The Second Half is Underway....
- Tracy Hart
- Jul 23, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 7, 2023
We woke up on the Monday of week 26 to this photo on my WhatsApp, sent by our lovely neighbours Marie and Twydd.
The weather was not great, that horrible consistent missil and I had my doubts as to whether we would be able to move the steels into place. I needn't have worried and as the day went on, the weather worked with us and just got better and better
Needless to say, we were super excited, didn't linger over breakfast, and headed down to site as soon as we could.
We live in a seaside/tourist spot and week 26 was also the week that Boris had opened up hotels/holiday lets etc. As we live so close to the water our street can get very congested with holiday makers cars as they do whatever they can to avoid paying for parking. This shouldn't be too much of a problem as our street is nice and wide, but unfortunately when people come on holiday they seem to leave their common sense home. Despite great big steel fences, safety signs and it being very obvious it is a building site, over the weekend one "numpty" parked in front fo the steel fences and access to the site and was still there when the crane arrived on Monday. Imagine the car owners face when he came to retrieve his car to find the fences had been taken down, a very big crane had somehow squeezed past his car and a huge steel wasvbeing lifted over the top of his car! Lucky for him this was not our crane drivers first Rodeo!
Paul made the most of having the crane on site for the day and had all the roof materials and stone delivered and then lifted into place.
The cranes main job was to lift the steels into place and it was amazing to see them put together like a big mechano kit. In less than a day we could see the upper floor take shape.
Even though we knew the size of the balcony, seeing it framed by galvanised steel was still a bit of a "wow" for us. `If you are wondering why we have different colour steels, it's because we live so close to the sea and any steels that are external and potentially exposed to salt need to be galvanised to avoid any chance of corrosion.
A different view of the balcony, so you can see how it will sit over the front entrance door.
This was the biggest and trickiest lift of the day and you could feel the trepidation in the air and I swear it went very quiet and we were all holding our breath until it was in place.
Installation gets put in place around the front entrance ready for the Trebarwith Stone to be laid.
The Trebarwith stone. I can't wait to see this in place, it is so beautiful and quarried here in North Cornwall.
The garden tidy continues. The plants and trees we have freed from the horrible ivy and overcrowding look so much brighter and happier. Once we get some coastal plants in here I think it will look lovely and provide the perfect back drop for the patio.
Week 27, Will, our carpenter arrived on site and what seems like no time at all, got all the joists into place. This really changed the feel of the place again and gave us the opportunity to climb up (very carefully) onto what would be the final floor level of the upper floor. This is about 2.5ft above the scaffold height and I hadn't expected it to make such a difference to our view, but wow it was stunning, giving us an even clearer view of the Estuary.
Middle of week 27 even more steel arrived and there is still more to come! The silver galvanised posts show where our glass sliding doors will go, leading out onto the balcony.
Seeing these steels put in place started to give a feel for what the height will be, although the finished room height will be higher than this. Not all the steels could be put into place. Until the joists are boarded it is not safe for the guys to be lifting the higher ones into place and some are so big we will need another visit by the crane to get them into their final resting place.
It has been a very satisfying couple of weeks, seeing substantial change and providing us a with a glimpse of what our upper floor will look and feel like.
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