Chapter 04

Rebuilding the Manor

Starting the second week of December Pat is able to concentrate on finishing the Mansion by doing the actual rebuilding work. However, the work to finish the grounds is all planned with Eve, Alice, and Dean focusing on doing the fences. Serge has a crew arriving later in the week to work on the car park and driveways. The turf from their work will replace the grass damaged by the plane crash after the dirt they dig out fills up the hole.

Pat’s first task is to go through all of the storerooms in the stables to examine everything there so he’s familiar with what they have. When the refit was done sixty years ago a lot of the old fittings and materials ended up being stored there, somewhere. Just like a lot of other materials over the years. The Michaels Clan has always been into keeping things in case of a future need, so there’s a huge wealth of material to go through.

Tuesday night, after two long days of checking everything out, Pat is amazed at the contents of the generations of materials and items in the building in what he’s now calling The Bizarre Storage Bazaar. Although the areas are set with aisles you can walk down you need a good torch and have to bend down to see everything in a pile, plus there are many items in various containers where the lids have to be raised to view the full contents; often after moving something on top first. Deep in one back corner are a few more sandstone blocks, but the real find is a huge store of various coloured rough cut slabs of wood in many different widths, thicknesses, and lengths with many being eight feet long by four feet wide, plus there are lots of matching boards seven by three inches by twenty feet long. Pat wants to use some of these for the doorways.

Large tins of brass gas fittings are in the pile, early brass and ceramic electrical fittings, brass door handles, and brass candelabra as well: some for use with candles as well as others for use with gas or use with electricity. Two piles of solid wood interior doors with brass hinges, plus a box of matching hinges. He also finds the original wood panelling for the front room and dining room. He knew the family never threw anything away, but he now knows his mother’s ancestors are much bigger pack rats than he thought! It seems all of the items removed in previous renovations or changes went into storage in these back rooms he hadn’t investigated before. The finds won’t change the basic layout he’s decided on but he’ll now change a lot of what he was going to do in the public areas. The new main dining and lounge room are bigger than the originals so the original fittings aren’t enough to cover all of the walls of the rooms, but they will be enough if he leaves the stonework uncovered as ’feature walls’ in both of the rooms.

Wednesday morning is spent planning and talking to specialists. One he calls is the father of one of his father’s friends, a carpenter of the old school. When he arrives Pat explains what he wants for the external doors and he shows him the wood. Mr Dove grins on seeing the wood and slowly nods as he listens to Pat then he agrees he can do something with it. After he measures all of the doorways and finds they’re all the same dimensions Robin Dove leaves with four twenty foot lengths and the eight narrowest slabs of wood of the same type and colour of wood.

Serge’s crew leader in charge of breaking up the original driveway to the garage asks Pat what he’s doing about the steps to the main doors. It’s something Pat has been thinking about but hasn’t yet resolved. At present the doors have old concrete steps for people to walk up to the doors because the ground floor is two feet above the ground, that’s six hundred millimetres in modern metric measurements. The need to be converting between the systems gives Pat a headache but he recognises the need for him to work in the old imperial sizes on the house.

After a long discussion Pat agrees to let him replace the steps with a ramp at each door. The ramp at each entrance will be a cement base with a single slab of granite like material of crushed granite with a resin mix that wears better than real granite. Nadia is called for a visit to do the plans for them, then some minor changes are made to add a cover.

The Entrances

Again Pat changes plans as getting the entrances done will make work on the interior a lot easier. Also, constructing the front and garage side entrance ramps at the same time as the driveways and car park enables them to be integrated with the driveways and to be much more solid.

While they get started with that work Pat opens the temporary back door of plywood to check out the work. He has a good look at it all because Eve did the final inspection while he was sitting an exam. Each level is now a grid of steel beams making squares of a metre by a metre. He smiles because he hadn’t realised they’d brought the flooring in for him, but the pallets of the anti-termite treated composite board sheets are sitting on the beams for each area. The steel frames for the stairs are also bolted into place on each level, another task he expected to do. At the moment the steps are just the supporting steel lattice they’re made of, but he’ll cover them with hardwood treads before he’s finished. Well, as soon as he’s finished the outside work he can get busy in here. He closes and locks the temporary door when he leaves.

