The project ends

January 05, 2020

It has seemed to have taken a lot more time than we thought, but finally, the conservatory project is nearing its end. When we moved in we knew that the conservatory was not what you would call a job well done. The odd leak here and there soon revealed itself to us. The final straw was a heavy, heavy shower that revealed the odd leak would be better described as raining on the inside.

The roofer was called in first (He had previously replaced the garage roof). Instead of replacing the plastic roof, like for like, he explained we could try a felted roof with a couple of windows to let the light in. This seemed the most practical solution though did involve ripping off the tiled section and joisting the roof underneath our daughters bedroom. This would also increase the pitch which would help with run-off.

It was a plan, and can be marked off as part 1. The resulting work looked incredibly messy.

As you can see! The roof and tiles were well beyond their sell by date, or in fact, their functional use. The actual job itself from start to finish probably took around about 4 days with a gap in between.

The end result was a waterproof roof on the outside and the skeleton of a roof on the underside. Just joists and the left over bits that held the old plastic roof up. This was now replaced with a half metre of old external wall that was part of the room.

It was a little bit dismaying looking at the end result and then figuring out how we fixed what was left over. It did look a sight.

And here is the sight we were faced with.

Just lots of exposed wood and brick! it was just so unfinished (Yet, wonderfully waterproof). Did I mention it was waterproof. The roofer provided us with the name of a plasterer he recommended to us. We rang him, and arranged for him to pop over. A nice fellow, who was very good at explaining what he could and couldn't do.

This work he would do close to Christmas so we emptied the room again! He then had delivered a remarkably large pallet of plasterboard to the kerb of our house which my wife, with herculean efforts and a little help from her father managed to get it all put into the garage for him.

The plasterer only took two morning to complete the entire job. The pair of them were super fast and the finish was immaculate. I am always in awe of plasterers and how they work.

Job done. Yet, again, we found ourselves with a not quite fully completed job as we now had to paint it and get the electrician in to put the lights back in. The one drawback to this sequence is that in December the days are a little short so when we painted, we painted in the morning for a few hours and then let the paint dry overnight before we did more. We 'misted' the plasterwork. my wife tells me it is called 'misting'. Essentially a coat of very diluted watery emulsion as a base coat.

It took a couple of days to add the white paint (it wasn't the best white paint money could buy, but it was free and in the shed. We've had it a while). We then started on the feature wall. Now, when we were in B&Q and we were looking at the many various and awfully named paint colours/shades I hadn't fully realised the issue. The issue, once I opened the paint pot was that the very shade of green matched, exactly, my works corporate colour. It was like looking at our website. It did make me groan a little inwardly. However, it's a lovely colour and it's also going in the front room. I will have a memory of work whenever I sit in the conservatory!

As you can see, this took some time but it came on nicely. The one potential fly in the ointment was an overly eager assistant. Who, was desperate to help us. His record on decorating was unproven. His enthusiasm could not be doubted. In the end we buckled and introduced the bubbleman to the team. He was entrusted with the small roller. It turned out he was in his element.

There was a distinct height issue.

Finally, today, we had our electrician arrive to put the new spotlights back in. He was also a nice guy. We have, I think, been very fortunate in finding some really good tradesmen. You do hear absolute horror stories, but as far as I am aware we have done rather well. Anyway the electrician was here for about an hour and the new spots were put in. We managed to have a bit of a tidy up. It's looking good now.