Garage Conversion page 7


 

Day 3 – 28th March 2018


 

So day 3, the steel arrives. It’s around 4.60 metres in length it arrives on a flat bed and takes 4 men to unload it into the driveway.

The following pictures show its unloading.

 



 

Upstairs pinned together

So a surprise aspect was the builders saying

‘Don’t worry but due to the fact that there is an existing beam going across the old garage roof void, (which they were not aware of until removing the ceiling in the garage) and the upstairs wall being offset from the one below, we cannot quite support the floor above as we expected.

It should be fine but to be extra sure we are going to pin together the bedroom wall above with scaffold planks, we will need to drill holes through the wall to fix several big bolts to hold the planks each side of the wall together’.

‘Uh whaat!?’ was the reply

Pictures below show the upstairs bedrooms either side of the wall that was ‘pinned’ together temporarily.


 


 

Breaking through…

So the next few pictures show the further progress during the 27th including breaking through the second skin of the wall between the garage and existing kitchen.


You can also see the new beam in place, and supported.

Due to the existing beam running at 90 degrees to the new one, it was necessary for Nick to speak to the Structural Engineer and design (professionally done to scale, on a pad of graph paper propped on the bonnet of a Landrover Defender one of them had on site!) an ‘L’ bracket that would be drilled and join the old and new beams at their intersection.

You can see the design below.

 

 


 

You can see the steel in place here but without the newly designed L bracket yet, the floor joists are being supported still at present.

 


 


 

The ‘Ladies’ are back from school and check out the progress.

Sharon is in the background trying to reassure herself that our bed won’t fall through the ceiling whilst we sleep, later on tonight…


 

Several pictures from the end of the day…

 


 

The end of another day…you can see the hoarding put up across the opening where the garage door used to be.

 


 


 

Day 4 – 29th March 2018


 

The number of vehicles on site at the start of day 4….later on in the conversion it became much worse with Nick & Wayne’s vans, Dave the plumbers, his electrician Gary, Liam and his mate ‘the proper electricians’ too (in fact at one point I think we had 4 electricians on site).

The wall comes completely out, you can see the temporary partition between the garage and old kitchen.

Also the doorway to the understairs cupboard which will be boarded up in due course is evident on the right had wall of the old kitchen. The new doorway to the cupboard is to be formed behind where the prop is (behind the hanging coat).

The man in charge of bricks (and lintels) aka Carl, is in the pictures below. He liked a certain type of ‘builders radio’ that had a higher level of volume than the others on site. When he finished on site there was a more harmonious playing style to the Makita radio…more 70’s 80’s & 90’s and a lot less ‘heavy thump thump’.

…underfloor insulation is put down, followed by the pipes for the underfloor heating.

We were originally going to have two upright radiators in the room but realised that they would restrict the placement of furniture and one of the builders had previously said ‘underfloor heating is the future..’.

As a result we asked Nick to get the plumber (Dave) to re quote for underfloor heating in the garage conversion (so the rest of the house would remain as traditional oil to radiator with a separate circuit of oil to underfloor in what used to be the garage).

Either way the floor in the old garage area was lower than the rest of the house (apparently it has to be due to regulations and oil spills or something) so a screed had to be laid. With underfloor heating the insulation was put down, the pipework fitted into a plastic framework on top, then the screed over the whole lot.

Another day ends, here Nick & Wayne are refitting the hoarding and screwing it into place for the night (8 hours later it would be ‘zrpp zrpp’ and we would be woken by it being removed 60 seconds after their arrival back on site!)

 


 


 

Day 5 – 30th March 2018 – screeding

So day 5 starts with the normal ‘zrpp zrpp’ then builders radio (loud) and Carl gets on with covering the underfloor heating pipes with new screed.

The screed level is taken to match the concrete floor level in the existing kitchen (or what was the kitchen!)

The eldest poses for a picture and then with me for a selfie (photobombed by Wayne!)