Storm Eleanor has certainly left her share of windy days in North Wales this week. It has been really rather blowy so we have pushed on with the indoor work as we didn’t fancy finding ourselves on the other side of the river against our will.
On Wednesday, my destructive urges were given full reign, and I wielded the sledgehammer on a set of walls on floor 2 that used to define the edge of a shower cubicle, the staircase and door into a room.
These walls have been reduced to rubble sack contents, but I (and later we) had to be very careful when swinging the hammer to ensure our momentum did not tip us into the void over the staircase which opened up in front of us.
On Thursday, after a shopping trip to Porthmadog, we turned our attention to lifting the floor so that we could see how the joists ran…
…and then as Mike lifted the floor in front of and to the right of the toilet room,
Now the reason for some of this is just about visible in the picture below.
On floor 1, there was a stiffened wall which you can see now resembles a strange honeycomb of gappy plywood. About 20cm behind it, you can see a new stud wall. The new stud wall will form part of the left hand side of the new stairwell but, in order to clad it with plywood and then fire-resistant plasterboard, we need to remove the old wall to the front. We therefore needed to support the joists which had been resting on the now-honeycombed wall, which is why we needed to lift the floor on the floor above. I hope this is making sense to you all! So, on Friday, whilst Mike was wearing his chefs hat, I was carrying a wrecking saw whilst wearing a safety helmet and a big smile
It was surprisingly difficult to cut away the old wall with the new wall so close in front, so I have left part of this until we can both be on site on Sunday. Some of the pieces still needing removal are pretty large and heavy, and I wouldn’t want them to fall in an uncontrolled manner.
Today we have been on cafe duty but also storing away all the Christmas paraphernalia for future re-use. Tomorrow, according to the weather forecast, should be a sunny day so we will be taking a day away from construction to complete some pressing tasks in the grounds. More details next time!