Chicken House Roof

Stripping off the old 'tin'. 

Away and by far the biggest news for this post is our superb progress on the chicken house roof replacement. Having surprised us by turning up 3 days early on Friday to make a start, builder/carpenter buddy 'K-Dub' carried on the good works on Monday and today (Tues). With me on light duties and the Help-X lad having blown us out, K-Dub was working solo for a big part of this time, but assisted by Elizabeth when there were chunks of new timber to be brought round from cutting-place to the shed, or chunks of old rotten roof to stack away for burning later.

Dismantling the electrics.

The jobs, in roughly chronological order were to carefully remove the good tarpaulin and the small two tarps which went on first back in the post Storm-Doris days. Next up, the electrics had to be peeled away from any wood which was now going to be removed. Next, K-Dub stripped off the old 'tin', sliding the sheets down for us to stack on the ground. Sharp edges on those rusty sheets, so gloves were vital.

Nifty chain-saw action while balanced on a wall.

The next stage involved some rather nifty 'high wire' balancing along the tops of walls (none of the woodwork would have taken the weight of anyone the size of K-Dub (or me)) armed with a chain saw. We'd shut all the fascinated chickens out of the building so that K-Dub could go all round cutting old rafters till the roof woodwork, almost in one piece, collapsed into the shed. He then went into the shed and chopped it up into bite size pieces that we could haul out and stack. Finally on the demolition phase, he had to dig out the wall-plates (timbers which sit a-top walls to take the bottom end of rafters.)

Here the old roof timbers have completely collapsed into the shed.

You know how these builder types, when asked for an estimate, suck in a breath between their teeth and say something like, "We won't really know till we get going - you can find all sorts of horrors when you start demolishing roofs!" Well, here, I could see that minor escalation in action and I couldn't argue with the man. The walls of these barns are almost a 'dry-stone wall' construction with very little in the way of mortar between the stones, maybe some mud thrown in on top to fill some gaps.

Some new timbers going in, mainly so that we could sling the
tarp back over the unfinished roof on Monday night.

Well now, 150 years+ later the wall tops are not so much 'wall' as loose small rubble and dusty dry soil. As K-Dub prised the old wall-plates out of their grooves, the sides of each groove simply land-slid in. We decided that this roof should get, for safe keeping and to ensure that the wall plates did not 'walk' away from each other under the load of the new tin, sagging our nice new ridge-beam, 2 extras.

It's not all chicken houses. Elizabeth, Queen of the Pointy
Shovel takes on the mighty job of digging that raised bed over.

Firstly we would span the building with 4 horizontal 'joist' beams. We actually used the spare 4' length off-cuts to make the rafter pairs between these joists into 'A' frames, which neatly gave the Guinea Fowl back their perches. Secondly we would mix a sloppy cement and pour/spread this along the wall tops around and under the new wall plates to give some grip onto the loose rubble. The top 6 inches of wall is probably now the strongest bit, and would be called a 'ring beam' if we had done it all round the building.

Those last 2 jobs were today's and, for another night we have slung the big tarp back over the work to give the chickens a bit of shelter in case it rains in the night. K-Dub is sure we can finish tomorrow. That would be the remaining purlins, the new tin, 'flaunching' the tin in to the gable at the 'windy' end, fitting the ridge pieces and a capping on the East end, strapping down the roof to the walls, re-assembling the electrics and cleaning up. Busy old day. I will tell you all about it in the next post.

A spindle bush recovering from sheep browsing in our 'Woods'

Meanwhile, in the down time (Yes, we do get some! Light duties, remember) I have been enjoying the various groups of birds coming of age and starting to sort out their grown-up family dynamics. The ducks, you will recall, are a young male Khaki Campbell hatched by us this spring, and a Mum and 5 youngsters of 'Silver Appleyard' variety bought in a couple of months ago.

Well, now they are all full size and the KC has started doing odd 'display' moves to various other ducks. He alone has differentiated into a definite drake (dark head, bassy 'quack', curly-up feathers just above the tail). We know that Mum is Mum, but the 5 youngsters are keeping their sex secret for now, from us anyway. KC-Drake's moves include a rearing up on his back end, standing up on the water with his chin pressed down into his chest, and zooming forward across the water with his neck stretched out forward and his chin almost touching the water. Are these moves designed to impress any coming of age males, or females? We have no idea.

