The House Goes Up!! - Part 1

Was up this morning at 7am, out of need/excitement/worry. The excitement because we had waited so so long for this day and so much planning had gone into it, now it was here it was good.
The worry was in relation to the scaffolding, was it setup correctly for the lads and was it secure enough, I was told by the lads later that it was spot on and I should have seen what some people classified as scaffolding.
The other worry was in relation to the sole plates layout. As I said before this has to be +/- 5mm, now we had our level and we checked, rechecked and double checked every lenght of timber before they were nailed.

About 1 mile before the turn off to the site I meet an artic with a TF kit on the back, I spotted it and said to myself someone else must be getting a TF kit delivered.
I arrived on site and the crane was there, a Polish lad driving it, no English at all, he asked me if I was "you manager" and nodded and he said "I drive crane", was going to say to him well I hardly thought you were there to do my tan now!! A great worker from what I heard from the lads. The crane was supplied by Moran Cranes in Castlebar @ 55 Euro per hour EX VAT. This was a 30 Ton crane.

I then received a call from the artic driver, he was near Westport, about 9 miles the wrong side of the site and the lads who were erecting the kit were behind him, so it was a case of shooting back the road to direct them.

I also had to find a place further down the road for the artic to turn.

I walked the raft with Mark Jackson the lad who was going to put the kit up. He was happy out with the sole plate and they were almost 100% level, gave out though that there was one sole plate, a non supporting wall, which had a piece of timber under it to level, I ran out of slate at about 9pm the night before so I could not find any more, I used one piece of timber, cannot please them!!!

I left them to it and headed for work.............

I got a call about 12 from Mark wondering where the roof trusses were, he said they should have arrived at that stage but there was no sign.

I rang Clarkes and they informed me that they would be late and not due until 11am the following morning, so I informed the lads of this and told them there was no point in turning up until this time.

I visited the site after work and got a great buzz to see the work done.

Mark also rang me to tell me that the scaffolding boards on the front and back were too high and to drop them down one level, so out came the hammers and we moved down the 4fts and boards down one level

Pics below....