oooer mi Noggins

After a short administrative break I'm back on the shed. Roof trusses are done and the wall now has some noggins. All in all the structure is looking a lot more rigid. And as we all know rigidity is the name of the game. I took a few picture of the progress, the colours of which are a bit funny but that's because it was dark!



Note the oak dowels, sad really!

Anyway time the raise the roof. I was thinking about this and how i would do it using all manner of complicated methods. Then it struck me i was being stupid, the shed has a first floor!!! So I'll just build the floor first and then I can work off that to put in the roof, easy...ish.

The new shed gets some walls

Today David and I constructed the walls for the shed. Using the compound mitre saw it actually was pretty straight forward, and a lot of progress for one days work. Julia is kindly providing a little scale.

And the view from the lounge:

Oh and yes the wood pile has gone down somewhat!


Looking at the shed today I think I may have got the decimal point in the wrong place on the drawings..Ho Hum, never mind. Still it wont look quite so small when the nice steep pitched roof is on!

Stage One Completed

Well stage one of shed is complete. The base is down, level, insulated and boarded. From this platform I can build everything else on top, so pretty much the hard bits are done...ish.
First off with Julia's able assistance we covered the frame with Tyvek and chicken wire. Tyvek as a breathable membrane and the chicken wire is to both hold in the insulation and protect against rodents.

Next I've laid in 145mm of insulation with an R value of 3.85 (Toasty) followed by DPM and then floor boards. The boards were the same price as chipboard and although a bit on the rustic side they are at least real wood (don't know why just don't like chipboard, even in a shed). Then the fun part laying the boards with David and his very cool NAIL GUN.

It was so much fun even Libby managed to get in on the action:

And then TA-DA the finished floor:

Except of course you can't see it because it started raining.

Ho Hum...

Ca Commence

Day 4 of the shed build and we are out of the ground. Levelling up took a while since the ground is frozen to about 4 inches. Many thanks to our friend David without whom the progress would be much less impressive. Having someone there who knows what they are doing is a big help. I promised my brother Nick that it would take 3 weeks to build the shed so I'm on a tight schedule....

Tomorrow it's insulation and floor boards. We have laid a fleece on the ground to help control the mud, but underneath that the ground is like concrete so I don't think its going to go anywhere.
And here is Julia's latest creation: isn't she clever..


Oh yes the shed really is that big.....

Hunting and gathering - was it all bad

This week I've finished off the design for the shed, ordered the wood, cast the concrete beam in the wall and glued up the door for the first floor. We've also met some new friends and visited their house and a bunch of other stuff I've forgotten about already. Trouble is with moving out to live a tranquil life in France that there are lots of thing to either occupy or distract you! Anyway the wood was delivered today and we started to dig the foundations to the shed. Sounds easy given that this is digging through 12 inches of top soil but take it from me its not. Digging or indeed farming in general is in fact the work of the devil. Given the choice between hunting and gathering and farming, why we chose farming eludes me! Here is a pile of wood:

And then there was the digging:

Now when I started digging out the foundations I had envisaged just for the blocks not whole area. WHAT WAS I THINKING. Mike Duckett if you read this, I never learn!!!

Oh and the mechanical plough in the picture...doesn't help. Just makes you even more knackered trying to control the plough and you still have to dig out the mess. Ho Hum.

Bench

As mentioned in my last post it was about time a made a workbench. Whilst it's not the work of art that the jewellery bench is its functional, and it will give me a stable platform to fasten things like the planer to. Ironically to make to workbench I had to use the planer to mill up the top for the new bench. In the process the planer slipped off the workmate and my instant reaction was to reach out to catch it. Stuck my hand straight into the blade of the planer! How I still have my fingers I honestly don't know. Luckily I was wearing my leather work gloves which took the brunt of the damage and certainly saved my fingers. If your reading this Jon, it was the pair that you bought me, so thanks again. Sometime I guess God's on your side! Here is the finished bench and no I won't be using the planer again unless bolted to the bench!

And the missing fingers!

Note to self: Always make sure you are wearing the correct safety kit......

After that little episode I thought I'd have a break from rotating knives and do a little gentle wall building. Today then I put in the lintels above the kitchen window and built up the wall at the front. When this has set up a bit I can then pour concrete into the void to create a beam to tie the end gable into the front wall. Not a bad thing really?

Eventually when filled in and built back up i'll make this into a window seat for the girls.

So tomorrow will be mixing concrete in the mixer (yet another thing off you Jon!) just hope its a warm as it was today; 11 deg and walking round in my shirt sleeves.

P.S. Yes and trim up the foam around the window (the shame of it!!!)

Time to make that door

Now all the wood has been delivered I'm going to make the back upstairs door. I know its a bit unusual to have a door upstairs but when the ground was built up at the back you could step off into the back field. now its all been dug out its 10 feet off the ground. Trouble is its on the north facing side of the house and every time it snows, it snows in through the opening, so its time to fill it in. When I ordered the last lot of timber I ordered some dry stuff. The best you can do from the saw mill is get stuff that's been cut about 6 months. Even then in this load I was struggling to find enough that were straight enough to mill down into the stiles for the door. So in the best traditions of using what you've got I've modified the design to suit the timber and now its going to be a stable door, et voilà. By the end of play I had all the pieces for the door milled and cut to size. As the joiners amongst you will note this is not in itself a small task when you start of with rough sawn timber. Its always amazing to see the beauty of the wood reveal itself when you plane all the crud off, and each piece is different. Some even have a hint of pink in the grain! For my workshop Alison has been kind enough to let me use her garage (many thank's) which is close enough to run power (yipee.. lights) from the gite.

Here's a before and after picture of said timber. The eagle eyed and safety conscious among you will note that the planer is in fact about to fall off the workmate! I must build a bench that I can bolt it to....


Having cut the wood to size I carried out a few test cuts at my saw bench. This soon revealed what a pile of junk my saw bench really is. However its what I've got so I spent about an hour and a half going through and setting the blade, packing up the table insert and setting all the extension tables level. Now low and behold it cuts straight and true and at 90o and wood doesn't snag on the transition between the table and the table insert. Brill, should have done it 4 years ago. Still it's another job done.......

Lovely to see Mark and Julie in their shiny new camping car, our first visitors from England!