Then yesterday, early in the morning, our alpha rooster, Gandalf came into view followed by an entourage of 15 adult and half grown chickens. Up to now the half grown babies have pretty much kept to their clutch-groups. Are they now feeling the changes of teenager-hood and starting to align with the dominant male, playing their cards right, as it were. More on these stories in future posts. Now I must wrap up as the Woman of the House is off out tonight to a meeting for which she needs this lap top. Talk to you again soon.

New Floors (2)

Some more pictures this morning of the impressive transformation of the house last week, when all the upstairs floors were ripped out and replaced with new. First up a shot of Dad raking out the old joist pockets. The joists had originally been levelled and set up on strips of soft wood which was sitting on top of a course of blocks, like a wall-plate. These, like most of the wood in this house, had long since rotted or been eaten up by the woodworm and reduced to peat-like fluff. This had to all be raked out and the new joists would be set up sitting on little stacks of pieces of slate which pretty much lasts for ever and does not crumble to softness (at least when its out of the frost, anyway.

2nd is a picture of the new joists just because we liked the effect the light made slanting down through the gaps. 3rd is the stack of kindling which came from sawing through all the upstairs floor boards between every joist. Facebook friends have likened it to a book case and you can see why, though Mum claims that none of her bookcases are as untidy as that! Finally a picture of Dad using the powerful nail-gun to nail down the main bedroom floor boards.

This weapon can fire a 3 or 4 inch nail right down into solid wood in one hit. Here we are using 3 inch nails and we have the power backed off a bit so that the nail heads don't slam down right through the floorboards, splintering the timber. We nail every board twice at each joist, which is quite a lot of nailing and we are thankful that we are not having to do it all with a hammer. The 'report' of the gun is very loud, so ear defenders are worn. By the time you have brand new joists, lots of cross bracing bits to stop any whip, and then tongue and groove boards fixed down everywhere you end up with a very solid structure which barely bounces when you walk or jump on it. Bit of a change from the house last week then!

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Transformation

By any way of reckoning the boys have the biggest week yet in terms of the amount of change brought to the house in a single week. In the 5, sometimes, long days they rip out the old floor of the main bedroom and replace it with new, and then having moved the stack of plaster board on the spare bedroom floor, they do the same to that end of the house so that by Friday all the old 1st floor is gone and there are new joists and floor boards throughout.

When Mum and Dad first had a look round this house they optimistically thought they'd need few joists here and there and some patching of floorboards but that it was basically sound. Fortunately as it turns out, Sparks was a bit dubious about this approach and when he found that joists were about a tenner each, he bought all 25 new and the floor boards to go with. Joist repairs are all well and good - you Accro prop the good joists up, then cut away bad wood, sticking a new joist end into the wall pocket and through bolting or doubling up. It's a good solution, Mr Silverwood told us, as long as there are only a few to do.

In our case though, we are stripping back to bare walls, so there was no point pussy-footing about.It was going to be quicker and easier to clear the decks, then rip up all the floor boards and chop through and drop to the ground each joist in turn, clear out the pockets and slot new joists home. The wall pockets for the joists are, you hope, at least 8 inches deep on one wall, four on the other, so you cut the joist at room width plus 8 inches, slot the end in 8 inches, swing the other end up to its opposite pocket and reverse out of the deep pocket 4 inches, giving you at least 4 inches embedded into each wall.

It's a good theory but doesn't always hold true. Some pockets are not deep enough and the joists must originally have been dropped onto their seats from above and brick or block work built up from there. On this old house the 'seats' are of some kind of soft wood which has long since rotted away to compost. This all has to be raked out and a new seat made with slivers of slate as the joists are levelled to one another and along their lengths.

I said earlier that it was fortunate that Sparks had gone for the complete replacement of joists and floor board. As the boys started to remove joists it became clear that the embedded inches of each joist were badly rotted and could not have been providing much support. In some cases it was probably just the floor boards holding the joist up. They went for a safety first technique of cutting alongside each joist, through every floor board so that if the joist came free and tried to fall it would not drag anything else down with it. There was also a minor drama on Wednesday when the removal of old joists exposed the fact that the inner lintels above dining room window and front door were only made of scraps of wood too, so that these were badly rotted also and there was a risk of some stonework caving in. But that's for another post. Enough for this one.

