Shop Transformation Part 3

The trusses are installed.

We had a slow start to the week because my builder had a couple of days holiday to celebrate the 1st birthday of his daughter. Then during the celebrations 50% of the people there were struck down by a food bug. This caused Jon and his brother to miss a further 2 days due to illness while they recovered.
Anyway Friday came and it was a real cold and crisp autumn (fall for my North American friends) day.
There were crisp dry leaves about 6 inches deep coating the inside of the shop that had fallen from the ash tree which towers above the shop in a neighbours garden.
These were all swept out before the guys could get to work. The trusses started appearing in their finished positions soon afterwards and by the end of the day they were all up and in a temporary braced state.

The guys had even put the cedar cladding onto the end gable and it looks great from my neighbours side of the fence. I just hope he refrains from letting his ivy grow over it like it did on the previous old shop roof.

I did a few pictures of the progress so far. Hopefully next week I should have a roof on and the shop is then weatherproofed.

The shop with trusses on

Shop Transformation Part 2

Here are a few more pictures of the shop progress.

The huge trusses on the truck are not mine!
They were for another building site.
The ones for my shop are the smaller ones.

The walls are up now. I call it
my Berlin Wall. They are a lot
higher in reality than I thought on my design.

How to remove an asbestos roof

As part of the shop re-modelling exercise I needed to get "professional" help in to remove the old asbestos roof. I was expecting people wearing space suits with breathing gear but instead got these two guys.
I would never have climbed up onto that roof never mind walked about on it.
They had no safety equipment AT ALL apart from steel toed boots!
I don't even think they brought a ladder. At one point the younger guy is up on the roof making a phone call!

YeeeeeHaaarrghh!

Have a look at this YouTube video I uploaded and you can see what I mean.


I'll give them some credit though. They removed everything, cleaned up thoroughly after themselves and the whole lot was completed in 2. 1/2 hours. They did say that the amount of asbestos in the roofing sheets was minimal and they were composed mainly of concrete - hence no protective clothing required.
Now there definitely is no going back and I have to continue the project until it's finished.

There is an HD version available from this link too.

Oh Dear! What have I started???

Shop Transformation Part 1

So the builder started with an empty shop, complete with a previous owners bored childrens' graffiti on the concrete panels, to new blockwork internal skin in just 4 days. The pictures speak for themselves:

I've never seen this shop so empty!

I didn't see any of the graffiti as your eyes just got used to it.
Once there was nothing in there it's glaringly obvious

Old shop clear out

So the big old shop emptying exercise has begun. As you may (or may not know) I currently have mobility problems due to a dodgy hip and this has caused no end of problems for me. Thank heavens for cocodamol and my employers VPN!
Anyway I have been able to pack up all my stuff into various boxes from a sitting position and move them into temporary storage (our dining room!) with help of my darling wife who has done most of the physical work and kindly gave me permission. We also have filled countless waste bins with 12 years of detritus. We even went to the local rubbish dump and got rid of the old petrol lawnmower. It had seen its last blade of grass earlier in the year and I knew its life was at an end when the metal of the bodywork exploded in a shower of rust when first started it up in the first part of the season.

The temporary storage area (our dining room)

Earlier on yesterday I had discovered that all my expensive parallel clamps, that I had put into a cardboard box raised from the floor by timbers in the back yard and covered with a "waterproof" sheet, were basically floating in rainwater! So much for the sheet! I got them all out and using some Boeshield T9 and a rag dried them all off. I then liberally coated all the clamps with the Boeshield and we took them indoors to the temporary storage area. I got my waste wood-chip collection bin and placed them all vertically in it. I also dried off a whole raft of F clamps that had also got wet. The whole lot (suitably cleaned) is now in the dining room and fortunately not damaged or rusted.