KITCHEN :)

The last couple of days my dad and i have been putting up the frame and rafters for our added kitchen. We have been through the process of chainsawing out a hole through the timber of the whisky barrel its  self; putting a lintel in above it so that the now unsupported timber/ roof section would be safe again; digging trenches in the top soil to reach the sad level (2.5 ft deep); getting their placement a bit off so having to dig corrections; levelling out recycled breeze blocks to be our foundations; then the floor came (size of a stirling board sheet 2400x1200, with added triangles at the edges); and now finally the frame has gone up and you can all see some change in presence. We have a real kitchen shape :).

Happy days! Here are some other angles:

Window In

Framing the Window (The Nesting Box)

Well, first things first we had to build a step for the front door, lovely and level, a pallet propped up by breeze blocks. Super proud, did it all by my self :)

Then we framed the window:

Dad previously made a built in window frame, however because the whisky barrel its self is tapering outward, our rectangular window would not fit snugly in the slightly trapezium shaped hole. So to overcome this we are building a window frame away from the window. The design is large enough to allow a couple of people to sit in it comfortably and we have made it tall enough for me to stand fully upright in it (…just).

Step 1) Built in 4 'baby' floor joists (see above red arrows). These are made with 2" by 4" size timber. We cut right angles into the ends of the timber that sit on the whiskey barrel frame.

Step 2) Added the frame (see above) for the window using 2" by 4" timber again making sure the lower joist (red arrow) and top lintel were level, and the uprights (blue arrows) were plumb.

Step 3) Erected 2 (one of the 2 as seen at the orange arrow, see above) rear uprights to hold the pitch of the roof. We measured these against my head hight standing on the joists, hopefully the sloped ceiling at the higher point will be enough to send up in but then the whisky barrels frame isn't high enough to step through, so there for might be a little pointless. Its defiantly enough room to have a small book shelf above the whisky barrel window frame though. can't have enough extra space in a wee house like this though. 

It then got too dark to keep working so we packed up and called it a day.