete, it is in no way self-leveling over that distance. It quickly turned into one hardest days’ work of my life.

Concrete being pouring through window reveal

Trying to spread out and level the never ending supply of concrete pouring through the window. Five of the big spinning/wurly lorries we had in total. (and yes my inner 5 year old still thought they were super cool!)

Power floating the drying concrete...

The second pour on the higher ground floor area required a far bit more prep than the lower, as we had to build some fairly robust shuttering to hold the concrete where we wanted it while it set. This also involved creating a small ramp across the front doors of the building to the new floor height and a much larger ramp between the two floors.

The two old steps between the two levels before we started...

Steps taken out and floor above taken backwards to allow for a shallow ramp

Starting the ramp shuttering. Also you can see the re-bar been added to the stone wall to strengthen the new concrete retaining wall.

Finished shuttering from lower and upper level

Shuttering was then loaded with lots of ballast to help it stand up to the weight of the concrete 

I wasn’t going to be fooled by the reps marketing talk this time – I needed more man power for this pour. So once again I found myself, NOT stuck up a fell with a broken ankle – but I called Keswick mountain rescue anyway!

A huge thank you to Richard, Grahame and Big Chris for their help, especially as (and im being honest here – I could easily of left this part of the saga out!) my shuttering sprung a leak! I’ll use the saying ‘all’s well that ends well’, as this did end well. But I could have easily turned into a major disaster with all the wet concrete above pouring down over the new set concrete of the lower slab. We managed to find where it was getting through (at the bottom of the ramp shuttering) block it up and get all the escaped cement back up to the higher slab before it started to go off, or worse still give way completely.

The aftermath of the leak around the ramp

Finished ramp and retaining wall between the two levels

 Graeme trying to 'kick' the wet concrete out across the space! I mocked, but actually turned out to be a effective method.

Week 45-50 - River Roof, Wall and Externals

Bulk of the work is now done on the river wall so its time to see a before and after picture to boost our motivation now the summers (relative) warmth is long gone...

We had about a two week delay waiting to crack on with the roof while it rained, but finally my anti-rain dance worked and we got started (my version of this involved dancing in underwear in the spare room while the cat gives you a judgmental look) and just to prove how effective my dancing skills are we were then blessed with 2 dry weeks.

First off we needed a way to have access to actually do the work, and once again, someone has put a river right in my way.
In theory at least we could have put up standard scaffolding down into the river. However then the environment agency wanted to get involved and insist on all sorts of impact reports and restrictions etc etc. Which to be honest we don't have the time, money or (most importantly) patience for. So instead I decided to cantilever a wooden platform out the upstairs windows.

The bulk of the support for this platform was built of the new steel work for the balcony. Unfortunately this doesnt go the full length of the building, and we needed the platform too, so to support the platform further out we build these two supports at each end, bolted them down the the floor, and then stuck them through the windows.

All the temporary old steel sheets removed to reveal the new roof structure.

First as mentioned in the last blog entry we fitted all the glass and them felted and battened out between for the slate.

After much deliberation and discussion with the the planning department we have used reclaimed welsh slate. We were keen to go for  reclaimed as it will blend in with everything around it instantly and also for cost. Unfortunately you can only get  2nd hand Cumbrian slate in random length tiles. This isn't really a problem when you are doing a large single pitch roof as you just do multiple rows of ever decreasing length slates. However here we only actually have 5 sections of slate about 1.5 m2 each. I am of the very strong opinion it would have just looked a mess, and it turns out the national park planning authority agreed with me! - who knew that would happen.

Sophie decided she thought slating a roof looked like fun and wanted a go - I think maybe because it is, and I told her so every night when I got home. Unfortunately she only decided this once the roof was finished and point blank refused to go out on our 'totally rock solid' (or at least yet to be proved otherwise) temporary scaffold platform. So we improvised and tiled the ground level roof of the new bin shed instead, although she did still need a beer crate to stand on. As you can see, she did a grand job.

Note Sophs tool belt, I got serious brownie points for giving her this to wear! - she's so easily pleased

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