The Door Painting Factory

So, the theme this week is painting. We've been painting non-stop and there's still loads to do.

Last Saturday saw the first delivery from our new, shiny trade account at Howdens - four doors, doorframes and weather seal, in an attempt to finally make the Workshop and Garden Room watertight and secure.

My wonderful new Festool track saw and router made short work of door fitting - all four doors had been cut to size, frames installed in the oak, hinge and lock pockets routed and decorative grooves cut in two days. The most satisfying things about using the Festool kit are the achievable precision and the remarkable quality of the finish - I have never been so attached to my power tools!

All the Workshop doors had decorative grooves routed into the surface, to give the impression of a panelled door. Even this was an easy and relaxing job with the router set up on my 3000mm Festool rail...

Using the limit stops on the rail meant that all the grooves lined up perfectly...

A quick couple of coats of paint and they are ready to hang. We've used quite a dark grey colour which I'm hoping will contrast nicely with the light grey silvery colour of the cedar shingles. We copied the colour from my sister's renovation project in Suffolk - it works very well there, so fingers crossed that it works well further west! It is RAL 7012 (Basalt Grey) in case you are interested...

These are the double doors that will fill the large opening to the Workshop - Kristy is crouching in the corner painting the stable door that will lead to the Garden Room.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice plasterboard on the walls and sockets installed. I've skipped over my unpleasant week with 55 sheets of plasterboard which collectively weighed over a tonne - it wasn't my favourite part of the build, but it does makes the place feel a bit more finished. We've still got to finish filling and sanding - there is a blanket ban on dust and sawdust while wet paint is present!

This is the result - I really like the colour, which makes the Barn look really finished. I still need to pop the beading around the glass in the window and attach the lock escutcheon (what a great word!)

Converting the Barn

So, with the Wedding finished and everything packed away, it was time (after a quick mini-moon in the name of tradition) to start converting the Barn. It was a lovely space when all open, but the building would become much more useful if divided up. The end by the drive will remain open and become a cart lodge for two cars (with a covered area for storage), in the middle would be my new workshop, and the far end would become a guest room with a bathroom for when Kristy's parents came to stay - her father uses a wheelchair so he can't get around easily. When not in use as a guest room, it will be a craft room / garden office / retreat as necessary - to be named the Garden Room.

Onto the conversion! I ordered a load of Celotex-type insulation from a firm called Seconds and Co, who sell insulation which has not passed quality control during manufacture. It's still perfectly useable, but the odd bit has a void here and there, or not perfectly flat. We saved about £1,000 over using full price material.

I also did the first of many runs to Wickes for studding timber. I normally shy away from Wickes, but they were holding a promotion and so we saved a good deal - even over using a larger builder's merchant.

The first job was to wire the place. There is an '8' shaped ring main around the garden room and workshop, with a spur to another socket in the cart lodge. Building Regs state that a ring main can be a maximum os 50 metres long, which was a challenge. There is also a secondary circuit in the workshop to connect certain power tools to a plumbed-in dust extractor that will live outside the workshop, a lighting circuit in each of the three areas and more PIR and timed lights outside.

The stud timber went in easily enough, even though an earlier mistake in specifying timber to hold the cladding in place caused me a good deal of extra work. I started by trimming the insulation to exact sizes but this took a long time and caused bowing if the size was slightly out; in the end I cut dimensions 5mm under size and filled the gaps with expanding foam.

The roof was quite easy - I used 100mm insulation to provide the necessary air gap between the top of the insulation and the underside of the cedar shingles to prevent condensation. In this pic you can also see the OSB I had to add to the frame to provide some lateral stability - as recommended by Roy, our structural engineer. I'm sure it's overkill, but it was easy enough to add.

After the insulation, a vapour barrier was stapled to the studding timber.

Finally, some more bracing was fitted to the northern gable. Despite the braces which stabilise the ridge, some galvanised strapping was further cheap insurance which helped to secure the roof. This would be covered by plasterboard in any case - the X shapes in the roof provide tension in either direction against wind load.

In other news, we've designed and ordered our new kitchen, Roy is close to signing off the design for the Orangery for the side of the house, the doors for the Barn are on the way and work is racing along to plasterboard and paint the two rooms in the Barn.

The Wildmoor Wedding

The day was finally here - our wedding day!

We wanted to have a real 'friends and family' feel to the event - and in the days preceding the Big Day we were snowed under with helpers, advisers, visitors, supper and overnight guests. We had SUCH fun and it was exactly the leadup to the day we were hoping for.

A typical helper's supper the night before;

The decorations were wonderful, and the barn looked amazing;

My mother Karen was responsible for all the flowers - these huge hanging balls in the barn were spectacular.

And then the deed was done - it went so quickly! Monty was even allowed to take part - he and I wore matching bow ties...

Our wedding car was a wonderful Series 1 Land Rover, which had been kept a complete surprise from both Kristy and I. It was the most fitting vehicle possible, and really made the day.

We had a load of wonderful photos taken - this is our favorite;

Before it was back to our home for the most amazing garden party / wedding reception EVER!

...and what would be a more fitting start to married life than a cup of tea with my wonderful Grandmother!

