Roselea

Category: Build Progress

  • Pebble Dashed Rendering Removed!

    The week’s work of bashing and ripping off the pebble dashed rendering has finished at last!

    The ground, the paved footpath, all the way round the Old Place has a pile of sand, cement and little pebbles, about a foot high! This will be scraped up later using the mini digger and deposited into a skip or two. Also there is a large pile of folded flattened soft iron metal mesh! Maybe get some money for the scrap metal value!












    All that is left is all the battens decorating the feather edge boarding walls, which will be taken off and burnt. A lot of them are full of nails and some are rotten too!

    It is quite interesting to discover what is underneath, as the pictures can show, but also some clues to why the big window (the Lounge) is a different style to all the other windows.

  • Roof Tiles all Off

    I don’t know what day number it is anymore! Half a day there and half a day here!

    Anyway all the roof tiles are now off the Old Place! It is bald!


    We have made a pile of them near the Loke, all wrapped in plastic to keep the dust in. Soon all the interior wall panels (which are also thin cement boards) will join the tiles. Then the whole lot will be taken away for disposal in the proper and correct manner.

    The rain over the weekend was very useful in washing down the roof of any remaining dust, dirt, moss etc.!

  • Days 3,4 & 5 Of The House Demolition

    Nothing much done on Saturday as Shaun was feeling ill all day (very unusual)… So Stephen just fixed a saftey rope from one end of the ridge to the other.

    On Sunday Shaun made good progress and stripped a third of the roof.
    Monday Shaun continued the good work (but the computer recording the images was not working properly and only recorded the last part of the day).



  • Day 2 – Roof Tiles Flying Off!

    Day 2 sees the tiles come flying off with increasing speed.

    The technique is improving but it is time now to make a neat pile for the rubbish so we can treat it properly.

    The tiles are well fixed, using copper attachments in the third hole and two more normal iron nails for the main fixings. The roof isn’t showing any signs of rottenness, quite solid!

    The chimney is in very good condition without any wearing or mortar failing! They knew how to do a proper job in those days!

  • Shed Making Timelapse

    Here are 6 daily timelapse videos of the construction of the new shed.






  • Day 1 of Roof Tiles Removal

    Today we started the demolition of the Old Place!

    The tiles on the roof starting from the top, working the way down, are being removed, one by one. No rushing!

    The initial cautious probing and teasing up of the tiles at the beginning of the gable end of the roof, then the job speeded up as the confidence grew.

    There will be safety lines tied up over the roof ridge and around the chimney to insure against slips etc. Also wearing full dust masks and face shield too!

  • Shed Moved and Bloated!

    The shed has been successfully moved to its new location.

    We have bloated it up by adding two more 4feet wide (8feeet high) panels to the side walls to extend it from 2.2metres to 4.6metres. The other dimension remains the same at 3.6metres wide.

    This change in size gave us a major boost in storage capacity for both our Oak planks, long offcuts and many items with are not needed in the short to medium term (like the gardening equipment).

    We made a new roof and tried out for the first time, a homemade ridge beam constructed using two 63mm by 38mm CLS timber lengths, sandwiched with two layers of 11mm OSB boards 400mm high. The resultant beam is 3.6metres long, 60mm thick and 400mm high. It was glued and screwed together. We mounted it up on top of the walls in the middle and constructed the roof using 63mm CLS timber rafters covered with 11mm OSB complete (8by4) sheets, 3 down each side of the ridge beam. Walking on the roof did not deflect the ridge beam at all, and jumping up and down (over 100kg body weight!) only gave a slight deflection of a millimetre or so!!

    The roof is now covered in fresh roofing felt, glued down with that black bitumen horrible stuff! A line gutters runs on both side and is collected into a water butt, through a filter box made of scotch brites, pebbles and stainless steel mesh!

    600mm deep Shelves have been installed on three sides of the shed, at 2feet apart and a 10 shelf rack also constructed to hold long flat items.

    The shed is quite loaded up now! !

    Box Beam Ridge

    Box Beam Ridge


    Walls Up

    Walls Up


    Walls Up

    Walls Up


    Roof On

    Roof On


    Roof Felted

    Roof Felted


    Roof Felted

    Roof Felted


    Gutters Fitted

    Gutters Fitted


    Gutters Fitted

    Gutters Fitted


    Storage Sheleves

    Storage Sheleves


    Storage Rack for long narrow items

    Storage Rack for long narrow items


    Storage Rack for long narrow items

    Storage Rack for long narrow items

  • Phone Line Moved

    BT Openreach came and moved the phone line today, from the old house to the garage. The old line was overhead and the new line is underground. Engineer cut off the old overhead line at the top of the pole and connected to a new cable which was pulled through the duct using the string we sucked through ealier (at the second attemp, the string broke on the first try and had to be sucked through again). New master socket fitted under the counter in the kitchen.

  • Utility Disconnect

    There are still two utility services connected to the Old Place, water and telephone. The electricity has been moved last November.

    For the water, we dug down near the meter and capped off the pipeline running off to the Old Place. The modern plastic pipes is very easy to deal with, just push on the End Cap, screw it down tight and hey presto! All sealed and done!

    Next was the telephone line, or rather installing the necessary underground conduits ready for the new cable to the garage. We needed to cut a trench across our little Loke to the telegraph pole and lay down a plastic pipe and come out at the base of the pole.

    Next is the threading of the string. But first, we discovered that there was quite a lot of water lurking in the conduit that have had been laid 18 months ago and the open end got buried! We used the workshop vacuum cleaner to suck this water out and then suck the string through, being tied to an old dishcloth. It worked very well indeed.

    Having marked the string beforehand, the distance from end to end is about 46metres!

    The engineers will be coming in a few days to connect the new phone line.

    This means the last utility connection will be cut from the Old Place and we can start dismantling it! Yippee!

  • Complete!

    It might be safe now to admit that Phase 1 of our building project is Complete! At last!

    We have settled into our new temporary living quarters, sorting out a great deal of stuff and putting up lots of shelves for our books and things, and getting ourselves sorted.

    The kitchen is performing well and it is so much nicer with the extra room and having everything near to hand.

    We had a long period of much reduced activities over the Christmas and New Year holiday to recharge our batteries, ready for Phase 2.

    So Here ends Phase 1!

    Goodbye!