Saturday, February 27, 2021

Day 1953: Our new balcony .. well sort of

Now that the weather is getting a bit nicer, we found a great 2nd use for the scaffolding .. a garden balcony.

Had drinks up there on Friday night and I think we'll bring up the lawn chairs soon.

The only problem is the ladder coming back down .. not recommended in the dark after a few drinks.

But just look at the view. No rush to take this down.

If it wasn't for this @#%& covid, we could have a party up here. 

Friday, February 26, 2021

Day 1952: The wall continues

This week was all about the wall. The sun was shining, Cyndi Lauper was blaring and the guys were singing (just maybe not at the same time). I've gained some appreciation for bricklaying - it's a long meticulous process. But so glad we decided to do it. 

The guys at MTL had to order 1000 more bricks ... guessing that means they have already gone through 1000+ .. crazy. 


Here is the wall about 3/4 done. Really neat how they built a platform up as they went.

You can also see the formerly leaning stack of Surbiton (see here) in it's new glory. There is a story on this but will save that for another post when I run out of things to write about. 


A close-up showing how the bricks follow the front pitched roofline. 

As these are reclaimed bricks, each one is unique and has a story. Some have been used more than once and many are bowed and slightly varied in sizes. What's great is the character they have. The guys will point and stain some of the more yellow ones to better blend in later on.


And the final wall from the front with the roof battens bedded in. You can see another mini-platform that the guys built to reach the top. Check out the blue skies!


Another view of the finished chimney .. not from an angle I'd be talking. I'm dizzy just looking at it. From here you can see the additional height of the chimney vs. our neighbours.


And's here's how it looked from the inside. The concrete blocks are more structural and will be hidden under plasterboard (dot and dab) so it's function over form here. 


And lastly the fished wall going all the way to the top. The support is holding up the steel joist at the moment but this will be removed to rest on the concrete block wall at some point. 


With the wall in place, the space is feeling more and more like a room. Exciting!

Next week they'll start on the other side.

Sunday, February 21, 2021

Day 1947: Closet be gone

Sometimes after starting a project you realise that you should have done it differently. This is one of those times. 

My task today was to demolish the hallway closet to make way for the new loft stairs to go in. Looking back, this would have made a great time lapse video. 

But unfortunately with demolition projects, you can't go back a few steps to get the right shot. So instead of watching me destroy a hallway closet in 35 seconds to some funky techno-pop, you're unfortunately stuck with 3 lousy photos. Sorry.


First the doors came out. Then I went to work with the reciprocating saw. All my work anxiety from the previous week was instantly released with some constructive destruction. 


And like magic, the closet vanished. And check out the funky wallpaper behind it. Another one for the collection. 


Friday, February 19, 2021

Day 1945: Another Great Wall

Throughout history, many iconic walls have been erected which serve as a testament to the might and engineering capability of the civilisations that built them. 

The Great Wall of China (Qin's Wall, c. 221 BC)


The Great Wall of Scotland (Hadrian's Wall, c. 122 AD)


The Great Wall of Mexico (Trump's Wall, c.2017) 


Well .. now we're adding another landmark to this list ....

The Great Wall of Surbiton (Hare's Wall, c.2021)

Ok, it's not quite finished but it will be equally as spectacular as the walls that came before it. 



Now that the weather returned back to normal - cloudy and rainy but above zero - the brickies could get to work on the gable wall. The intent here was to make a new wall look like a 120 year old wall so it wouldn't be too obvious. The solution was to use reclaimed bricks taken from some unfortunate building or perhaps a not-so-great wall. The colour of bricks here are know as London Yellow Stock. They are common on many properties in the area and typically go on the side of buildings - the pretty facing bricks go on the front. 

A little about blockwork before showing the details. There are multiple different styles of brick courses the most popular shown in the photo below. 

The stretcher bond is the most basic that people will recognise and works well on a single row ("skin") brick wall. It has good vertical strength but not lateral and isn't typically used on house walls. 

The next 2 types are for double skin solid walls where the bricks are alternated length and width wise so that the two skins are physically connected and offering strength vertically and horizontally. The choice here is just a matter of taste. The Flemish Bond has a similar cousin the Surrey Bond which coincidently was used on our house. 


Below is an example of the Flemish Bond being used on our wall. Now building regs call for a cavity wall - air gap between the skins - so the alternating bricks can't be laid lengthwise and were instead chopped in half. 


