COMPLICATION WITH ELECTRICS

I did believe that the electrics in the conservatory would be a fairly simple job. All we need are a couple of double sockets, a light on the house wall and 2 external lights which have been set into the dwarf wall of the conservatory wired up.
So we contacted a local electrician in the village and he came round to look at the job. Unfortunateley he can't do it as it comes under part P of the building regulations, or rather he can do it but it would then need inspecting and testing by someone else, meaning it would work out more expensive. It appears that if someone is 'Part P' registered or certified, they can do the job and then test their own work. Anyway we now have an electrician who is 'part P registered' coming round to quote for the job on Thursday or Friday.

WEEKLY UPDATE 30 MARCH

Well, we're now back to weekends only working on the conservatory having had 4 days last week to give a long weekend to get the main structure up. This weekend we had Peter, the plumber in to move the radiator under the window and also fit one in the conservatory. This took all of Saturday morning. The rest of the weekend was taken up with knocking out the wall and fixing the new french doors which B&Q managed to deliver on time.

JOBS STILL TO DO

Next weekend we have the plumber coming to move the radiator which is under the window which is being converted into French doors leading from the house to the conservatory. We now have a delivery day of Tuesday this week for the french doors from B&Q so hopefully these will be installed next weekend too.
Other jobs still to complete are wiring of lights and power points, fitting internal window boards, flooring plus we need to tidy the garden up around the coservatory.

HOW EASY WAS THE BUILD?

Having almost completed the build it's time to reflect on how easy (or difficult it was). In all I spent 4 days on building however I don't start too early or work too late so I would say if I had got stuck in, 3 days would have been sufficient time. I wouldn't say that any of the build would be difficult for anyone with reasonable DIY skills however some of the assembly was a bit fiddley and tricky to start with and I just got the hang of doing some jobs when they were almost finished.
The instructions we got from the supplier were reasonably easy to follow, however I found the roof installation instructions a bit hard to follow as it covered all types of roof so I had to search through a bit for the bits relevant to our roof.

WE HAVE A CONSERVATORY

OK, so it still needs guttering installing and there are various bits and pieces of trim to put on, but the conservatory is up, glazed and sealed. We finally got the last piece of glass in at about 6.30pm on Sunday.

FRAMEWORK COMPLETE

Saturday
We finished installing the perimeter walls today and levelled up the whole conservatory. The bricklayer said his dwarf wall would be level and he's not far wrong judging by the almost spot on level of the conservatory walls.
We've also installed all of the roof structure ready for the polycarbonate.
Tomorrow we install the roof, fit the glass and the doors.

PERIMETER ALMOST COMPLETED

As the delivery arrived earlier than expected - breakfast time in fact - we've managed to have most of the day starting the build. We've got the sills all laid out and the perimeter almost completed. There's just one part of the perimeter to put in - it had to wait because there was an old vent cover right where it needs to go, this has been removed and the resulting hole filled.

The perimeter sections were simple to fit, just a case of screwing the sections together in the right order. Fixing of the strips which join each section was a little tricky - there must be a trick to this be we couldn't work it out and it was a bit of a struggle, they're all done now though.

Next job is to fix the last perimeter section and then fix all the frames down to the sill (after checking the level), and then on to the roof