Living the Dream

While lock down had been pretty useful for the first few weeks i soon ran out of materials for making major progress. I had to settle for spending the next 4 weeks mainly doing odd jobs here and there that id been (probably sensibly!) putting off for ages. Got a lot done but also ended up starting quite a few things that i was planning to leave until i finish (which is why I'm still plodding on with to project now). Not to worry tho, the next major task was tackling the roof.

When i moved into the unit in 2016 the roof had a few leaks which i had mixed success in patching up. Over the next few years these leaks had defiantly gotten worse to the point that they were probably worse then when i started. I had decided before going any further i needed to spend the summer tackling them properly. The roof is a north light style with asbestos one side and glass the other feeding a cast iron gutter on either side which i share with the units next door. The unit behind mine (adjoining) had had a fire and they had replaced the whole roof with insulated cladding and clear GRP. I priced up doing the same with mine but it wasn't going to be cheap and far from easy either considering i needed to keep a roof over all my equipment the best i could. After a bit of thought i decided to go with a compromise. The asbestos section of the roof wasn't really too bad and that was by far the most expensive bit to replace considering it cost nearly as much to get rid of the old stuff as it did to buy the new! It would also probably have required a crane to get the long steel sheets up there in the first place. Instead i decided to keep all the asbestos. Only a few panels needed replacement so my next lockdown task was simply getting up there and cleaning as much of the crud off it as i could.. Boring as hell and probably a waste of time but after removing the moss and layers of old sealer and curse word at least i could see the wood for trees.



The main culprit for leaks on that side of the shop was actually the gutter. I had decided a while back to line it with plastic damp course but with time on my hands i went to town, 2 days with an air chisel chipping out all the layers of sealer and GRP that it had been badly repaired with before. A couple of sections had massive cracks in them which i had to repair as best i could and where water had been leaking though the steel RSJ underneath had corroded so badly it looked like puff pastry! I cleaned all this up and re-leveled the sections of gutter best i could so at least the water wants the drain away now rather than just sit there causing issues. With the liner in the workshop was suddenly 10 times dryer I'm just a little worried about it being fragile. One tiny hole could mean the whole lot needing replacing. For now it works tho!

With lock down now over i managed to get the stuff ordered to do the glass side of the roof. Again it was a complete ball ache organizing it all. Essentially i may as well have been arranging something with a brick wall they were that unreliable but after 3 or 4 weeks of being told it was 'coming tomorrow' it eventually turned up unannounced and we could begin.. This side i had chosen to simply replace the whole lot with clear GRP. The original glass is a bit of a nightmare to repair so i opted to just rip it all off and start again. It was a lot more economical too. The materials was £1500 or so but i got back £300 in lead scrap to offset it! I enlisted the help of Dave again and we spent a extremely busy week manhandling the old stuff off, replacing the perlins, fitting the GRP and a new ridge. 12 hour days for 5 days in a row got it done and its made a massive difference to how watertight (and dust tight) the place is. Time well spent!














I don't have many pictures of it 'finished' but il get some for the next post. One other thing i tackled was the stairs. The original stairs had taken up a stupid amount of room so i designed my own this time, just steep enough to not take up too much space but also shallow enogh to still use like a proper set of stairs! I had considered just using a ladder style of stair but seeing as i will be up and down all the time i really needed something you could climb quickly. I made up the steel work myself and found the treads on eBay for £20quid each which was a bit of a bargain..




More soon... Maybe the mods might want to move this to the garage section??

The rest of the walls were treated the traditional dry wall way. Taping and filling the gaps then sanding back. This was again something id not actually done before and after doing it i can say its something i will be avoiding doing again in the future! Not a pleasant job! I think maybe if youre a professional it might go a bit better but i found it just took way too long and made a massive mess. Taping, filling, filling again and then sanding.. Then realizing you had a few low spots and filling again and sanding again and then the whole shop being covered in horrid fine white dust. I definitely should have just got someone in to skim it all!

I did however redeem myself with my choices on the painting side of things. After investing in one of these airless paint systems it took me all of about 20mins to paint the entire lot! Literally these are so good it took 10mins to put a 15L tub of paint on the wall.. It probably took longer to clean the thing out afterwards! Honestly i cant recommend one of these systems enough. If you have any more then a couple of walls to paint spend the money! Saved so much time and effort and will save me days doing the rest of the shop when the time comes.

With the downstairs rooms cladded and painted i could do the 2nd fixing on the lighting circuit and after that finish laying the insulation and damp proofing on the ceiling. With all that in i could make use of the spare chipboard flooring i had left over from the old mezzanine to board out the new 'loft'. I'm not used to having a loft (my house has a loft conversion) so I'm looking forward to having somewhere to chuck all my junk thats out of sight and out of mind.. Of course tho for it to be out of sight here i also needed the wall to extend up into the pitch of the roof so thats what i did. I had a bunch of 8mm ply that came off the old mezzanine and it was perfect for the job. Started filling it with junk already!

Last little bit was to tidy the 'crawl space' i had to leave down the back of the rooms. The plan is this will house all the various services both for the mezzanine rooms and whats going to go in below. (It should also double up as another 'out of sight out of mind' space too i should think!) So far its home to the extraction fan for the spray booth downstairs, the gas meter, electrical board and will soon be home to a combi boiler, fume hood extraction fan, auxiliary extraction fan and probably a load more stuff i will convince myself i need!

Maybe see you in another 3 months? Just starting to get to the interesting bits now! With the pubs opening soon I'm not sure how much progress will have been made however..