30 Aug Sun: Fitting worksurface in utility room

That's a mighty big & heavy worksurface
I was planning to clear this up and dig the drain up, again, since it now needs to go against the building over on the right, where a garden tap will stick out the utility room wall. It was originally where you see it now because the kitchen sink would be on the other side of the wall. But I decided to move that in the kitchen, so dragging the blue 25mm MDPE inside is a huge amount of effort for no real gain. But it's Sunday and my body is killing from a weeks worth of floor sanding at a mates place

And there's why you work from the top of a house to the bottom. Dust always goes down. Straight up, you ignore this rule and you're a nunce

Surface in place

Finished it off by making some supports from the 25mm ply. They're shimmed & screwed, with foam filling any voids left over

23rd Aug Sun: Bent PVC

Error, error, error... does not compute John Spartan... you are fined ten credits for an infraction of the keeping it real code

He doesn't care, he just doesn't care...

The freshly fitted 2000mm window is opening and closing, but with a Rogue Traders clunk. A few seconds of inspection revealed the frame of the opening part it's self was bumping on the centre latch plate of the fixed frame.

Breaking out the trusty spirit level, I got this result balancing it between the latch plate in the centre and then the other to the right of it. It's tipping upwards towards the centre

And then this for the centre latchplate to the one on the left, again up towards the centre.

In short, the opening has bowed.

There are two reasons for that. One, the act of closing the window while the foam cured has encouraged the frame to tighten up against the opening part. Secondly, the foam has helped push the frame upwards over the 1200mm span of the opening window.

No problem, easy fix...

Having cut all the foam out under the 1200mm span, I stuck a batten into the opening, pressing down on the latch plate. Reshimmed and squirty foamed the frame. This way, the opening is fixed at the correct dimension until the foam has cured, so it can't bow.

No spiders on this batten, yet... With each one (usually) having eight hands, they might be useful "I'm doing it myself! Dammit!" friends if we can ever cross that bridge

The squirty foam is from the contractor cans. It's really sticky, so it literally glues to the frame and brickwork and it's real tough once it's cured. You can't use it for high load bearings, but it does massively improve bonding on uneven surfaces. The same trick is the reason why most high performance cars or aircraft are as light and strong as they are. Without the foam inside the composite panels, they'd fall apart. With it, they can be near unbreakable. When a load is applied at a finite point, the microscopically perfect binding of the foam will distribute the load throughout the local as soon as the surface (often carbon fibre) starts to bend, rather than letting it concentrate at a point. The foam used in the aerospace industry is the same stuff, PolyUrethane. It's also great because you don't need to measure and cut pieces, you can simply inject it and let it fill a cavity better than any measured piece ever could.

I added a pair of screws around the problem latch plate, they run down into the sill to help prevent the frame warping upwards over time.

And yay, it shall b'eth until the mighty foam hath cured... amen

22nd Aug Sat: Tight fitting PVC

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21st Aug Sat: Second piece of double glazing - prep

This used to be a door and window, as I've shown in previous uploads. Getting it out wasn't too hard at all

That piece of worksurface needs to go so I can brick up to the wall above it. For some reason, whoever built this extension on the end of the kitchen decided to leave the wall on the left of the corner as a single skin and then make it double thickness above the counter. Meaning there's a skin of bricks hanging in the air. This corner of the kitchen has actually subsided about an inch or two compared to the other, on the right of the window you can just see in the picture. Anyway, out comes the retro jigsaw again to regain it's honour.

going...

going...

broken

This DeWalt drill has a rotostop, allowing me to stop the bit spinning and use it like a hammer-action chisel. It also has a quick change system on the chuck, allowing me to snap the jacobs off and fit it with the SDS chuck it included for things like this chisel. I have to strim all the tiles, backer, plaster and floor screed away from the brickwork so I can get the new bricks close to the old

The inner brick layer was burried under the screed you see at the base of the picture. Leaving that in place would mean one layer was out of line with the old mortar lines, making it next to impossible to fit the brick ties between the two. Off it came

Clear picture of what I've been trying to do

Once the mortar starts going on, the ties will line up. I think I explained before, I've opted to use the ties rather than actually interlace the new bricks with the old for speed and because that single skin (now on the left of the picture) is in no shape for me to start chiseling bricks out. It's already subsided, and the old bricks and fragile, so chewing them out could cause even more subsiding or (much, much worse) cracks and collapse

