Yesterday, the roofing felt and laths were installed. Today, the slates are going back on. We are replacing the occasional broken, or poor condition, slate with slates off the lean to.
Biggest ones at the bottom. Smallest ones at the top.
Tag: outbuildings (Page 2 of 2)
All of the spars and purlins were removed and replaced. The existing purlins were nowhere near as big as they needed to be and at some point the original purlin had been supplemented by an additional piece of wood. All very poorly done and still nowhere need adequate. Two of the spars in the middle bay had snapped under the sheer weight of the stone slates on the roof. So we have increased the total number of spars as well as increasing the size of the timber. We have installed two purlins right across the outbuilding, rather than the one that was there previously. And again we have increased the size of the timber used to 6×4 (although they are really two 6×2’s bolted together – 6×2 are held in stock as standard treated timber – we would have had to order treated 6×4).
The two end walls had to have new holes cut for the purlins and this has meant that they have needed to be repaired to a certain extent. It is a single skin building and large parts of the upper courses were fairly loose. Paddy and John have done an excellent job at cutting the stones to fit around the purlins – it puts the rest of the wall to shame, although I suspect that a little bit of pointing will help both improve the stability of the wall as well as it’s appearance.
Paddy and Jon repairing the end walls, Richard fitting the new sofit. The big stone slabs are the “water tables” that fit on the very top of the wall on the front of the building.
You can see the top of the end wall where it has been made good and now lines up perfectly with the slope of the spars. If you look along the line of the roof it is perfectly flat. The woodwork was put in so accurately that one spar was cut as a template and then all the other spars cut from it. They all fitted perfectly.
Looking along the line of the roof, you can see how flat it is. You can also see the two holes that have been cut for the new purlins and the stones that have been cut to fit. The larger hole to the left is an original hole that was for ventilation – this end of the building was used as an outside toilet. This is a standard design for this part of Yorkshire and we decided to leave it as it was.
The other end wall showing the two holes where the new purlins have been installed.
Well, two of them anyway. Now we have got planning permission, we can start to “tidy” the site up. Although we don’t need planning permission to remove the sheds, part of the justification for the extension was predicated on sorting out the overall use of the land – we didn’t want to start on any of the “tidying up” until the plans had been approved. There are 2 large sheds at the back of the property and 2 large sheds in the orchard. This weekend the plan was to remove the two sheds at the back.
The sheds are of a wooden construction and I have no idea how old they are. Let’s just say they are not modern! During their lifetime, they have been moved (the insides had markings for left and right) and repaired. Although much of the wooden was rotten in places, they were still remarkably robust. The plan was to disassembling them and burn the wood on a bonfire. They come apart reasonably easily – the roof comes off first and then the sides are bolted together. The bolts in the first shed were easily removed, but completely rusted up in the second shed. In the end, I used the chainsaw to cut out the bits that were bolted together. The worst part of the process was removing the roofing felt off the roof panels before putting the wood on the fire.
Burning the wood is the most economic approach of disposing of the material. If these sheds had gone into a skip, it would probably have cost in the order of £200 to get rid of the wood. Burning the wood avoids this cost just leaving us with a pile of wood ash that can be put on the fruit trees. It is amazing how little ash was generated by burning two sheds (as well as a pile of cuttings from the trees).
It took a day to dismantle and burn each of the sheds. The bonfire was going for the entire weekend. Removing the second shed has vastly improved the view down the valley. Since it hadn’t been used in years (possibly as many as ten years), I have no idea why the previous owners hadn’t disposed of it years ago! Anyway, it is gone now! Only 2 more to go (in the orchard!).
Shed 1 in the foreground and Shed number 2 in the background
Shed 1 minus the roof and gable end
Shed 1: Nothing but the roof left
Shed 2: Roof half gone
Inside Shed 2 with the roof off. The old bench and tools.
Shed 2 meets the chainsaw
This is where all the wood from the sheds ended up
All that is left the following morning – a surprisingly small amount of ash