Roselea

Category: Phase 1

  • Finished back wall

    Spent the last few days finishing off the back wall now the cement boards are here…

    First we fixed a sheet of thick polythene over the OSB as a final waterproofing layer, this took longer than we thought as we had to work hard to get the wrinkles out. Cut the plastic around the window holes. Then placed and aligned the cement boards.

    BW - Cement boards on

    The next job was to cut and install two rows of noggins at the top of the wall. These will keep the end of the roof I-Beams upright.

    Next day we drilled the ventilation holes for the roof  in the wall, 79 of them (each needing to passes with a hole saw). In fact Shaun kept busy removing the cut disks from one hole saw while I used the other on the next hole.

    BW - Vent holes drilled

    In the afternoon we slid strips of  SS mesh between the cement board and the OSB to cover the holes and fixed them down. Then we routed out the window holes. Last thing of the day was to seal in the joints between boards with Polyurethane sealant.

    BW- Windows holes cut

    Trimmed off the bottom of the cement boards to the right height. Fitted the ladder brackets and installed the steel ropes and tensioned them (we then de-tensioned them until the wall is installed in final position). The wall is now ready to be moved into place.

    BW - Ready to raise

  • Cement Boards are coming!

    We phoned today and were told that our cement boards will be delivered this Friday! Well we will see won’t we!?! Fingers crossed!

  • Preparing the front wall

    We are continuing to build up piles of timber and pieces of jigsaw pieces ready for the day (or days) after the cement boards comes! We have been working on the front wall of the garage, chopping timber for the posts and OSB sheets for the physical structural reinforcements. We will finish these pieces this afternoon.

    So we have now everything ready for all four walls so it should only take a couple of days to construct and join them all together! And chuck the roof on top! Just like that!

  • Cement Boards delays!

    The supplier for the cement boards are being very slow in delivering them. We found out today that they are waiting for other orders to come in, to make it worthwhile for them before delivering all the way from Birmingham!

    It is very frustrating for us and it is very much the case of rare use of these cement panels and our relatively small order thus making the problem worse.

    We tried phoning half a dozen local building suppliers to see if any had these types of cement panels in stock and none had! Oh well! In hindsight we should have ordered these panels a month ago!

    We are not quite losing time just yet, we are preparing all the timber for the other parts of the walls and roof, the wire suspension system on the back wall for hanging our long ladders and other items that are too long for storing inside. We probably have about 2 or 3 days worth of jobs left to complete before we hit the point of twiddling our fingers!!

    Fingers crossed!

  • Stack of Cut Timber

    We spend the afternoon cutting up most of the timber for the left side and the right side of the garage. We are still awaiting the cement boards to come and we got on with other jobs like cutting the CLS 89mm by 38mm timber into all the different lengths. It is nice to see the quality of the timber, they are fresh, clean and in good nick! Only one or two had “bad” spots like the point where the suppliers had crunched the edge with their straps holding the whole bundle together!

    We have produced over 74 pieces! And more to come!

    Stacks of Cut TimberStacks of Cut TimberStacks of Cut Timber

  • Cut out Windows!

    I waved the router around and cut the windows out in the back walls! Because the router bit has a ball bearing wheel exactly the same size as the diameter of the cutting blade then it is very easy to slice the extra material away without the worry of going too far and making holes!! I could do this and I did!

    See picture below!

    BackWall with window cutouts

  • Building Inspector Approves our Wall!

    Our building control inspector came today to take a look at our back wall. We assured him that the cement boards is the final layer with the DPM plastic material sandwiched in as well!

    I got the impression that he was expecting the wall to be upright! But he is happy. He will come again when we have got the roof on and tied down! He can then see the structure of the posts and windows etc.

    We also talked about the electrics and what form of approval he wanted to see when the electrics are installed.

  • Back Wall Constructed

    We have constructed the back wall of our garage. It is still lying flat on the floor slab at the moment as we are still waiting for the delivery of the cement boards! All the joints and the OSB panels were glued and nailed together in a few hours (about 5 all together). We hope to reduce this on future walls when we employ our new glue dispensing machine! We have calculated that this wall will weigh about 300kg (660lbs) and we are planning to slide it up to the top of the mass wall up wooden slopes using the old fashioned block and tackle method. We have ordered a roll of rope and twin pulleys blocks to give us a 4 to 1 ratio pulling power!

    We just hope that the cement boards will come soon! Or there will be lots of grinding teeth noises!

    When we finished the wall construction @ 19:15Back Wall done @19:15 we realised we couldn’t close the shed door! So we had to push hard to slew the door round enough… Then we covered it in plastic to keep our hard work dry.

  • Lintels and corner posts

    The lintel over the windows of the back wall of the garage was constructed in one continuous 8.5metre piece. It was made up of two vertical 90mm by 38mm CLS timber with an 11mm OSB board sandwiched in the middle and topped with another 90mm by 38mm timber lying flat. All was glued and screwed together as per instructions in our Structural Engineer’s report.

    We also made the same sandwich construction of two 89mm by 38mm CLS and 11mm OSB to make the corner posts (4 of them) to allow maximum connective forces when we join the walls together.

    The air nailing gun is not working!! oh drat! o bugger!

    We fell back to good old Turbo Gold screws!

  • It’s getting dark!

    With the nights drawing in and the clock going back on Sunday we decided to put up some floodlights! A quick shopping trip gave us 4 x 400W  lights which we have put on poles attached to the sheds and wired together to a switch inside. They give a good level of light to work by and cost less than £20 all together.