It has been a while since I last posted, so I've saved up some progress. I guess the first big news is that we were granted planning permission! It has been a long wait, and apparently we have been quite blessed to be granted the permission as the council hadn't appreciated the garage was a detached dwelling rather than attached (whatever difference that makes). So permission has been granted on the basis that we cannot rent it out (we think they are worried about the number of student rentals in the area). This might be something we can challenge in the future, but for now, we don't plan to rent it anyway.
Since permission was granted, I had been working to prepare everything for the next big job - lifting the roof off. This was to be done with the help of my Dad and little brother who visited with my mum this weekend. We worked all day Friday and half of Saturday to complete everything planned. This included removing the roof, support rafters and removing some windows and doors. This was the garage before starting:
Since permission was granted, I had been working to prepare everything for the next big job - lifting the roof off. This was to be done with the help of my Dad and little brother who visited with my mum this weekend. We worked all day Friday and half of Saturday to complete everything planned. This included removing the roof, support rafters and removing some windows and doors. This was the garage before starting:
And from the top:
One small job I wanted to do before the roof was to remove our grape vine. The grape vine has been generous for the couple of years we have been here, but unfortunately it was in the location that a door to the bedroom will be placed - so it had to go. The roots were widespread, so I had to pull up some paving slabs to remove it properly:
Once that was sorted and I'd removed all the internal garage lighting mounted on the support rafters, we were ready to get going.
We woke on Friday morning to find it pouring with rain - not a good start. My Dad and I filled the time by moving some of the materials and tools inside the garage to one end, so if it continued to rain then at least we could keep these covered for as long as possible. An hour later, and prayers were answered - the skies began to clear and we started removing the existing tar felt followed by the plywood underneath:
We woke on Friday morning to find it pouring with rain - not a good start. My Dad and I filled the time by moving some of the materials and tools inside the garage to one end, so if it continued to rain then at least we could keep these covered for as long as possible. An hour later, and prayers were answered - the skies began to clear and we started removing the existing tar felt followed by the plywood underneath:
This was the first piece coming off revealing the rafter construction:
The existing roof was covered in small stones and an unexpected amount of time was required to remove them (by shovelling and sweeping) from each board before removal - otherwise the boards were too heavy. Here's Dad in action:
One of the decisions in the project in whether to pay for the extra expense of a skylight. Once two of the boards were removed, I pretty much convinced myself that the quality of light coming in from above would be well worth the money:
The day wore on and we were steadily removing more boards. There were occasional instances where logic was missing - like getting stranded on a board with nowhere to go (of course, my instinct was to take a picture of such instances):
Such tests were overcome, and we finished the first day with a distinct lack of roof and just a few rafters remaining:
Day two saw my brother Izaac get involved. He is perhaps the best dressed builder I've seen - he helped with clearing rubble and removing windows:
And so the rest of Saturday's work was a lot of clearing up, removing the final rafters, removing the window and door shown above and covering the rafters to protect them from the rain (seeing as there's no roof on the garage anymore, and no other indoor space to store them).
By the end, everything was tidy, and the garage and workers had shed a few pounds. You'll also see that most of the roof stones were used to gravel over the soil bed running alongside the garage. This area will eventually be covered by decking anyway, but at least the gravel would limit any weeds:
By the end, everything was tidy, and the garage and workers had shed a few pounds. You'll also see that most of the roof stones were used to gravel over the soil bed running alongside the garage. This area will eventually be covered by decking anyway, but at least the gravel would limit any weeds:
The rest of Saturday was spent enjoying Bradgate Park and Arsenal dominating Aston Villa in the FA Cup final. Not bad for a couple of days work.
Next stage is more window removal, and then to rebuild with new brick and block work to create the apertures for the new door and window configuration. More on that next time!
Thanks for reading - we always enjoy reading any of your encouraging comments!
Next stage is more window removal, and then to rebuild with new brick and block work to create the apertures for the new door and window configuration. More on that next time!
Thanks for reading - we always enjoy reading any of your encouraging comments!