Monday, March 23, 2015

House Improvements #30. Taking shape.

As ever, I've fallen behind in my blogging. Now, however, as I look out of a 19th floor window over the beautiful Colombian city of Medellin high up in the Andes, I have a couple of hours to kill before bed so what better to do!

Things moved on quickly and by the end of the second week the roof construction was in place and the extension was really taking shape.

 
It was real thrill to come home from work each day and see the house dramatically changed from the day before.

 

In what will be the new office, we decided to have the room open all the way up to the roof joists. The original house does not have particularly high ceilings so we decided this was worth the extra effort and cost to add a feeling of "roominess". The office is well used, with all the bills to pay, e-mails to send and Mari working from home up to one day a week.

 
We were both surprised by the depth of the beam required to hold the weight of the roof (even though it is dimensioned for snow). Even after we've put in an air gap and 30cm of insulation this is going to be a great feature.


During the second week, the windows and balcony doors also arrived. We've organised all the materials ourselves and surprisingly enough had to ask to have these delayed and stored in the factory so we didn't have to store them for weeks ourselves.

 
We'd have to wait another 2 weeks before we saw these installed, but it was good to know they were here and would not delay the job.



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