The inner skin won't be visible on the inside or outside so the guys used cement blocks. Denser, bigger and less fiddly. The two skins are held together with metal ties that go into the mortar. These are placed throughout to keep everything solid. 


And the Leaning Stack of Surbiton is no longer leaning - we decided to rebuild this from the base. It also needed to be raised to meet building regs. Unfortunately, we'll also require a new longer stainless steel chimney lining (queue sound of money going down drain)


But on the bright side, the bricks look great. Most match, some don't. But the guys are going to go over with a stain to blend everything in a bit better. The unevenness of the bricks is intentional and provides some of the character - it will look great when it's fully pointed. 


And rest assured, while the bricks themselves aren't perfectly even, the wall is perfectly level as the guys are following a brick line across. 


There you go. The making of the Great Wall of Surbiton. Hopefully it be just as iconic and will last as long as some of it's predecessors. Just hoping it doesn't take as long to build.




Friday, February 12, 2021

Day 1938: A meshy Friday

It was a slow'ish week overall with most of the activity happening on internet tile sites .. 

But things picked up on Friday with the guys finishing off the prep work on the outside. This involved them first putting a breathable membrane over the ply and then nailing on a mesh to hold the cement render. 

Q: What's louder than a building hammering in nails
A: 4 builders hamming in nails

Yup, the mesh part involved a quartet of builders hammering away in symphony. We're definitely not getting nominated for this year's Neighbour of the Year Award. And yes.. there actually is an award for this -> see here




As you can see, there is a whole lot of nails and staples holding the mesh in place. Guess that is a good thing as it's going to be covered with a cement render which I can imagine will have a bit of weight to it. 


With the exterior all framed up, we can get a great idea of what the structure will look like from the outside now.

Next week will be fairly busy with the brick gable wall finally getting built and possibly even the rendering. After a week below zero, we're expecting weather to hit the low to mid teens next week... Finally.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Day 1936: Just too many choices

With the Beast from the East - Part 2 wreaking havoc on the UK this week (we got down to -8 C which is $%@#'n cold here), there was understandably a little less activity going on atop our house. The guys did some work but I felt bad for them being outside. I had a heater and was wearing my coat in the cabin and I was still shivering.

The brickwork doesn't work when it's that cold. Apparently anything under 4 degrees C is a non-starter as the mortar won't set properly and could freeze. 

Making the most of the quiet time, we set off to determining the finishing and fixtures. This is the part that I enjoy the least - I'm good at smashing and putting back together but don't ask me what colour of tile complements an accent wall. My answer will usually be "the one on sale".

Care however was armed with a pile of home magazines to determine the "perfect look". First the bathroom, I'm told we'll go with something like the picture below with a pattern tile on the floor, light metro tiles and a colourful wall pattern. The basin will be a vanity unit in a light grey with round mirror. To which I said "OK!"


The architect's drawings didn't have the fixtures put in place to scale so Care took it upon herself to show a hidden talent for both PowerPoint and for architecture. I have to admit - it was pretty good. 

We had initially intended on a free standing bath but seeing as we're not in a massive mansion with cavernous space, it would have looked out of place. It was key however to have both a walk in shower (which we'll use all the time) and a separate bath (which we'll never use). Given the large'ish size of the bathroom footprint, we'd have room for both (just). 
A lot of thinking has gone into this design - use of natural light, easy access to all the features, visual appeal on entry, routing of waste pipes. It's great when you can start from a relatively blank canvas. We opted for 2 windows with the vanity in the middle to allow a mirror to be above the sink yet maximizing window area. The kids and I saw a Bluetooth enabled, 36 colour led/speaker/mirror for the vanity unit which we thought was super cool .... this was vetoed unfortunately. 👎

And of course the other choices to make were on tiles .. for anyone following this blog, you'll realise 2 things 1) I've spent a lot of time tiling and quite enjoy it and 2) I absolutely hate picking tiles out.

When a while tile is not really a white tile and you're starting to debate texture, edges and gloss it all becomes a bit too much .. and don't get me started on colour. choices for grout, which then takes you back to tile re-selection. For someone that's colour blind, this is my definition of cruel punishment. For bathroom part 1 - we had a mountain of tile samples to work through. I can't believe I never posted a picture of this for comedy value; there was over 100 individual samples in all.

Here we are starting again. The boxes are arriving daily and the mountain is once again growing. And because the showrooms are all closed at the moment, we need to order samples to see them. Help me. 



