Garden Project Phase 2

And so it starts ,  The massive project that is the decking and tidying of the garden.
This is a project that we wanted to do and had in mind when we did the shed 2 years ago ,  however with a lack of funds we had to wait and save.  But we commited ourselves and then we started.  Baring in mind that we it was always a project on hold so everything was just scooped up after the shed and put in the middle of the garden.... yes it looks a mess.

Strangely enough when we started this project we were waiting to get a SINGLE roof tile changed on the roof ,  and as a result we had scaffolding up from January through to April

Fantastic eh ,  I've never really done decking before ,  so this was a new challenge all by itself for me ,  the certainties were to get it square and level as best as I can,  One thing I was sure of is that we didn't want it to slide down the garden

Using 2 by 6 joists made it for an easier life,  they are less bouncy so need less noggins and padstones ,  however they still required a few for each run.

 Over half way across now,  everything is balanced on bricks to get the hight,  Unfortunately we were able to get it down any lower due to the historical coal shed and concrete council house path,  With hind site,  i should have notched the 2 by 6 to get it lower over those areas,  but to be honest ...  you would have saved 4 inches maximum for 1 to 2 days work,  not really worth it on a sloped garden.

TADAH!!!!! to the most part ,  that's the joists done for the top deck ,  just need to finish the noggins

Is it streight? seems to be,  when its all done with 3.6 meters of 2 by 6 ....  if i would give some advice ,  its to double check the lenths ,  as 3.6 meters can never be less than 3.6 but it can be 3.65

As always getting there takes a lot of time and effort ,  and I have the effort ,  but very little time.
Have some pics of various angles below,  but they are pretty much what they are at this stage. Note though that the joists at the wall side ,  are all bolted to the house with expansion bolts and suppored with notched legs,  so shouldnt have any slippage. but thats 18 joists.

Started with the first step,  i know its not super built ,  but this is just to get the idea together.

 Thats the rest of the noggins in though ,  so apart from putting the boards down ....  thats a job well done.

 Well ,  we have gustimated that we would need 42 boards to get this puppy done ,  so  ordered and delivered ,  chandlers building supplies ...  diamonds they are.

Lets get this party started,  thing is ,  you start with good intentions ,  and then you say "f**k it" and just lay the boards the easiest you can.

 But that's it,  the top deck has been boarded ,  but ...  i made the gaps 10mm ,  which i thought would be fine ,  till I lost a pencil  and a lighter in the gaps ...  Katey decided ,  we need to make them a little smaller.

Got some nice decking lights off the interwebs ,  20 in a pack ,  bargain.

 Looks decent at night too ,  but a little bright,  we went for cool white ,  maybe  a warm white would have been better.

My Brother dropped by for a visit , I turned to say something to him ,  stepped off the top deck  and onto half of a concrete path ,  I hit the floor like a bag of spuds as my ankle gave way. I can still stand on it ,  so I know its not broken ,  but its starting to swell up.

 Thats the first few steps done,  its not perfect because essentially  I made the steps before doing the working out on the path ,  but it is looking like its starting to pull together.

An embarrassing picture I know ,  but remember this is everything that was left over from building the shed/workshop ,  so piles of wood that i KNEW would we need all stacked up in front of the shed.  Its resources ,  and you don't buy what you can get for free right.

Kate built a little wall to stand her water butt on,  just need to plumb it into the shed guttering. Its a brick wall ,  filled with concrete...  a bit overkill ,  but as always a great job.

 Kailan Inspecting the work.  All the legs are noched 2 x 6 with additional supports in 2 x 4 (note the large gap on the fence side ,  We are using the path to support the new deck path ,  and the ground is so loose on the fence side ,  we have to be carefull.) Im running out of 2x6 too,  so this weekend I will need to change plan a little untill we get more timber in.

We had some left over ply from what was the old roof from the old shed,  had 3 sheets of the stuff,  and 2 sheets that were from the floor.  This was one of the better bits,  we also used a piece infront of the shed untill we do the bottom deck.  This willb e boxed in ,  but for now ..... it needed a back.

 At least its looking tidy ,  Its loverly up here though ,  feels nice,  but I really need to sort those cables for the electric out ,  cant have dangling wires ,  but for £5 bought all the connectors and conduit to hide it.

The steps to the back door ,  are a project in themselves,  but we couldnt do them while the scaffolding was still installed ,  but thank god its gone now...... but not quite ready yet

 Especially seeing we are going in the opposite direction,  I guess a big thing is to NOT forget the other bits,  postpone yes,  but don't ignore ...  it will still need to be done.

