Right, lots to get through.
First, a couple of views of the chimney:
I simply don't have time to do the ridge tiles now, so I had to leave myself a way up there for when I tackle this job in the spring. I covered the missing tiles with plastic, and I'll finish the lead off at the same time:
OAK TIME!!! The end wall of the dining room was next on the agenda. This consists of a main overhead beam which picks up the end of the existing bridging joist, and has a structural post underneath which takes the weight of the upstairs floor back to the foundations. I cleaned up a lump of 6"x 5" oak, and did a cut out for the bridging joist:
That doesn't show clearly, but there is a squint (angled) face cut quite a long way in. There are quite a few electric cables to get across the room in this beam, so I cut a rebate in the top:
Then it was marking, drilling and chiseling until i had finished all the necessary mortises:
I wasn't going to do a chamfer detail on this beam, but there was a nasty bash on the edge of the oak where it had been carelessly handled by the supplier, so I managed to get that over the doorway, and removed it with a chamfer:
Once I had cut all the mortises in the top beam, it was time to transfer them down onto the longer of the two sole plates:
Here is my dining room, 6 days before christmas. Note the pile of completed oak studs and beams on the right:
Here's a tip. You know how all your electric tools have indistinguishable black plugs......well, get some Tippex and put an initial or two on them, so that when you are faced with a cobwebs of cables and an extension full of identical plugs, you don't waste ages pulling the wrong plugs out:
Here's another tip: always know which face of the wood you are working on. Then you won't make cock-ups like this:
The two holes on the upper face were a start of a cut-out for the patress box for a light switch, but on the wrong face. You can see the correct version to the right, with a stepped rebate to allow the fitting of a cover strip in due course (once the beak has done all its shrinking).
Time to prepare the bridging joist for its new support. Crack out the precision woodworking machinery:
This new support beam is a featherweight compared with the 2 big lifts I did a few weeks ago. Essentially I lifted each end alternatively on my shoulder and stuck a prop in underneath, with a rope at one end to act as a fail safe. Anyway, here is the lift:
I should have made a template rather than measuring:
I pinned a piece of thick lead to the underside of the support post, because it will bear down on top of two engineering bricks sitting on some DPM on the foundation, through a hole I left in the screed. I wanted the weight to bear evenly on the bricks, and lead is a good way of evening out very small differences:
I had left the brickwork down a course, so was able to offer everything up into the sole plate, then raise the whole arrangement the length of the mortises:
Note the very long lever:
Same the other side:
Finished:
This wall remains open. It physically divides off the dining room from the hall, but keeps the feeling of space, and keeps everything feeling light and bright. I need to add the pegs, and complete the brickwork, but that is the wall complete.
There's more...........