Today is dairy door day, but first we had to make the door frames. These were made from 50x 100mm tanalised timber which were bolted into the granite blocks behind with expanding bolts. These were a pain and I now regret not using ‘Thunderbolts’ as these just thread their way into the block just like a woodscrew. To prevent water getting into the dairy, I used a row of brick blocks to form a…

We were supposed to have started work on the workshop over the Christmas break, but never seemed to get round to starting.  However, with New Year well out of the way and a little bit of settled weather, we got going. First in were the uprights. They  are bolted to the roof beams at the top and the wall at the bottom. With not a single flat or straight surface, all we had to…

The cementing inside the dairy is now complete. Now we just need to decide on how the workbenches go in. Before After

Now the outside pointing on the dairy is finished, our attention turns to the inside. This is before we started removing most of the old soft concrete . and after about an hours de-pointing. A long way to go yet, but at least I can work inside now when it’s pissing down outside.

The pointing on the Dairy seems to have been going on for weeks and weeks and indeed it has. But the end is almost here We had to take off the roof sofit to cement the stone underneath it. Having taken of the rendering on the left hand side, the rock underneath consisted mostly of rubble…… …this was all taken out and larger cut pieces were set in place. This now just leaves filling…

The weather has been crap recently, so today has been the first opportunity to  continue the pointing. The old cement around the doorway on the left is fairly vertical and flat as well as being well adhered, so we decided to blend the pointing into it. The other side is all over the place and all the rock at the bottom edge is nothing more than rubble. The two pit props should hold the…