Causes for joy and despair

The destruction continues apace, with the house now being deficient to the tune of two roofs, three walls, four windows and a door. It has, however, acquired three Very Large Holes. These will be for pouring concrete into as footings for the new steelwork, assuming the buildings inspectors who were coming today are happy with the holes. At nearly a metre cubed each, I can't see how anybody wouldn't be happy with them really. If you're going to have a hole... make sure it's a big one. Or three big ones, which must be three times as good.

Before it finally disappears forever, I do have another little visual treat for you, however. I present for your delectation the manner in which the lean-to extension is joined to the flat-roof extension:

Construction at its finest

Please don't spend too long staring at that image, looking for the cross-bonding of bricks, or the anchor bolts, or indeed anything at all. There is literally nothing, not even silicone sealant, in the gap between the two buildings. They are simply built "quite close" to each other. Not even that close.

On the plus side, we have discovered that the pitched roof is actually attached to the main body of the house with something more than glue and good wishes. Not much more, but something more.

A bolt, a bolt, my kingdom for a bolt!

In fact there are at least four M6 bolts holding the first set of roof timbers to the wall. Which is four more bolts than appear to have been used to hold anything else together. This genuinely made me almost giddy with excitement. You have to take your pleasures where you can.

Meanwhile, the nature of my mind is such that I have been awake since 4:30 this morning fretting about the roof trusses, and their location, and appearance, and size and whether they will have to span what was going to be an open, vaulted ceiling and completely change how the room was intended to look, or whether there's an alternative structure, or whether we should revert to having a "normal" flat ceiling in the revamped extension to avoid having exposed (not very beautiful) trusses. You'd be surprised by how many hours I can spend worrying about roof trusses.

And then this morning, MrBuilder arrived on site, as well as the Diligent Weekend Builders. So I asked MrBuilder if we had to have the trusses visible, and now I know all about king trusses and queen trusses and purlins, and he knows what we want, and it's all fine, we almost certainly don't need to have exposed trusses, and what was I worrying about anyway? But never fear, I'm sure there'll be another thing I can lie awake worrying about soon.