The garage is almost finished! The last slabs for the path have been laid, along with the shed base and the garage floor. When the concrete floor is dry, the builder needs to build some supporting pillars for the door and then he is finished and we can start with the remaining jobs – the interior fit out, getting the garage door and electrics installed etc.
Now that the facias, window and side door (minus bottom panel) are fitted it looks a lot more complete. The path down the side of the garage has also been started, although we’ve ran out of slabs, a combination of not ordering enough and some breaking when they were laid.
I’ve been told the concrete floor is going down on Friday, so I really need to hurry up and get the garage door ordered.
I didn’t post yesterday, as the visually there wasn’t much different from day thirteen, as it was just the carpentry that had been finished off. However, there has been more progress today, the roof has been finished and the eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that we also have a new fence and back gate.
The brickwork for the walls is now complete and work on the roof has started. The wall plates and joists have been fitted and the boarding is about half done. The roofer will finish off the roof on Tuesday and the window and personnel door will be fitted on Wednesday. Work has also started on the path down the side of the garage and the base for the shed. The next step is to fit the steel lintel above what will be the garage door.
Whilst I was at Le Mans (blog to follow seen) the builders made good progress, with three sides now at full height. Due to the slight slope of the garden the garage looks higher than I was expecting, but my plans were based on the garden being flat.
We are still on schedule for the roof to be fitted this week, at which point it will start to feel more like a garage.
It has been a busy day on the 119 project!
The builders have built 2 more corners and made good progress on the left wall, and the hardcore for under the floor has been delivered (the blue damp proof membrane shows what will be the eventual floor height). They had an extra guy working with them today, so progress was good.
The electricians were also on site, until 18:30 when I got home, I’d bumped into them at my office at 10:00 and they said this was their next job – they were still here when I got home at 18:30, which was good going. They were installing trunking for the electric cable and network cable, as they had some water pipe in the van already, they ran that just in case. They had to drill through from the outside loo and the bricks were putting up a good fight, when I got home there was a big pile of empty drill batteries, showing that the outside loo is literally built like a brick shithouse!
The builders have made good progress, all the walls have been complete to floor level with engineering bricks and they have started building up the main walls. The floor is due to be laid early next week.
After day three was rained off, the builders were able to get some bricks laid. With 2 walls and the start of the third and fourth I can see exactly how big the garage is going to be – and it looks like there will be plenty of room to work in there!
We have foundations! When I got home this evening there was a large pile of bricks on the street outside, I was also surprised to see the guys still working, it turned out the concrete had arrived late, so they were here until gone 18:30 getting the foundations finished.
Assuming the rain holds off they are going to start laying bricks tomorrow!
From the 30th May to the 1st June 2014, Coventry city centre was taken over by cars and motorbikes for the first Coventry Motofest. Coventry is the spiritual home of the British motor industry, with an automotive design pedigree and engineering history to rival any other city in the world and I am proud to live here. It is the unique motoring heritage that is celebrated through MotoFest – a free motoring extravaganza which for one weekend each year, turning Coventry city centre into the UK’s most exciting display of great cars from the past, present and future.
The focal point of the event was the display of classic cars on Broadgate, the cars on display ranged from the more common classics; Minis, Triumphs and E-Types through to 1930’s Bentleys and Bugattis. Alongside the classic cars there, were motorbikes from Triumph and Francis Barnett as well as the new Lightning GT – an electric supercar being built here in Coventry. The degree show for the Coventry University Automotive and Transport Design course was part of Motofest and was a good opportunity to see the work of the car designers of the future.
In addition to the static displays an oval racing circuit had been set up in the Cox Street car park, under the ring road for stunt displays and stock car demonstrations. The stock cars sounded incredible, with the V8 noise ricocheting from all the concrete supporting the ring road and it was only when I got back home that I realised my face was covered in black dust from all the tyre smoke.
Sunday saw even more cars on display on Broadgate, but also the anti clockwise lanes of the ring road turned into a racetrack for cars to do demonstration runs (hopefully there will be some timed competition next year), cars running on the ring road ranged from historic competition cars, such as Mini, Talbot Sunbeam and Skoda rally cars, to Time Attack cars and performance road cars from Jaguar, all lead around by the “Dreadnought” pace car.
My photos from the weekend are in the Coventry Motofest 2014 gallery:
