Roselea

Author: Shaun

  • New Floor is Laid

    The Sun Corridor now has a new floor!

    In order to make as much of the space useable as possible for each of our rooms, we brought up the level of the floor. The only compromise we decided on is a gentle slope down towards the front door to minimise the step up when anyone comes in via the front door.

    It was a fairly simple construction of 4 lines of CLS timber (38mm x 63mm) supported by little legs every metre.

    Corridor supports

    Corridor supports


    Corridor supports

    Corridor supports

    Then 8 sheets of 18mm OSB boards laid on top. The gap inside was filled up with recycled glass wool bits and pieces to provide a little insulation.

    Corridor floor down

    Corridor floor down


    Corridor floor down

    Corridor floor down

  • Preparations of our Temporary Living Quarters

    we had to change our priorities just a little bit and started the preparations for making our temporary living quarters. We cleared all the remaining bits and pieces from the Sun Corridor which was baking hot today! We also dismantled the large old shelf down the bottom of the storage shed, and finally cut three doorways into the wall between the Sun Corridor and the storage shed.

  • Clean Up!

    We spent the morning cleaning the whole garage, vacuuming all the floors, walls and windows. We are getting ready for the painting task.

  • Garden Room – All Holes Are Filled, at Last!

    The Garden Room is at last, has all its holes, cracks, joints, corners and dents filled in with filler. We have been using two different sort of filler, we decided to try professional Polyfilla and discovered that it stays soft much longer and it is also much easier to rub down afterwards. The other filler is a much cheaper bulk filler from the Fermacell people. Their filler is much much harder and it sets in next to no time (well 30 to 45 minutes!) compared with 4 hours for Polyfilla! The Polyfilla is more than twice as expensive but it offers much easier work of filling in and rubbing the staple holes!

    All the corners are rounded off and the walls to the ceiling and light channels are also rounded off, by using a 15mm plastic pipe as the “curve” to draw along the wet filler. It has come out very nicely!

    GR - Ready to paint

    GR – Ready to paint

    We also put up the cistern for the WC toilet as the final pieces of the Fermacell needed to go up and rounded off. The rectangular box is mounted high up the wall, is a permanent structure with a little lid for servicing. The flush push button works or at least the pump (air) causes the valve to lift up and hopefully release the future water that will be in the cistern! We hope! And all the pipes are concealed inside the wall so no going back! Gulp!

  • Garden Room – Half Way Filler’ed

    We are making progress! We are more than half way completed with the filling operations. All the staple holes are now filled, most of the boundaries have rounded corners and all the doorway trimmings are filled. Half the rubbing is also completed! The major task to do is the bulk filling in the space alongside the metal uprights and just a couple of boundaries to smooth off.

    Then rub rub rub!

  • Garden Room – The Filling Operation

    All the pieces of Fermacell is now up everywhere, all the walls, trimmings around each doorways and windows plus all the corners of the Garden Room as well as extra pieces to terminate all the Utility Rail channel.

    Now it is time to fill all the little staple holes, which we have started now, then the joints between sheets along with the gaps left over in the slots where our metal upright bracket were screwed onto the walls, and finally putting enough filler in all the corners, whether it is wall to ceiling or wall to wall etc, a smooth small curve to soften the hard edges. There is quite a lot to do in this segment of work so it will take a few days to complete and rub down to a nice and smooth finish!

    We are getting close to the time where the Garden Room can be realised .. .. as a kitchen! That is the short term use of this room to enable us to move out of the little tumbling down old cottage, and during the Summer, we knock it down! Flat!

  • Back Edge is Done

    Our temporary fixing of the rubber material has proved troublesome during rain showers, we have had too many little leaks coming down the back wall and spilling into the air holes for the rafters. We decided to put up and fix down the 45 degree sloped flange along the back edge of the roof and then mount a wide 180mm (just over 7inches) Oak plank the facia hanging down from the roof.

    Rear upstand and Facia

    Rear upstand and Facia

    The rain will now gush off to the sides of the roof for now and not straight off the middle of the roof and trickle down the back wall!

    As soon as we get another series of good dry days and warm too then we will be back on the roof to finish it off properly, preparing and gluing the rubber material down all over the roof.

    It is the first time we have used our supply of Oak Planks, we pulled out 4 pieces of 6 feet lengths and 1 x 8 foot length which were all very similar in width. We sanded one face and the edges to take off the worse of the rough sawn surfaces and put them up untreated and in their full thickness of over an inch! Nice and solid!

  • Garden Room — Doors Trimmings

    We have put up the trimmings in and around the two doorways, the garage from garden door and the WC door. The Fermacell are now pinned up and ready for the final trim to make a nice and smooth curved edges right around the doorways. We have also put up reinforcing strips in the corners and at the ends of the utility rail to allow us to fix small strips of Fermacell across the utility rail so that the lids over the utility rail doesn’t have to worry about going right into corners and having complex mitre joints etc.

    The final finishing touch is to run the router around and smooth off all the edges etc.

  • Garden Room – Upper Walls covered Up!

    It was a long day today working on covering up the upper sections of the walls in the Garden Room. In some ways it went fairly easily but having to contend with windows and sloping ceilings did make things more complex.

    It is all finished apart from trimming the excess materials from around the windows once the glue is set. Also the Light Channel had to be accommodated with pieces of the Fermacell going around the flange etc.

    GR - Main fermacell installed

    GR – Main fermacell installed


    GR - Main fermacell installed

    GR – Main fermacell installed

    The last piece of Fermacell left to do is the side of the chimney which has not been constructed yet. But that is it! No more Fermacell work until the main house is built! The rest of the stock will be put into storage (not too many sheets left).

  • Garden Room – Half Fermacell’ed!

    Today the bottom half of the walls in the Garden Room was covered in the Fermacell boards. We went right around the room, skipping the doorways and jumping pass the hot water cylinder! We used up nearly 7 sheets.

    GR - Lower walls fermacelled

    GR – Lower walls fermacelled


    GR - Lower walls fermacelled

    GR – Lower walls fermacelled


    GR - Lower walls fermacelled

    GR – Lower walls fermacelled

    Also we sliced out the window in the WC we covered up with the Fermacell yesterday and we can see what we are doing again!