Some more chiselling to remove all the old tiling along the wall. You can easily see the hanging layer now. Why they decided that would be a good idea I don't know, especially as you can see the double skin runs along the floor as well. Maybe someone cut these bricks out at some point to fit a unit in there

This was the bricking project that was never supposed to be, it seemed. I'd lost my debit card, having dared to visit B&Q for some screws instead of ToolStation. I think that cast anger in the hearts of the gods, like it did when Ulysses 31 defiantly rescued the children from the giant cylops. That aside, I was then left running (literally) between the bank and Hews Grey trying to get paper money to pay for the bricks and mud before they both shut and left me unable to work. Then I managed to order solids (breeze blocks) as opposed to commons (house bricks), meaning I needed to get more money until we resolved that I was a noob on the next visit. Next up, in my rushing I'd managed to pick up a mix of 75 and 65mm commons. 8^/

Mixed in with all this, I was having to load and unload the boot fulls of bricks and 25kg sacks myself whilst going between Hews Grey and the bank at 4:45. I managed an entire boot in about five minutes at turbo speed.

I'd also run almost completely out of 3-in-1 waterproofer / retarder / frostproofer admix.

The trowel decided to go on an adventure without telling me.

And last but not least, some rain

And yes, the more astute will notice there is something else missing from the picture, and it really is that simple a mistake.. You can guess at what it is until the solution arrives and all is revealed. I was kicking myself for forgetting it in the first place, and getting ready to kick the wall down until I found a way around having to do that

I shall be using the Flemish bond pattern, yar...?

The main man. There are nay sayers, but they have yet to understand the defining epicness of the series

I make absolutely no attempt to pretend I'm good at laying. Any time served bricky would be laughing his ass off at it. But those are concrete commons and each joint has been mortar packed and tied, making it look disgusting but super strong. I'll be skimming each side with render anyway, making all that mess invisible

I could have made it neater if I'd been more patient but it's going 6pm on Friday night now and I'm not in the mood for messing around with tidyness

It's getting late now and my goal is to get the house water tight and unwelcome visitor proof as rapidly as can. There's something nice about having openings this huge in the walls out to the garden, it's impossible to resist having a cup o' tea and staring out at the rain for a while between mixing the 25kg sacks in a bucket with a spade. But it also means you get assaulted by rain and cold, and need to be ready to do some assaulting should a chav strike occur

By this time, Hews Grey had long since shut and I'd annoyed the staff enough for a Friday afternoon just before home time. I had to use the remaining material to get the wall ready to take the window tomorrow. I can finish the suspended brickery at a more convenient time

The cats decided it would be a great way in and out of the kitchen, across the wet mortar. They have a kitty flap, and there's a 2m drop on the other side of that wall. Somehow, they still managed to climb up the other side of it and back in

Double glazing

Things start with the worksurface getting a sand with some 80 grit paper on the random orbit sander. This removes all the lumps and bumps, hairs and air bubbles

A top coat going on with a cheap disposable roller. I don't like using things only once, but the amount of white spirits I'd need to clean these up makes that option just as wasteful and harmful as throwing the sponge away

Right on que, the double glazing arrives

The decorator at the house behind ours. He sung the entire track list of Jesus Christ Superstar

The ends for the sills, shims and keys that came with the glazing. I don't like their shims and used the Silverline versions

The sill was the first part I tried for fit, and it came up 100mm too short for the cavity. I had an instant panic attack having just spent 180 pounds on this frame, but discovered the window it's self was right and they'd cut the sill too short. A trip to the glaze shop and I had a new one, free of charge obviously

I used the grinder with a twist knot brush in it again to remove the remaining silicon stuck to the brickwork from the last frame

Old frame out

New frame shimmed in

There's around 15mm of play in some areas, so I divide by two and shim each side out by 7-8mm. There isn't that much play around the entire frame, areas of the brickwork get a lot closer

Cavities foamed up, 24h and it'll have cured

The side door and window, still in place

I stuck this big note to the first window to inform Alex that he shouldn't open it until the foam had cured. Apparently, it wasn't clear enough for him being hand written in red pen. The first thing he did on seeing the window in was grip the handle and push it open

That's not a door you see coming out, it's the frame

I need to rebrick this area, so I've cut slots in the mortar work with a diamond disc on the 9" grinder

And I'll use brick ties to pin the new work in with the old