'The Challenge....'

The house was built in 1965 and this conservatory could even be an original feature. It had a certain charm but it had to go.

Some years back I saved the conservatory from falling down, using a trolley jack to lift the centre of the roof while I raced around reinforcing the walls. There is no way to save it again and restoring it would mean replacing just about everything. Only the roof joists, their brackets and the single glazed panes of glass could be retained, so it really wouldn't be the same buiding at all. Whilst I might think about restoring it if I lived here on my own, Grace would prefer something more robust - fair enough.

Grace is of Jamaican descent and the folk of those Islands have a word 'Scarn'. This fine word is part of the every-day vocabulary in our home. At the simplest level, 'Scarn' means 'Dirt' but there is so much more to it. Grace has often said that white people simply do not understand Scarn but after 20+ years together, she will admit that I now grasp the concept and indeed - that I embrace it. 'Scarn' also involves the presence of dirt, grime, germs, bacteria and so on. Places and people and things can be 'Scarnfull' and our old conservatory certainly was. The good news is that it is entirely possible to remove scarn and this act is known as 'de-scarning'. I plan to de-scarn the conservatory but the level of 'scarnfulness' is so extreme, that the only answer is to remove it completely.

Like most rooms, the old conservatory looked far bigger when empty. Those vinyl floor tiles under the carpet are glued to the base slab pretty firmly but I would like to get them off if I can. The carpet (which received a very high scarn-rating) is coming out in this image. Even with the doors open, the temperature inside the conservatory was volcanic - probably not a Summer job but needs must...

Some of the conservatory content was saved, some went to the dump, some to the local scrapman - and the rest went on a great many bonfires.

That's got the roof off. These old sheets were full of slime and pretty nasty generally.

Monty came out to help but had to be shut indoors when it started getting more dangerous. There were some big panes of glass about.

The roof joists are almost gone but this last one is important and needed to stay in place while I figured out how to get the glass out safely - definitely a coffee moment.

How to tackle the glass? - I decided to don safety goggles and fold down the first wall. Once it is flat on the slab, you look the other way as you toss a club hammer onto the window from a (fairly) safe distance.

Three big boxes of glass went to the dump - I was glad to get rid of them. 

And there you have it - a nice clean slab. Removing the old vinyl tiles was a tough job but I did it in the end. A coat of 'Valspar' masonry paint cleans things up.

Of course, this all amounts to the end of the easy bit - I now need to build a new conservatory! First though, the rest of the house exterior and the gardens require a bit of a make-over.

I have done a fair bit of brickwork and some labouring for a pukka brickie in the past but needed concrete blocks as well this time. progress was fast as the blocks are so large.

It is vital that the blocks are true in all directions as they will dictate the laying of the outer brick skin.

That bubble is dead centre but look at how high the left hand side of the level is.

This needs to be corrected early by some creative brickwork or it will come back to haunt me.

Slow but steady progress. It was a very hot day today and it was hard work.

I don't have a cement mixer and the build will take too long to make it worth hiring one, so it is all done by hand in batches. This all keeps me fit and saves money.

Good, steady progress. Having lived here for some years I have only now noticed that whilst the quality of brickwork on the house is excellent, that on the garage is pretty poor, suggesting that it was a later addition. My brickwork falls somewhere between the two, which should work out well.

A view from inside. Whilst the thicker walls make the interior smaller than it was before, it will still be plenty large enough. All imperfections in the base have well and truly been built-out now and the spirit level shows that I am just about spot-on. The doorway has moved from the front to the side, essential as the custom-made wooden doors of the original have no off-the-shelf equivalent. As it is, the door is a short one at just 1981 mm.

A large concrete joist spans the back door and because fixing wood to concrete is not easy, the short rafters holding the white board up had not been fixed to it at all and simply pulled out.

I consider this a pretty bad bodge but I bet loads of houses are no better.

