The last major job in the current phase is to finish the external platform for the first floor suite. You can see below that we had started to lift the floor – which, unbelievably for a fire escape, had been built with battening – to find that the joists were so rotten that they just fell away.
Looking in the other direction, you can see how the rock gently falls away beneath this platform…
…so whilst Mike continued to dismantle the platform, Alex and I scraped away the random weed and thin soil that lay over the rock to reveal its stark beauty.
After the platform and handrail were gone, we could remove the joists…
…and then really gain access to the area below to check and clean. Whilst I continued removing weed growth from the concrete support, Mike plugged gaps around the two metal supports as they linked to the building and prepared to replace the joists.
Once the joists were in place and carefully supported on a variety of different depth spacers so the platform will drain properly, we began putting your actual decking onto the joists… with Lola helping, naturally.
Whilst we did this, Shaun was busy painting some of our more recent work in the suites. So quite how he came to have time to mock up the picture below, I have no idea…
…but we love it! I think it was only lack of time that stopped us putting on our hard hats and getting out our sandwich boxes to fully replicate that famous photo.
So plenty of hospitality to undertake this weekend, and back to building work next week we hope – assuming the weather here dries up a bit! Then perhaps Alex can clear away a bit more of the over-growth…
