Day 674: The grand re-opening

So our final day on the job. Today was spent putting down the decking boards on our finely crafted, perfectly level and square frame.

And everybody put in a helping hand. The only limitation we had was drills - and later batteries. 

Today's top tip was the use of countersinking screw bits (see below). These rings allow the screw to go flush with the deck - to avoid trip hazards and other RWI's but prevent your super-torque driver from burrying the screw way into the wood causing water pockets and premature rotting of the wood.

After a while, the batteries started expiring (definitely not the workers!). However, Victor kept things moving along with his trusty plug-in drill (who needs batteries?!)

Before it was fit for general use, Montecello Inc management (aka Jen) came to inspect the integrity of our work. 

It passed inspection! (of course) so the workers then tested the load bearing capacity of the corners. 

And voila, a new deck! The pressure treated wood will be left for a year to age before staining/sealing.

The Montecello patio is once again open for business.

And for the record, no adults were harmed (RWI'd) in the making of these posts.

Day 673: Strong foundations

Now that the old deck risk was mitigated, it was time to build a new safer deck in its place. To keep the laborers motivated, the management of Monticello picked up the builders breakfast of champions - Timmys!

Today's task was to build the foundations for the new deck to rest upon and put the supports in place. Safety was the number on priority on the job site as the events of recent days put this all into perspective.

Our architect, Paul Skemer wasn't going to take any risks with this deck. This deck was designed to be strong enough to launch a NASA space shuttle. 

After the workers had finished their glorious breakfast, we got started on the foundations. The blocks were burried in the ground and quite solid. They were designed to carry a 4x4 post. The only issue was that they were far, far, far from being level. The team elected to put the posts in place and run a line level between them to get something more true.

Then we started running 2x8's across the length and width of the porch to create the frame. Of course nothing was perfectly square so this took a lot of moving things around to get right.

With the frame in place and reasonably level and square, we started putting the cross joists in place. These were hung on metal joist supports and spaced to allow the decking boards to be screwed in place. This was where we needed to decide on what lengths of decking boards to use.

A helpful step came in from another Paul in the team - try and avoid cutting boards if possible. Time is money, and cutting takes time. Not to mention the risk of another RWI! On a 20ft span of deck, this meant alternating 12ft and 8ft lengths of boards. All installed with no cutting required. Simples.

And there you go .. a deck frame all completed. Time for a much needed break.

Day 672: Not another RWI!

On vacation, but that doesn't mean a break for the builders ... our work is never done.

Monticello Inc's HSE record was at an all time low. Things started off poorly when Scotty-O knocked his own mother off the picnic table. This definitely needed to be classified as an "incident".

All the caring family members took time to ensure Doris was OK after her epic free fallin' incident and also attended to Scotty-O's arm which incidentally was also "injured" in the event.

Victor then came to the scene to cordon off the area and help with the incident investigation.

But unfortunately, Montecello Inc.'s untarnished RWI count was now reset back to zero ...




















And just when we thought the RWI count was going to creep back up. Carolyn sporting her "sophisticated London look" hoodie and heels went crashing through the cottage deck. Oh-no! The counter was going back down to zero.

Luckily the Monticello Inc. rapid response HSE team was there to quickly cordon off the area to prevent any further incidents.

But it was clear that this deck was now a Purple Risk that needed to be addressed immediately. After the Free Fallin' incident, site management wasn't going to let this one slide. Luckily skilled labour was in plentiful supply at the cottage,

The demo team made quick work of the old decking. To be perfectly honest it was like a North Korean luxury car - kind of functional but you know its going to fall apart on impact. And that it did .. a couple of hits of the hammer and a pry bar and most of it came out pretty easily. 

Of course that didn't stop the workers high-fiving, cheers-ing and admiring our great work.

The building site was closed off to the public to protect against any further injury.

And there you go, the remainder of the cottage deck. Hazard removed. Monticello Inc. was once again safe from workplace hazards. Phew.

Stay tuned for the epic rebuild ... and to find out if there were any further RWI's along the way.

Footnote: For those that said "North Korea doesn't make cars!", they do see link. I've personally never driven one, but I can imagine that in a fight between the rotted old patio and a DPRK car, the deck would win.

Day 657: The final'ish product

Thought we'd finish up with some before and after pictures of the house to highlight the transformation. It's not quite finished as we will do so more beautifying (flower pots in windows, etc) but it's mostly there.

Before

After

And on to the next project now ... 

Day 656: Re-outletting

When we first moved in, I told the sparkie* to just rewire the power outlets but leave them where they were. But after living in the house, we began to figure out where they actually needed to be. And of course, they were all in the wrong spots. For instance to plug in our Christmas tree, we needed to run an extension cord behind the couch. Our TV bench jutted out from the corner to make space for the plugs.

In old houses with masonary walls, moving outlets is always a bit more of a challenge as you need to chisel out the space for the metal boxes and conduit for the wiring. Anyway with the walls now scraped, I didn't want to suddenly get lazy on a few final touches, so I ended up moving a couple of boxes to where they should have been in the first place.

