The horror, the horror...

In a slightly surprising (to me) turn of events, the builders arrived at eight o'clock on Saturday morning to continue ripping the house apart, and appear to have every intention of doing the same on Sunday. Nobody can say they're not going for it. Today was, however, punctuated with pauses for them to stare and shake their heads, and on occasions to point and laugh. For those with minimal experience of building work... pointing and laughing is never a good sign.

I was chatting to a friend outside school the other day, and commented on the fact that the ceiling had been taken down. To my surprise she said, "Well I hope they're putting it back up again." I realised at that point that perhaps I had not outlined the full scope of what was happening to the house. In short, about a third of the downstairs area is being completely demolished, new foundations, floors, walls, doors and windows put in. Oh, and they might have to take the roof off and put it back on again as well.

To get your eye in, here's a picture from before they started, and the end of today...

 

 

Empty and ready for action

The only really notable thing about the above photograph is the abominable tongue-and-groove sloping ceiling that I've spent nineteen years hating.

At least the ceiling's gone.

Not only has the ceiling vanished, so has a section of the wall at the end, not to mention one of the roofs, and a large concrete lintel. I only regret that the wall to the right of the patio doors had gone before I had a chance to take a photograph of how it was joined to the side wall. Which is to say, it wasn't. There was a thick bead of silicone sealant approximately bridging the gap. It was possible to rock the entire wall backwards and forwards by hand. The draughts that used to plague that room are making more and more sense all the time.

This wholesale ripping out of the former lean-to roof, as well as the former flat-roof that's out of shot round the corner at the end of the room to the left, has allowed a thorough inspection of the structure of the third roof. Which is beginning to fall into the category of "things I'd rather I didn't know about".

Let us take exhibit A, the steel sub-structure. There are three uprights along the right-hand wall, spanned along their tops by a long beam. Well, sort of. There isn't one long beam, there are two which are kind of welded together in the middle. Kind of.

Can you see the welds? Me neither

Attached to this structure is the wooden frame of the walls. Well, when I say attached...

I wonder what these bolt holes are for?

Each upright is equipped with splendid big bolt holes (highlighted above, for your convenience) for the very purpose of attaching wooden frames to the steel. And yet, our entire timber frame is attached to the steels with glue. Or perhaps silicone sealant. Hard to say. Perhaps it's the slime trail from an alien slug. At the moment, anything's possible.

Now that we've established that the steel frame is not exactly structurally sound, we could move on to consider the roof itself. Which is held up on the steel frame. Here we go, here's one of the main roof beams, resting on the wall. (Unlike the lean-to roof, mentioned previously, the main roof beams do rest on the walls.)

Problem? What problem?

I admit, amongst the profusion of random pieces of timber, you may be struggling to work out what's going on. To help you out, I've marked on the next photo just how much of the main roof beam is actually resting on anything.

Oh, that problem!

And just in case we hadn't found enough things to laugh at, once the ceiling and roof of the lean-to had come out, we discovered a new item to point and laugh at.

The original external wall of the house

Here we are, looking at what was originally the external wall of the house. There seems to be something grey and white and black running across the back wall. What can it be?

Secret surprise

Why, yes! It is a waste-water pipe. It turns out to be the waste pipe from a washbasin upstairs. It runs under the floorboards, springs out of the back wall (formerly hidden above the lean-to roof) traverses the house and exits out of the side wall and down into the drain. And it's held together with gaffer tape. That well known plumbing sealant. Which means this job just got a little bit bigger and will now involve asking the builders to do some additional work upstairs to decommission this particular pipe. Yay.

At least it's not boring round here at the moment. What was that Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times...