New rafters were installed and fixed upwards to the main floor joists. I could literally hang from these now and the whole thing is locked solid.

The doorway is another problem with a level which is some way from true. It would be hard to get it so wrong if you wanted to!

The answer is some crafty carpentry. The piece of wood at the back has had a drip groove routed into it and the one at the front is essentially a long wedge - yes, it was a pig to cut!

So, the wedge goes down first and then the doorstep on top of it, plenty of silicon and then drilled down into 70mm plugs set into the slab.

The result is a bubble that is where it should be.

At some stage I will need to hide this when the floor goes down, but that is a problem for another day.

Jumping forwards a bit - the weather has been terrible with so many wet days when I have been able to make no progress. At this stage I have the door frame, window openings and the capping timber in place. There is also so much that is less obvious, like the new joist along the top of the garage wall and a lot of work 'behind the scenes' to correct previous bodges.

The roof is now on and the first window in place. problems with the base slab not quite being square have been ironed out, with the difference concealed in the last of the six roof panels. This one needed to be cut anyway and by making this cut on a very slight diagonal, with the fixing bar also on a very slight diagonal compared to the joist, the variation was taken up and you would never notice it.

Here's a view of the interior. The windows are from Wickes and use a very clever fixing method which needs no screws through the frame itself - I was unsure at first but it works very well.

The gutters are also on and the whole of the back of the house, conservatory and garage were done at the same time. 

Here, the other two windows are in place and the central brick pillar is built at the front (not as easy as it might look as it must be absolutely spot-on).

The new door is also in place and fits under the roof exactly to plan. Fitting the door took about ten minutes - making it open, close and lock smoothly took about five hours as it was not intended to be used quite as I have done.

So, how to deal with the wonky base slab? I considered using levelling compound but it would need to be very thick in some places. I also considered ceramic tiles but again, the adhesive would need to be a good inch and a half thick in places which would have cost a fortune and been tricky to do well. I like working with wood and I understand it reasonably well now, so a complex frame was constructed. 

In all this needed around 100 pieces of wood, each one different, in order to build up the level. The object was to get the floor flat in all directions but to add the minimum overall height to the slab (which is already way too thick). This means that the wooden frame supporting the flooring sheets is wafer thin/non-existent where the slab is highest.

The finished floor. It is flat in all directions and has remained lower than I had expected it to - a good result. The whole lot is screwed and pinned to the subframe and sits on a large damp-proof membrane.

The conservatory is now starting to feel like a nice space to be in and has survived its first real storm with no leaks.

I have replaced all the guttering at the back of the house to match that which I have done at the front. This now continues around the conservatory and the back of the garage (visible through the trellis archway on the right).

Of course this all makes the garden look a bit shoddy and this will be a task for the Spring.

Next job inside was to line the walls with plasterboard. I used the 'dab' approach which means mixing up a bucket load of plasterboard adhesive and then (as the name suggests) just dabbing it on the walls. Have the plasterboard pre-cut and then just press it onto the wall. Use a level to ensure it is straight, vertical and square and that is all there is to it. After painting the plasterboard with diluted PVA adhesive, the next step was to skim the plasterboard with plaster. Traditionally I would have said that plastering was the one DIY job that was beyond me but I watched a good tutorial online and had a go. I am delighted with the results. Scrim tape was used on all joints to prevent the plaster from cracking.

Getting the colour on really felt like progress. I have not painted right to the floor as the skirting board will cover this space. The skirting was painted before fitting to help me achieve a nice clean edge. That vertical face beside the door, where the door catch is, did not leave me room for plasterboard (ie the door would have been right up against the board) so it was plastered directly onto the brick, after a coat of dilute PVA glue.

This end of the room is storage. Doors are thin ply on wooden frames and were far trickier than anticipated.

450 litres of storage will help us greatly.

Here we are - just about finished. There will be some minor touching-up in the Spring but we are about there. 

We have come a long way....