Week 3-4: Underpinning Complete / Site Cleared

The Mill slowly deconstructing!

Hello again bloggers!  Went out to site last night to see how things have moved along in the past weeks.  Encouraging progress despite it being the trades easter holiday week with the underpinning now complete on the 3 walls that needed work.   You will see from the pictures that the North, East and West walls all needed cement blocks poured to give necessary support (quick thanks to Craigie for starting the excavation with a shovel last year!).  I have also attached a photo from last week that shows how the blocks were made within a wooden box - simple but effective.  These will all be covered up (thankfully!) once the drainage pipes are run.  The South wall has really deep foundations so no support needed there - wall depth was probably a factor of the sloping site and all the heavy machinery and the Mill wheel that would have been loading that wall.

Cement box below our bedroom window!

Cement Box Construction

The first cement pouring

The other bedroom window!!

The old Mill wheel hole has now been cleared of all the rubbish that was in there (thank goodness I didn't have to do that job) ... you can now see right down into the old lade tunnel - pretty cool.

Looking down into the abyss

Looking up inside the lade outlet at the rivers edge .. spooky!  Someone was knocking back the old cans of Export!

Inside the Mill looks really large - the height seems massive now the floor level is all cleared out.

Can we fit rooms in here? Hope so!

The guys have also made a start to removing the old Scots slate from the roof - they are about 1/2 the way through I'd say.  The original slates and ridge stones are getting stored onsite for re-use once the new roof goes on.

Recovered Scots slate

Roof ridge stones .. can't remember the techie name!

The old roof looks really rotten when looking up from the ground - our builder Stan tells us all slates will be removed along with the roof timbers this week - now that will be a big fire!

Lasted for +/-200 yrs .... nae bad effort

The river side is now all prepared for starting the extension foundations, however architect has a few things to get sorted before Stan can get started ... hopefully get things moving before end of the week.

Lots of earth moved .. and lots more to go.

Site of the East extension (front door is close to where the mixer is)