The Barn was full to bursting with friends and family for our wedding supper;

What they say is quite true - it goes in the blink of an eye! All our wonderful friends and family, loads of amazing things to see and do, wonderful wedding presents, a hog roast - but before we knew, it was 2am and the last of our guests were leaving.

Easily the best day of my life!

The Barn - Cladding and Glazing

I don't seem to have many pics of this stage for some reason...

Here was a bit of test-fitting of the oak cladding - I attached a softwood frame to the oak beams, and then screwed the cladding to these softwood studs. Stainless screws throughout to prevent corrosion.

Fast forward a bit...

Progress was slower than a commercial job - every piece of cladding had to be cut with my ropey old mitre saw, before the screw holes were marked (all the same height thanks to my OCD) and pre-drilled and countersunk. Screws had to be greased to ease them into the holes - the stainless screws are quite soft so the heads would round off without much provocation.

I didn't quite order enough cladding - about 5 metres short - so I decided to leave the other eave uncovered.

The glazers also came to pop the glass in the end. I was very glad they measured and fitted the glass - the job was perfect, and we were finally ready for a wedding!

Simon's Stag Do

While the dwarf walls were being built, I decided to pop off for a weekend away.

I'd briefed my Best Man (my chum JB) with very specific parameters - no strip clubs, no big groups of blokes, no awful drunkenness, no being-tied-naked-to-lampposts; in fact, nothing associated with a normal Stag Do.

We settled on a simple formula - five chaps, in three pokey sports cars, some great roads, a bit of industrial heritage and a nice evening in a good pub. Simple!

We headed off to Devon early on Saturday morning and spend the day blatting around the place. There were originally four of us - Self, JB (best man), and my friends Neil and Tom. Jimmer was a last minute addition - I'd met him a few times but he got wind of our trip and had just bought a fast car, so he tagged along.

Above; Author, Neil, Tom, JB and Jimmer

The cars - my 2 litre Mazda MX5, Jimmer's Mercedes C63 AMG and JB's Porsche Cayman. About 800 BHP in total!

A good bit of blatting was involved surrounded by glorious scenery and great company.

Some industrial heritage - this was a proving mortar at an old gunpowder factory. A measured amount of powder would fire a calibrated ball, and thus the strength of the powder could be adjusted to the required potency.

And a wonderful pub for great beer, lovely grub and a comfy bed. Result!

Garden Room - Dwarf Walls

With something like a fortnight to go before our Wedding (and DIY in-the-garden-and-Barn reception) we contracted the building of the dwarf walls that we'd need for the building of our side extension Garden Room.

Yes, it was a bit last minute - but the nature of the foundations meant that there was a foot-deep hole running around the perimeter of the foundation. We'd already lost one small child's leg down the hole, and didn't want a repeat performance at the wedding.

We really landed on our feet with Nathan, our brickie. He had visited before to lay the blocks for the barn, and turned out to be a real craftsman. He planned to finish the job over a two-day weekend - and visited on the friday evening to prepare and move materials into place. We used hand-thrown (or whatever verb they use...) bricks which match the house really well.

This first pic was first thing in the morning - they had to cut in the bricks to match the pattern in the house.

The outside skin went up really quickly - and the finish they have achieved is wonderful. There is not a speck of mortar on the brickwork, and the pointing is to a really high standard. 

The job was finished by lunchtime on Sunday - with both skins tied together, insulated and a tidy site. Great work fellas - we'll use you again!

And a quick reminder about what we hope to achieve with the Garden Room - an oak framed orangery (far too upmarket a word for our house, but that's the proper name - a conservatory with a solid roof!) with bi-fold doors and windows all the way round. We plan to use it as a large family dining room with a small sitting-room bit at one end.

Laying the Terrace

In the middle of all this barn-building chaos, we decided that having a large terrace would be really nice for our wedding. We were hoping for fine weather, and would have 100-plus people milling about in the garden all evening - we needed something good underfoot!

We priced up the job and calculated the need for 55 square metres of terracing. This would give us a big area outside the back door for a table and chairs, a path to the barn, a smaller area outside the barn for another small table, a paved area by the log store on the barn plus a long sinuous path between the parking spaces and the front door. The paving we chose would cost about £2,000 - but the labour for installation was over £4,000. Yikes!

As ever, we decided to DIY. This saved a lot of money, but it was really hard work.

Our tame groundworker Dickie came in and finished all the excavation and laying of membrane and hardcore in a single day - this also marked the last of our hateful concrete paths. Hooray!

In hindsight, the level of the hardcore was a bit low - this necessitated a thick layer of lean mix (dry sand and cement) which was more work for us.

This was the approximate area that we had to fill - plus a bit more in front of the barn that is out of shot. The path can be seen on the right.

The job progressed quite well - the terrace had to slope away from the house to drain water, and the house wasn't very square which meant that compensation had to be factored into the laying of the stone flags. It looked marvellous very quickly!

The job was quite hard work - even though the flags were of a calibrated thickness it was difficult to got the levels to a satisfactory standard - and then they had to have the correct drainage slope and sit flat on the sand bed without rocking!

Sadly we were running out of time towards the end - we left the path and bought a tonne of gravel instead. A bit of turf to tidy up, and the garden as ready for the wedding!