In the week after Easter we took things a little easier, since the garage roof was now watertight and some of the pressure was off. However, there was still much work to be done.
In the past, we've had a number of birds making their nest in the garage and to prevent this we needed to fit soffit and facia boards to the exterior where the roof meets the side walls. We custom made the soffits to fit between each rafter, complete with mesh vents to aid ventilation in the space between the roof sheets and the Tyvek membrane. The vertical facia was then fashioned and attached to the soffit and rafter ends, providing the mounting points for the guttering. Front and rear flashing fabricated from plastisol sheets were fitted to form the barge boards, the whole setup should prevent any nesting in the future (we hope).
Once it was dark and work had ceased each day, pint pots and wine glasses were filled and internet research for the best deals on guttering and drains began. In the end we determined that Wickes had the best offers on guttering and Tool Station had the cheapest drainage supplies. These were ordered ready for fitting and drinks were refreshed!
Having spent time getting the soffits and facia right, fitting the guttering went without a hitch and was done in just a few hours. However, drainage would be a little more involved. Given that the original garage had no gutters or drains, rainwater would cascade down the sides of the walls and eventually seep into the garage and flood the floor, not ideal when one is entertaining! The gutters would help, but how do we get rid of the rainwater and more importantly where to? With agreement from our wonderful new neighbours Don and Sue, we fitted drains across their ground, around the back of the garage and down into our paddock, which we will eventually landscape (a project for another day).
Scotty and John also scrapped back the ground down the right side of the garage and erected a fence parallel to the garage which forms the boundary between us and next door. This removed many of the remaining roots from the original trees and provided access to the lower part of the wall in order to seal the wall with tanking slurry. Road plainings were then used to back fill the ground to provide natural drainage below the garage floor level. Finally, we constructed and fitted a gate between the garage and new fence. The new gate would allow us to access the rear of the garage for any maintenance work and let Don through when he fancies a pint!
The exterior is now pretty well complete apart from a tidy up, so it’s time to turn our attentions to the interior makeover.