Doesn't look too shabby from our bedroom windows either

I cant say the same for the overall look of the garden ,  OK ...  I admit it ..  it looks like a shit bomb has exploded,  but after all this is a work in progress.

I suppose ive left it long enough to get the cabling done,  this is a bit of a task ,  because we ran this ages ago ,  and its buried so cant exactly re-run the thing ,  so just going to have to cut it ,  and run a spur. I had to do a couple of joins .... as you can see below ,  but it is all sealed with bathroom sealent,  it will normally  be covered anyway but its belt and braces.  All this so we can have an outside power socket...

 I knew it would happen eventually .....  the bruising has finally  made its appearance. Hurts like hell to walk on too.

The lights are looking nice.

a lovely nice sunny day for once.

The next batch of timber has finally arrived for my weekends work.  Just lots more 2x6 and a couple of decking planks.
The main challenge is that I would like to get down to the bottom deck,  as that has been a long time coming in all honesty.

 Its actually quite hard to see outside the box with this sort of thing ,  especially  when you have to deal with lots of different levels

 And of course ,  you need to plan ahead with what you are putting in and where ,  we would like to have a bench seat down there ,  and Katey wants some beds for her planting,  my only regret with hindsight is that I should have used a longer piece of wood ,  to balance it out better.  But this is a board bolted to the wall,  and then the 2x6 screwed to that.

As above but from the opposite angle.

 Too many similar pics here ,  however I made the bench ,  built into the raised beds ,  but somehow ,  it just doesn't feel "right"

 As always ,  I like to keep records ,  so another of the above from a different angle,  still not happy with it though.

 Oscar however has given HIS seal of approval.

 now have a general idea of how big the beds are going to be ,  and Kate has lined them to protect the wood over time,  If only I could work out whats wrong with the bench....

ITS TOO SMALL!!!!!!! for fat arses like mine ,  2 boards wernt enough, so despite it being a pain in that arse to dismantle it ,  it had to be done ,  and make it a 3 board bench. feels better now.

Just found out from Virgin ,  they are upping our broadband to 200mb,  Ryan as indifferent as always doesnt care ,  Kailan on the other hand ,  is insistent ,  that 100mb broadband in his room isn't enough ,  and he should be entitled to the same as his parents have downstairs.  So a deal was struck that if he and his brother buy a gigabit switch for their room ,  I would run new cables,  as I had to run ethernet down to the workshop anyway ,  i thought hell OK,  so a new cabling exercise was undertaken.

Typical me though drilled the hole in the right place,  but then realized the sky dish was in the way..... but we have cable I thought .....  so the sky dish came down ,  i was shocked though how rotten it was,  lucky it didn't fall down.

Sometimes though ,  a lack of for-site can hinder you ,  guess who forgot to put in enough noggins originally,  but also we have decided as we are changing the top deck a little bit (more later) we could use the removed boards,  problem is,  those boards are 2.95 meters long the gap is 3 meters long. I dont know what to do ,  so after some thought ...  came up with a better option..... Extend the step by an extra tread.

 Got to be honest though ...... the bottom deck does look kinda nice

Managed to get close to finishing the first of the 3 beds though,  and starting to get rid of the mountain of dirt we had from when we dug out the garden to build the shed.

 The lighting here ,  was deceptivly complicated,  not due to a technical reason ,  just that every wire was too short to go to the next light ,  so they all had to be cut ,  extended ,  soldered and heat shrunk  to make it work ,  but it DOES work

I like to take this pics ,  from the bedroom window,   as it gives a better overview ,  despite the mess ,  its starting to look good.  Then we got a call ......  the council wants to put a new roof on our block ,  YOUR KIDDING!!!!!! we have just had the scaffolding down from ONE ROOF TILE!!!!,  now they want to change the whole roof  for the block ...  to say Kate was upset ,  is an understatement,  so as you can see above .....  the decking has had to come up again.

And so the scaffolders arrived ,  ripped up Kates plants and generally  made a real nuisance of themselves

 We could have just waited ,  but there was still plenty to do ,  So I started with the side beds ,  while Kate ...  installed a new fence at the back of the house ...  and I must say ...  great job .

And now we have a roof again ,  just need to get rid of the scaffolding and we can go back to putting the top deck back .  Personally  I don't think it will go for at least another week or two. 