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Bathroom floor

With he new concrete floors downstairs now giving us a good base on which to work we can attach the next level, the joists of the kitchen ceiling and bathroom floor.These are generally OK but do need some doubling up and strengthening in a couple and they are all, anyway, getting woodworm treatment. Sparks has ripped up the floor boards while we have been away and, by Friday, he's at the stage of needing a hand doing the repairs and laying the new floor. The floor is plywood boards rather than proper floor boards, because it is going to be tiled.

The main weapon for this is Sparks's compressed gas nail gun, a wicked looking device capable of firing a 4 inch nail 4 inches (or more!) into solid wood in one hit. It makes quite a bang. He actually has a more powerful one for firing pins into stonework and metal, but that one stayed in its box. Poor old Sparks was actually suffering badly with a cold by Friday, so he was pleased to be able to finish this job, tidy up, and head for home in Dublin. His son Brian is also suffering with the same cold, so the two of them were going to do "Man-Flu suffering and martyrdom together and make life merry hell for Mrs Sparks. We gather from Facebook that they managed it!

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Taking Deliveries

Thursday should have been a relatively easy day. Had the delivery company taken note of Sparks's warning about narrow lanes, sharp turn into the driveway etc, they might have showed up in sensible lorries. As it was we took delivery of most of the building materials for the project in 2 hits, one on a full size 40 foot artic which assumed we'd have a forklift, the other on a 28 foot Hyab (flatbed lorry with crane), neither of which could make the turn.

This meant that both deliveries were going to be made to the country lane and we'd have to wrangle stuff up to the house. Add to that, some of the stuff was to be the modern composite wall insulation boards, plaster board bonded to thick foam sheets. Plaster board in any form hates to get wet (goes soft, sags and forms bellies in your ceiling which do not go away even if it dries out, as anyone knows who has had a plumbing leak above a ceiling). It was threatening rain and kept delivering heavy squalls which had us racing to cover any exposed stacks before running for shelter ourselves.

Luckily, just along the road from us is one of those magnificent 'Celtic Tiger' big houses which never got occupied (more than one visitor has asked why we didn't buy THAT one!) but which has a hard lay-by out front big enough for a 40 foot artic and a van alongside on the roof-rack of which to tip sheeting from the lorry floor, with still room for cars to pass. But is was another arduous day (not as bad as clay-shovelling, but close!) taking sheets off the lorry 10 at a time and shipping them to the house on the roof rack of Sparks's van.

The 40 footer was emptied by 1pm and we had a 20 minute break before the Hyab arrived, laden with our one ton bags of gravel and sand, the joists, floorboards, door frames, wood for stud walling, bags of cement and plaster, rolls of bitumen sheet for the extension roof, sheets of plywood for same, lead for flashing etc. At least this guy had the crane, so was able to drop piles in and around the entrance or over the hedge. The boys then had to wrangle it up the drive in the van or on the 2CV with trailer in between the showers. Knackered again by about 5pm they left some sheeted till the morning and one of the one ton bags right in the middle of the drive.

This is all a bit physical for Mum so she heads for Dublin to take a belated chance to visit family and friends who we have not been to see since moving over. Questions were starting to be asked! Luckily, Mum's wee Fiat can slip out between the sand bag and the gate post.

Friday is then, of course, filled with squaring away the remaining building materials, left the previous day. It had rained all night but, as seems to be the way of these things, by morning it was clear and sunny and plaster board could be unsheeted and moved at will. We have to move all the stuff from the entrance up to safe places; the timber, the plaster board and the plywood roof sheets for the extension roof. None of it is particularly heavy - plasterboard sheets are 25kgs, so they are mainly awkward and need two men to carry them. They all get carried upstairs one by one and stacked flat. We have now and embarrassment of building materials, meaning the build is turning into a bit of a game of solitaire. We need to move this to get to that, but we can't start that because these are in the way. Sparks is scratching his head trying to plan a sequence of moves and tasks which will work. The wall sheets alone take up the entire living room floor to ceiling.