Getting there

The lads came over and completed the rest of the deck and put down the skirt around the sides of the deck.
They measured up the sides now for the spindles and handrails.

I installed the rest of the lights so all that is done, need to get an external box now, 2 four gang sockets and and external socket for under the seat! Just in case!!!!

The lights look well now when on!!

Day 4 - All decking down

The lads were over again today.
They did very well completing another section of the deck boards.

AS you can see the rain drove them home today, at the end of the day they are doing me a massive favour so I was not going to argue!!!!!

You can get a better idea of the pattern now and the lights from the pictures below.

Problem with the washing machine, not sure what, its outside now for some "operation" :)

Could be the brushes!!!!

Day 3 - In the deck brother house hold

John and Dad were over again, finished off the final noggings and started the decking of section 1.
I called back to them at lunch and they were making great progress. Made the lads their soup and headed back.
When I came back they had all section 1 done. I was delighted. Then my job was, on crutches, to get the lights in section 1 installed. I decided that the transformers were going to be installed in the corner. I over the period of about 3 hours I installed the cabling for all 5 transformers, you can see the black cables below in the picture.

Each transformer has 4 lights in it. Each light has a 3m cable run to the "housing" on the end of the cable which returns to the transformer, these cables are 12m in lenght.

So by the end of today I had some of the lights installed also.

Decking Day 2

Was out for a bit of food last night with my sister and brother-in-law. Went to The Plaza,top notch food and the wine was not bad either ;)

So did not rise until 10am. Bit late I know!!! :)

So the idea today was to tighten down the deck, put the legs and nogging in place and the posts up.
My ankle was playing up today so it slowed me down big time. I decided that I would cover each of the feet with a dpc, stapled onto it. I had some left over. You can see what I did in the photos below.

With all the legs in and the noggings cut out we progressed to also nailing these in, while we had the nail gun.



The seat also went in today. The idea was to have a little table in the corner. The seat is 14ft long.

The posts are all bolted in, and noggings to the side of each, to totally secure them

I had to retire early so John and Dad worked away until 5pm

Decking day 1

Dad and John were due at 10am. I was at this stage meant to have got the nails, wood protector, nail gun, nails, brackets etc! But on crutches I was meant to be off! No chance.

Into the car, dumped the crutches and hobbles around NCF and Heiton buckleys for the stuff.

Paslode nails 48 euro. Deck screws, 60mm, were 21 euro for 500.
100mm wire nails were a tenner. 12" bolts were 30 cents each.

Nail gun to rent per day, 40 euro in Castlebar, 25 in Westport (Duffy plant hire), figure that out!

Anyway the lads got there and we started.

Supplies wise.

I got 37 joists, 88 deck boards, 8 lenghts of handrails, 88 spinds and 8 posts. Dad and John had taken the spinds and post and routed them witha pattern for effect and they looked well.

So we decided on 3 sections, about 8ft * 14ft each. Middle section running the opposite way, this mean that the centre joists were 2400mm long, meaning that out of joists 4800mm long we got 2 centres.
Joists onto the walls were express nailed in, with a drop of 1" fall outwards. Then the lads started cutting like hell with the chop saw while I measured and hobbled around, Dad given out every few minutes!!!!

Anyway as you can see we progress very well on day one, no supports or noggings. Thats tomorrow!!!
Off for me to get the ice!! and work out the lights.

I bought 20 LED deck lights off ebay for 142 euro. Not bad :)
It wil be a setup of 4 lights on each transformer.

More on that later

A close view from the door

3 separate frames, as you can the middle one will be the opposite direction

The corner was cut off to take the edge off it. Note the lawn growing in the back ground :)

View from the sun room door. Noggings and legs to go in yet.

Bit of a disaster

After about 2 months in the planning and help in place I decided to do the ligaments in my ankle tonite.
Very easy done, I pushed off after giving a bad pass and as I did my ankle went down into a hole in the ground and cracked. I knew straight away that things were not good as the tingling it in was weird and I had no feeling.

I had also bought a bike from my mate Adrian, he was to leave it to me tonite and I was to cycle it home. Idea is to cycle to work, 5.5 miles each way. It would help to reduce the weight, as 4 months out with a groin injury was no help.

So up to A&E and out in 30 mins with crutches, "keep it up for a few days, on crutches for 2 weeks and out for 6-8" , great!!!!

SO I rang the lads to cancel but they were adamant that they were going to work!!!!

Another day of stones

After about 4 attempts today we managed to get the machine and rake another section of the site, the area is about 100ft long by about 30/50 ft wide at its widest.
Myself and Michael got stuck in and Dad arrived about 10.30am, fair play to him after doing the papers.
Gerry was due to arrive also but did not manage it due to drink commitments the previous, but he arrived at 2pm and that helped push on the job.
We actually got through it fairly fast, unfortunatley my cracked rib was killing me but had to bear it to get the work done.
So Michael or his Dad Sean raked with the machine and then we pulled back the small stones.
The lads had to go at 4pm and I managed to rid of Dad then also as I could see he was struggling and he had a days work done before he ever arrived.
So what was done today about 1/2 of what was orginally left. Sean called over about 7pm and we seeded what was done.
I then watered it and put up the "Bird protectors" :) Also known as strips of plastic on a stick!!!!
While I was outside I also measured up for the deck, after a year of promising the funds were there to do the work and I started to price around.
For 24 sqm of deck, I was getting quotes of about 1000 euro, thats for standard posts, spindles etc.
I was away with a friend of mine in Rome at a wedding and we got talking about what I was doing, he is is involved with timber processing and he needed me to do some website work for him so we "bartered" :)
Anyway, when he got back he got me a quote of 540!!!! I near died!
So when I heard that I decided to "grow the deck a little!! So now its gone to near 33 sqm.
Deck is 14ft wide, 24ft long and the creeps around the back of the house.
Dad and John are going to be involved again.
I tiled Johns daughters house as payback for all the work he did here.
I will throw up a few pics of it below.


Pretty poor pic of the lawn but you get the idea :)

Simple tiling here, but she liked the idea of the brick effect. Instead of individual borders we just cut large mosaic tiles into strips. Cheaper option

Just another different view.
This was one of 2 bathrooms and then 24 sq yards of kitchen floor.