Thursday July 5th - First-floor joists

A day off yesterday for me to catch up on work, Mal to attend to a prior engagement and Melvin to have a lie-in. Back on site today to start on the first-floor. By the time Mal and Melvin had constructed the load-bearing utility-room wall on which the big beam will sit and I'd finished the ground-floor OSB, a Doves wagon had arrived with the beam and a stack of wrong-sized floor-joists. Sent them away (but kept the beam), then nicked out to summon Mick Gamble and his telescopic fork-lift to unload the trusses, which arrived from Donaldsons Timber on an artic driven by Bob Hoskins. They look bloody enormous, but seem to tally with the measurements!
Quite an operation lifting the beam into position in two sections, very skillfully co-ordinated by Mal, with Melvin's brute strength and my impressive collection of ladders and less impressive collection of biceps completing the team. Once the beam was in place, on temporary posts and bracing, we set about installing the upper-floor joists. I'd tweaked my back during the beam-lifting (ah, diddums!) so assigned myself to cutting the joists to length. Even that was pretty painful, with my lower-back in spasm, but by the end of the afternoon it had eased a fair bit. Will need to give it kid-gloves for a day or two.
Hamish, Buggy and Boo played much more happily today, constructing a den with timber offcuts and a tobogganing slope with a rubble sack.

By day's end we had all the floor-joists in place for the northern half of the house. We're still waiting for the bigger (220 x 75mm) joists for the longer span on the southern half, so may have to spend the next couple of days dwanging until they arrive. Scaffold coming tomorrow, which will be very welcome, after all today's tricky ladder work.

First floor