Day 1906: Going topless

First day and the work began in earnest. I was trying to take pictures from my cabin and they turned out terrible .. this was looking to be a pretty poor post until the guys at More Than Lofts send across some nice photos over WhatsApp. TOP TIP: If you ever find yourself blogging about what's happening on top of your house (a common occurrence I'm sure) invest in or find a friend with a drone .. or just ask the guys doing the work to take photos.

Today the roofers came .. and well de-roofed the house. Yup, in the middle of winter with a 10 day forecast of rain, rain and more rain we decided to remove the roof from the house. Fantastic planning. 

Watching them do this, I was surprised at how little there actually is on a roof. Tiles, battens and then finally felt underneath. A day of work and it was all gone with just the rafters exposed.

These guys know their trade and used the battens to fix plastic over the exposed roof. Looks pretty solid, let's hope it holds up in the English weather before the new roof goes back on :)

And BTW .. I'm not really joking about the the forecast for the next 10 days ..😬

Day 1905: The big clear out

After 5 years we finally are starting the loft conversion. Better late than never I guess.

And after 5 years of careful planning, we've picked the optimal time to do this - the middle of winter at the onset of Coronavirus Lockdown 3.0. Cold weather outside with all of us trying to work / do schooling / keep our sanity inside. Will make for some good stories in reflection I hope.

The first thing we needed to do to prepare for this was clearing out the loft space. If you remember (and I'll help with a link here), the loft was first converted back into storage back during a previous winter. As it turns out, stuff in a storage space has an R value greater than 1.0. Needless to say, the space was getting pretty full. Fine in normal times - out of sight out of mind I guess but not helpful when we needed to clear everything out to convert the loft. We are getting some storage back, but really need to cull a lot of the junk. Christmas / Hallowe'en decorations are protected of course. 

We initially thought about storing everything in the cabin, but given this is my new office / mancave - it was quickly dismissed. This meant that we needed to find external storage. Enter Big Yellow .. easy to reserve a spot, great service and decent prices. Most importantly, just like off-licenses and photo shops it was considered an essential service and allowed to stay open. Just a 5 minute drive away from us as well so happy days there.

I had a bit of fun moving the stuff there .. particularly with the life size skeleton from Hallowe'en which ended up being my passenger on the drive there. It got a few people's attention :) .. He's now guarding the storage locker for us. 

As you can see, the storage is pretty full now. Initially I thought this was going to be too big for what we needed but the R value of stored items came into effect. After 10 weeks, this may be overfilling, let's see.

Most importantly, the loft is now empty save for some bonus items that can be re-used or go in the skip. Fine either way. 

 

   

Monday the skip and portaloo arrive and the work starts in earnest.