With the
ridge tiles done, the roof is basically finished - so it's nice to finally start doing something else. The next area to focus on is finishing the dormer - but before working on the carpentry and painting which will be quite involved, I figure it makes to start at the bottom. The bottom of the dormer will be a narrow "Juliet" balcony which will sit in front of a very large series of windows that will open (on one side) like a set of French doors. The idea is that one day, we'll be able to open these doors and step out onto the balcony to enjoy a view if the beautiful neighboring gardens and trees below.
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| The Dormer -afternoon of June 22nd |
The balcony will be made of concrete so that it's strong enough to allow the balcony to extend beyond the face of the brick wall, and also to help hold together all the loose bricks that remain exposed. The first step in working with concrete will be to make the wooden form-work that will hold the wet concrete in place before it dries.
Before starting the form-work, the first task was to remove some obstructions that were in the way - the ends of the vent stack for the plumbing, and the downspout for the old gutters. These were quickly cut away, revealing that some of the brickwork had been removed, leaving a gap. I soon realized that before moving forward, this gap had to be repaired before the form-work could go up - whoever installed these pipes really butchered the wall and the brick. Because it was so bad, the rest of the day was taken up by repairing and filling in this gap. It was only on the following day that I was able to do the actual form-work, and that ended-up taking the whole day...but at least it was finished. Another item to check off
the list!
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| The obstructing pipes before being cut away |
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| After the pipes were cut, the gap and damage to the brick (from when the pipes were originally installed) was revealed |
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| To fully repair som eof the decorative brickwork would have involved removing most of the surrounding bricks, and possibly causing more damage. To avoid this, I decided to span the gap with a plate of unused steel from the structural work. The plate was held in place by mortar. |
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| Brick were then laid over the steel plate and the gap was slowly filled. |
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| The completed repair. |
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| June 23rd - the form-work in place. |
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| This space is where the concrete will go. The left side is the form-work, the right side is the wood "wall plate" that used to hold the original roof rafters. |
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| The completed form-work |