And if this wasn't too many choices for one week, MTL has come back to us with more things we need to decide on - fascia board colour, newel/spindle design, stair tread colour .... luckily these were much quicker decisions. 

We made some choices this week but there are still many, many more to come over the next month. And the tile mountain will continue to grow. 

Monday, February 8, 2021

Day 1934: A couple of bricks short of a wall

This post was going to be about the great brick wall of Suburbiton .. or something to do with Pink Floyd. Emphasis here was on 'wall' ...

The bricks were delivered on Friday, ready for the brickies to do their magic this week. The weather was great - blue skies and about 13 deg C.


They are new yellow bricks with an aged face to match the existing. After 120 years of exposure to just about everything the weather had to throw against it - not an easy task. I must admit however, MTL did a really good job finding a very close match. Looking forward to seeing how it looks when it goes up. 


A good start, but unfortunately you can probably gather from the opening, things didn't go as intended. As luck would have it, London got hit with ...



What better way to build on record rainfall, a once in a decade snowfall than by adding a twice in a decade cold snap. Why did we decide to start a loft conversion in January again?!!!

Our friends in Canada may be laughing and saying "That's not cold!" .. but to that I respond "It is when you don't have a roof!"

Anyway, as you really can't lay bricks when the weather is below c. 2 degrees C due to freezing/expansion, our beautiful wall will have to wait another week for this cold snap to blow over. Lots more time to think of something creative to write about it I guess ...

Friday, February 5, 2021

Day 1931: The latest and greatest

The loft really started to feel like a loft this week. With the addition of stud walls and window and door frames you could get a feel for how the rooms will look when finished. 
 

And I had to take an obligatory selfie from the top of the scaffolding.


A view from the inside with the 2 - 1.2m by 1.2 m Velux windows - we wanted lots and lots of natural light. 

At the back is a 1m wall with eves storage in behind. We're losing quite a bit of storage overall but getting a whole lot of useable room in return. However, my LBS books may finally have to go 😢


Carolyn scoping out the new bathroom. Look at the height!


This will be our new closet - it's quire deep so we're debating whether we should do a mini walk-in or pull outs.


The box in the corner has the skylight that is going above the staircase. 


And the staircase will go behind this wall (where the ladder is at the moment). Stairs are apparently coming soon - they got measured up this week.


And a view from the gable end wall looking towards the door and bathroom.


Lots going on and getting very exciting ... looking forward to getting walls and a roof up soon.

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Day 1928: Every little helps

If I'm going to be honest, we spent so much time thinking on the floor plan and maximising square metres, we didn't think too much about the other dimension .. height. As it turns out, with all the required structure and insulation needed, you end up losing a lot of ceiling height. 

For those that have visited any old buildings in the UK (we measure them in centuries here and anything built before the first world war is still considered new), you would appreciate that ceiling height was typically an afterthought. Mostly due to previous generations being shorter and it costing more to heat rooms with high ceilings. Estate agents refer to this as "warm and cosy".

Anyway for loft conversions, the only requirement is that there is at least 1.9m (6' 3'')  at the top of the stairs and nothing for the rest of the rooms. Our plans had for 2.01m (6' 7") .. fine we thought as Care gave up plans for a career in basketball many years ago. 




... but when we went up there, the actual height hit us. Not like it was terrible but we are blessed with high ceilings in the rest of the house and could instantly feel the difference. 

The only options really weren't options:
  1. Raise the roof - would require going back to planning permission and stop all the work. Nope.
  2. Drop the ceilings on the 1st floor. Done by a lot of conversions but really messy and would require us to move out. Not to mention having to re-do all the great work the guys have done thus far. Also nope.
  3. Fit the insulation between the roof rafters (cold roof). Done by many still but apparently creates major issues with condensation down the road. We were guided against this as well.
So for the bedroom, we'll have to just live with the 2.01m. But hopefully it won't feel too cramped with all the windows in place. Besides, most of the time you spend in the bedroom is horizontal anyway.

But the bathroom .. now that's another story....

Given the design of the house - where the part to the back is lower than the main area - we did have the option of dropping floors.. 

It was about a day's work to undo the floor joists and move them down a bit but in the end, we managed to get about 15cm of additional height. Now there will be a step down when you get into the bathroom. Not huge, but to quote Tesco ... 





For reference, here's Care against the new ceiling height. In total it's about 2.15m or 7'. We'll take it.