The garage is finally ready to park a car in! This picture is actually a few weeks old, but life has been a bit hectic recently, so I’m playing catch up on the blog. A few days after the door was fitted Martin, our electrician, installed the fuse board and connected up the garage door motor, so I could get the car in and out. The tricky bit now is working out how to connect it up to the alarm which he is going to fit, so that before the door opens the alarm is deactivated.

It has been a bit quiet on the garage front recently, we’ve mainly been painting the inside, but this weekend the door was fitted. I went for a Hormann sectional door with motor, expensive, but hopefully worth it.

I also got the trench for the electrical cables dug today – hard work in the sun, but my fault for leaving it until the last minute, as the electricians are starting tomorrow. This means I will be able to open and close the door, without an extension lead from the house in the middle of the garage.

An internal picture today, as the piers either side of the door were the last bits that the builder needed to do, so nothing has changed outside. The pace of work (and frequency of updates) will slow down a bit now that it is down to me to do the work, but the next task is to paint the walls inside the garage white, to keep the dust down and make the garage a bit brighter.

The door has been ordered, so that should be installed in the next few weeks, which means we will be able to get the electrician in to finish the wiring and then I’ll be able to park the MR2 inside!

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.