 So the bank holiday weekend has arrived ,  and although I have been putting it off ,  its time to do a fiddly part of the steps,  which is down to the back gate. Although the weather says its going to be dry on Saturday ,  the morning was storm clouds,  thunder and generally  crap till lunch.

 Im not exactly working smart here ,  but I did manage to get another step in,  and get the existing ones finally  boarded.  So although not pushing through at speed I dont think Saturday was a complete washout.

I know this is looking dire,  but this is the in-between stage,  so its not going to look great just yet.

Theres no easy way of making this look good ,  the problem is and always has been that we live on a hill ,  and there was some rather large concrete steps on the path,  I can remove them so I have to work around them.  I have considered decking the bottom part ,  but then I would have to remove a significant section of the gate due it opening inwards.

 As you can see ,  Its quite a pain in the arse and im not sure how to do this.  So I think I might just ignore it for now  and start to look at other stuff.

 So did some tweeking on this section ,  I know it may not seam noticable ,  but added the trim piece to the first step down so now looks a bit tidier.

 Same,  different angle.

And here we have another area of "things that need to be finished" I had left the angled step for quite a while,  why ...  I dont know ,  maybe  I was just putting it off ,  or maybe just got distracted with other tasks,  one thing for sure is that due to the bottom gate ...  It pushed me to complete this section.

 One thing I did learn from this aspect is that when you create angle such as these ,  they are a pain in the arse ,  and dispite you measuring it all correctly ,  what can be 3 treads on one part ,  can quickly turn into 2 and a bit treads due to the angles.







OK Simply put  ,  the roof replacement is dragging on,  its been over a month now and although the roof has now been replaced,  the scaffolding is still up,  it was signed off last week yet this week we have another roofer up there pointing the chimneys again.  And he managed to break a ridge tile in the process bless him.  Accidents happen,  but we really want to get the top deck relayed and its just pissing us right off.

Anyway time for a few more pics

 So showed this to my father in law ,  and his ultimate questions was "why have you done that"
I suppose its a valid question ,  however I have seen similar on the interwebs and I quite liked it.
So as its my project ...  I thought hell why not.
Each slat is made up from a third of a decking board ,  cut in half.  The frame it sits on was made out of the absolute shyte 3 x 1 planks the timber yard sent us.

This image ,  one of many is what set me off,  its called contemporary fencing.  And yes I know i'm not exactly fencing the rear of the house ,  but it breaks up the mass of brick wall that's there,  and covers the pipes mostly.  I was always planning to do this though ,  but it does give me something to do ,  while i'm waiting for the scaffolding to be taken down

Im not exactly a chippy or a joiner but it has the right feel,  still has yet to be sanded and possibly stained ,  but it has the right effect I think,.

We are getting really close to finishing this,  once the replacement deck has been ordered and laid ,  then it will be time to order the turf to tidy up the lawn.... it will all end up looking lovely I'm sure.  Certainly Kate has started the planting ,  so I expect summer will be enjoyed but it may take a while for it all to bed in and become established.

 Here's the weekend ,  and YES the scaffolders have finally  gone,  but that's only because the wifey bribed them with bacon sandwiches and coffee Thursday and Friday so they prioritized on our section.  But all went to plan.  Decking boards were ordered and here we are.

 Well  Saturday came to an end ,  and to be honest if I say so myself  I think its looking pretty good ,  it is a large expanse though ,  and realistically could have been a bit smaller ,  but then as we are on a slope it gives us a nice flat part that's usable.

As you can see,  theres still things that need to be done,  but cant really  grumble,  the weather stayed almost ok all day  with a HEAVY shower for over an hour at lunch.

 The standard "out of the bedroom window" shot ,  that I always like to take,  although as there is a few versions of this,  it should be interesting for a comparison over the years.  But Sunday was a washout most of the morning ,  in fact ALL of the morning,  but I did manage to get the top lights in,  I was suprised however that the transformer was able to cope with 26 lights...  but i counted up the wattage ,  each lamp is 0.2 watt so the whole garden is lit ...  with 5.2 watts of electrickery ...  RESULT!!!

It looks a bit tidier in the dark ,  with the lights on from bedroom window,  unfortunately the reality of the matter is that theres still many many tip runs to do ,  and a lawn to lay maybe next week. We will see on that as its all got to be levelled yet to get rid of the clumps of old turf. But we are on the home strait.

So what did I do this weekend....

Well I would like to say I did massive things this weekend ,  but no,  In fact this weekend was a period of starting to snag and finish off bits and pieces that I was honestly just putting off,  procrastination at its best I can assure you.

So theres no pictures to really show,  but the list of things done are

1. Removed the house side gate ,  it hadn't fit since Kate did the fence,  so had to remove all the hardware and take about 4 inches off the width and rehang it.
2. Finished the house cladding..  I didn't have enough time to finish it off last week ,  so with my last decking board I sorted that out.
3. Started framing up the cupboard... The bit with the electrical socket in it,  well its waterproof ,  so it doesn't need to be housed ,  however that part of the top of the garden is ugly as hell ,  so thought it would be worth just boxing it in ,  the framing is done just need to do the cladding for it.
4. Run the cables to move the shed light,  this is a bit rough,  so will have to tidy it out ,  but I moved the light to the end of the shed ,  rather than right by the door. I have left myself enough cable to add an additional light,  just need to decide which light,  then I can clip the wire down to the right lenth.
5. Moved my tool racks...  as part of the shed tidy ,  I wanted to clean out a section that will be where the computer goes,  so all my tool racks got moved down to the same place as the light.
6. Put up some solar lights...  got some nice solar lights from my mother in law last xmas ,  finally  put them up to give some additional light when the garden lights arnt on,  that doesnt cost money to run.
7. Used the offcuts of decking boards to make some planters for kate,  They arnt exactly craftsman but they arnt bad and you dont have waste.

Like I say ,  nothing massive this week ,  just tidying up ,  as i am notorious for leaving things unfinished.

ciao for now.


Its looking rough at the moment ,  but tis all being sorted out and things moved and changed, note the racks have been moved as has the light ,  so new runs of electric cabling.



and from the other direction - had to put a central light in as it was a bit dark in the middle part.






I honestly think we are getting very close to the end of this little project ,  most weekends are now spent doing snagging and small changes.  the lawn is still a major thing though as you can see below



Kates little thing,  is digging it all up to level it out and reseed.











Wide angle of the whole thing,  its not established I know ,  so looks a little stark ,  but the planting has been done it will just take some time to settle in.

And from the other direction.

Did get a new tool in the house though,  so that should be interesting eh. Its a multitool,  so does things like plunge cuts ,  sanding ,  scraping etc.  Just adds to the pile that I have.  i LOVE tools










Kate insisted on some soffits in the workshop/shed .....  so why not put some more lights in there eh.  Looks nice at night if not a little bit overboard really.
















And here comes the weekend once more , but Kate has decided on the furniture she wants,  placed the order and surprise surprise ...  early Saturday morning while she was out at the shop ...  there was a knock at the door..  two massive boxes had arrived

What could they be ?









Well theres some clues right there










hmmmm what does this attach too











TADAAAHHH!!!!!! thats what it is

Kate seeded the lawn too ,











By the weekend it was certainly starting to come along.









Any which way ,  I thought I better continue with the snagging and as I had a few days booked off work ,  I thought why not.  so I FINALLY terminated the cabling for the boys internet,  that involved a 4 gang faceplate in the lounge,  a 2 gang faceplate in the bedroom and lots of punching down and putting RJ45 connectors on things.


I even went down and put the blinds on the shed doors,  dont get me wrong ,  I like having glass doors ,  but I dont want it all to be too obvious and open. but that did kind of lead me on to doing some work in there.










Well ,  lets be honest , i looks like a bomb has gone off in there ,  all the elctrics were done from a single feed with lots of extension cables.  so took the opportunity to buy a reel of 1.5mm and 2.5mm cable and a fuse box and went to work.  I moved my tool racks to a more suitable place,  for a reason that will be seen in a minute.  I had some trunking from way back when I worked at the uni,  it has done the rounds several times but I figured this would be its final resting home so got some sockets and started work.

Its starting to make a little more sense eh,  now i have light in the darkest part of my workshop. and of course,  nothing is srted yet as im moving things around and sorting as i go along.

Its still a bit messy at the window end ,  even though I have cleared this off 3 times this weekend. It still seams to be a magnet for shit.









hmmmm  whats going on here ?

I know ,  youo might be thinking WTF ...  a telly in the shed,  its a multiple purpose telly.  Mainly I have wired up the interwebs with gigabit cat6 from the house down to the shed,  so why not...  I put a space computer in there,  had the old telly hanging around,  so it gives us the option of having the tv down there should we wish to sit down the bottom deck of an evening.

I wired in the new fuse box for both the main ring,   and the lighting ring.  Put a spur in to power kates shed,  so she got her own fusebox and light ..... and finally  Oscar signed of the work.