Roselea

Blog

  • Storing things behind the garage.

    There will be a small (200mm/8inch) space between the back wall of the garage and the boundary fence. We want to use this for storing those awkward things like ladders! We went through a series of ideas before settling on having a set of tight steel ropes and hanging items from them on sliding loops. Now we needed brackets to hold the rope up and tensioned.

    Typical us, we decided to make our own!

    Ladder bracket diagram

    We bought steel angle from our local steel stockist and cleaned off the foundry crud with a grinder. Then we cut the parts using our universal chop saw. Joining holes were drilled and the bracket assembled. A matching bracket for the other end was made next.

    Pair of ladder bracketsLadder bracket - joint detail

  • Stainless steeel mesh

    We have bought a roll of stainless steel expanded mesh to use for insect screening in the ventilation gaps around the building. We also plan to cover all of the gutters with it, to keep out all the leaves!

    Once again the Internet allows us to buy a product at much reduced prices from the retail. Screwfix sells this mesh in 75mm x 30m rolls for £74, we bought a 300mm (4 x wider) x 30m roll for only £95! (It’s even cheaper in wider rolls)

    roll of meshSS Mesh Detail

  • Cement boards arrive early!

    The cement boards arrive a day early. The lorry was too high to come down the loke, so we took the trolley up tothe top of the loke.

    When we started to pull the trolley we found two tyres were soft and this caused the steering arm to bend while trying to turn into the loke! The two front wheels pointed in different directions…

    We then brought the dumper truck up and transfered the boards and drove them down to the site.

    Shaun dragged the broken trolley down after the dumper!

  • Oak Timber has arrived!

    Oak Timber has arrived!

    Our cubic metre of English Oak has arrived today just before Lunch. There were the two old sleepers we ordered as well just to see what they are like!

    The 91 oak planks are very nice in the main, with only one or two odd pieces of older looking ones and one thinner one (only 19mm thick!). we got mostly sizes between 2mtres (6 feet) and 2.5metres (8 feet) and majority more than 120mm wide going up to 300mm! we are pleased with them!

    Such a nice smell too!

    The old railway sleepers are very interesting and the sheer history in them is lovely to see! The old screw holes and the coupling plates outline compressed into the surface, to show the age and number of trains that has rumbled over these sleepers! We also bought a untreated and unused Oak sleeper to see what this size is like too.

    The Azobe wood is very very heavy indeed! It is 2.6metres long (8.5 feet) by 250mm wide (10 inches) and 150mm thick (6 inches)!

    The Jarra wood is very similar but slightly thinner at only 130mm thick! Only! This wood is very heavy as well!

  • 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!

  • Nail gun arrives

    Our new nail gun was delivered today (quite quick!). This gun comes with two tips,one allows you to drive standard nails into timber for joints and panel fixing, the other one has a pointed bit which locates in a hole in a metal fitting and allows you to fire a nail through the hole.

    I have tried the standard nose with the nails which came at the same time and it works great! I can’t try the metal connecter one yet as the special nails havn’t come.

    Bostitch P21 Nail Gun

  • Ordered new Nail gun

    This morning we did some research looking for a nailing gun which will allow us to nail metal plates onto timber as well as the usual wood joining plus the ability to take different sizes of nails. There is one particular model that seems to fit the bill so after reading various reviews on it we ordered it along with boxes of nails including hardened nails for firing into metal plates! Another advantage of this nailing gun is that these nails all have full sized heads on them which offers better fixing properties when nailing panels! It is nice to see that the price of the nails are very similar in bulk!

    It is good to have a second major nailing gun on hand, just in case our older (coming up to 8 years now) big gun stops working again!

  • 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