All this while the guys were busy outside working on the driveway. I must admit, I would have preferred to have been working outside with the weather we had this weekend.

Step one was to mark out where the boxes and conduit runs were to go. Next the fun part of notching out the bricks to put everything in. This requires a good sharp masonry bit, a hammer and chisel plus lots of patience. Brick dust sucks - the particles get everywhere and somehow find there way into spots in the house that should be physically impossible. Look on the surface of the moon or the bottom of the ocean floor and I'm sure you'll find brick dust. Just don't try to understand how....

Anyway after knocking everything appart, it was time to clean up my mess. Or at least as best as I could.

For the entertainment corner 2 boxes went in, 1 for the power and one for the network and cable connections. The other bits are the Virgin Media cable and phone lines.

As we would eventually be putting down a new floor, I wanted to future proof our connections as much as possible and decided to put down 3 lines of shielded Cat 6 cable and one run of high quality coax. I know of course that after we finish the floors, some new technology will come out making these all obsolete, but hey, best to go with what you know.

The "Christmas Tree" outlet was also moved to a much more convenient spot. Just hoping Christmas trees don't become obsolete, or more likely, we move the tree to a different spot in the room closer to the old outlet.

In moving the outlet, I discovered a loose brick just underneath. This was taken out and re-mortared. You can see the different colour in the photo above.

With all the outlets now in the right place (I hope), I rough plastered everything back in. The room was finally ready for Jim the plasterer to come by and make the room pretty. But that will come post holidays ...

* for reference, they like to create slang names for all the trades here: Electrician=Sparkie, Builder=Bricky, Carpenter=Chippy, Plumber=Drippy .. Plasterer=Muddy?

Day 656: Sweeping up

With the subsurface stuff all sorted, it was back to business for Michael and Co. First they laid down a cement base for the pathway. This needed to dry for a day. My hope was that we wouldn’t find little footsteps from kids, cats, gremlins etc. in the work – but luckily it had time to dry before getting trampled on.

The next day (Saturday), the team came back and went to work on the tiling. This was impressive. 3 guys – one cutting the tiles, one distributing and one laying them down – super efficient. I was going to take a picture of them working but it went so fast, I only got a quick snap out of the window before it was all done. 3 hours in total to do the entire pathway. And the work was nothing short of perfect.

We had deliberated for quite a while on the design and colour scheme. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of options to choose from – see here.

We went fairly plain as it suits us best – small tiles on the border, large ones in the centre and a red border to go with the red bricks (our little bit of flare). Seeing the final product now, it was a great choice I think.

If that wasn’t enough for one day, another team was working on laying down the paving slabs. We went with rough granite as it, well, looks nicer. Not as cheap as the normal blocks, but as we saw it, if we’re going through all the effort, we might as well splurge on getting nice blocks. I’m hoping too that as the granite formed over millions of years, it should last for a few more in our driveway.

By the end of the day, the main part of the pathway was tiled and the driveway was all blocked in. The borders were embedded in cement and sharp sand was set between the blocks to keep everything put. The girls were of course intrigued by all of this and wanted to get in on the sand sweeping action.   

As the guys lost a good day due to London's mini-monsoon earlier in the week, they unfortunately had to sacrifice their Sunday to keep to plan. For the record, this wasn’t me pushing them. The plan for Sunday was finish off the edges and tiling the porch and finally putting down a coating on the granite slabs to make them super tough and also give them a nice dark colour.

The guys happy with their work (as were we).

And the look of the house changed once again. You would hardly think this was the same house from a couple of weeks ago.

Day 653: Trench warfare

When Tom was originally in doing the plumbing back when we first mover in we discovered that 1) the stop cock was in a super inconvenient location under the front door and completely seized and 2) whoever last did the work decided to go with a strange combination of lead and copper.

Everything inside the house was now copper but the main supply from the meter was still in lead. With everything now dug up, this was the perfect chance to make our house 100% COPPER (aka regular unleaded). This sounds a lot more exciting than it really is....

I asked Michael to dig us trench to access the old pipe expose the old piece of lead. It had definitely seen better days and looked bit like a grass snake that tried to mate with a live power cord.

The plan was for Tom to then come by and install some 25mm blue polypipe and relocate the stop cock to somewhere more accessible like where the old gas meter used to be.

The problem was torrential rains. The kind that we don’t typically get in London. The kind that can really screw up even the best of plans. So on the Wednesday it rained and it rained and it rained …

Our trench eventually became a moat. Cool for castles, but not cool when you want to replace a pipe under the house.

So Wednesday was a wash (quite literally). Tom also ended up being swamped (yes, pun intended) on another job and couldn't make it anyway – a good thing as he would have needed SCUBA gear to finish our job 

So things had to wait until Thursday. Tom came by and ran the new polypipe into the house and put the stop cock a much more accessible place - pretty much where the gas meter was before.

So now we have Evian spewing out of our taps with enough pressure to run a small hydro station (this may be slightly exaggerated). But at least we can shut off the water without having to stick our hands into a hole in the ground out front of the house.

With pipe in and the moat drained things were finally ready now for the walkway and driveway to go down.