Friday, March 25, 2011

First the Structural Beams

Above is the plan for the big metal beams that support that whole loft level of the house. The red beams are in the floor and you can see the two long ones running horizontal are embedded into the brick party wall. Yes, there are all sorts of agreements, party wall surveryors and so on. You must sign an agreement with your neighbours to use the wall like this as you both 100% own the wall between you. How can two parties 100% own a wall, you ask? I think it has to do with not saying "this is my half and this is yours". The blue beams on the plans I assume are the staircase support. Our ceiling hatch in our bathroom has not been boarded up yet, so every evening I pop up and take some pictures of the progress. Above are the metal plates put into gouged out sections of the party wall where the beams will rest and support the whole floor. The beams lie around after being craned up. It is actually quite shocking to see how the roof is held up. Above the beam holding the roof is resting only on a few small crumbling bricks jutting out from the wall. It has been that way for over 100 years. Above is the a picture of the back of the roof which will be entirely removed to build the back wall. I ask the builder to save me all the big old beams so I can cut them up and add them to my wood pile. This picture shows all the chimney breasts merging from the 4 downstairs rooms into one chimney on the roof. They will remain and be boxed in as shown on the plans in the previous post. No bags of old coins hidden up here! The next day the beams go in. In order to slide in a beam that is wider than the room a long strip of bricks is removed and then the beam is diagonally shifted into place. Next it is bricked up again. The beams are huge and the floor will sit on top of them with a large cavity between the ceiling of the floor below and the loft floor. I suppose that is good for sound. The beams are fixed together. I would just like to say that what you see here are wood stores built AND filled entirely from wood from the loft. There is still more wood to come! Today we are being quoted for a wood burning stove in our dining room.

1 comment:

Laura and Ryan said...

Looks exciting!! It's hard to believe those old beams are being held up by crumbly bricks. Yikes!!

I love seeing the progress, as always.