Pat goes to the pile of beams recovered from the fire to pull out a number of the shorter cross beams and joists that had held the ground floor up because they survived the best. Going from the plans Nadia gave him he measures and cuts the uprights, rails, and cross beams for the four entrance covers. This is hard exacting work because he’s used to working in metric and these are all in imperial measurements. The ramp area cover will be seven feet wide and eight feet high to make it larger than the six by seven foot doorway. Once the ramp is made Jim Flowers will be back to finish it off with sandstone blocks on each side to make it look like a slab of granite resting on the sandstone blocks.

Each piece Pat cuts has to be smoothed down a little, rebates cut in at the right places so they’ll set into each other as intended, and holes made for the dowel plugs to hold them together as well as making the dowels from the offcuts. Pat could just screw or nail them together, but by using hardwood dowels in the joints he’s hiding them and making it look more like the work of a carpenter of the era the house was built. The hardest part is drilling the hole most of the length of one of the front uprights so they can put in a tube for the water from the small gutter.

Making the frames for the four entrances takes Pat through to dinner on Friday. That night he finally makes a decision about the roofing for the entrance areas, so he’s back checking the recovered wood again on Saturday morning. He spends the rest of the day and the next day cutting and preparing the extra wood.

While two of Serge’s crews break up the old cement another is busy getting the ramps ready. This includes the precision setting of the square steel pipes for the cover uprights and the retention bars of the granite slab. The hard part for this is the cement is laid down in layers after they put in the framework of steel reinforcing because the slab is going in on an angle. The ramp is six feet long to rise only two feet so it’s a one in three gradient, an easy slope to walk up or to use a trolley on. It’s ready for them on Wednesday morning when a truck arrives with the slabs. When Pat sees the truck sway while its built-in crane lifts and swings the first slab does Pat realise how heavy they are. They aren’t as heavy as real granite this size, but they’re a good weight since they’re six feet by seven feet by four inches thick with some steel rods sticking out of the bottom to go into the bars set for them, that’s to ensure they don’t slide or move about once in place on the final layer of cement. The one by the garage is set first, then the front door, and on around the side and back. They do them this way to reduce the weight in the vehicle while on the grass. Even unfinished the entrances now look very good.

Although the final setting cement still has to dry Pat is given the go ahead to work on the covers. Starting at the back door he inserts the uprights, sets the rails in place, marks the spots on the wall for where they’ll go into the wall for a hundred millimetres then he carefully drills and cuts the holes to be tight fits. He inserts the dowel plugs into the uprights, pushes the uprights back a little when he slips the rails in while the dowel plugs hold them apart. A check they’re aligned with the plugs for the first upright ready to go into the holes in the rails. Now the hard part as he uses large g-clamps tightened just a little at a time to force the rail onto the dowel plugs in the upright. He makes a single turn at the rail nearest the wall, starting at the bottom rail, then the next upright, next is the middle rail and top rail; then back to do another turn all round. Repeat numerous times until each rail is snuggled in tight in all of the uprights for the length of the entrance cover.

It takes Pat just on an hour to get one side done right then he does it all again on the other. Repeat at each entrance. Back to the first one and up the ladder to check the crossbeams are right to fit. This part is easier as the wider beams only need to be set in the right place then hammered down with a rubber mallet hitting a protective block on the beam. The work goes faster when he gets more experienced at it. He started mid-morning but it’s dusk as he’s finishing and heading in for a late dinner.

Thursday morning Pat is back at work setting the small gutters in place. These are galvanised steel held in by straps screwed into the top of the front beam, but they look like a wooden gutter because Pat covered them with more of the flooring. The outlet attaches to the pipe in the front upright so the rainwater will run down the hidden pipe and into the ground drain. With them in place he puts in the many dowels in each beam and the top rails to make the roof of the entrance with the best of the cut up recovered floorboards. Once all four covers are done he goes back around them to seal all of them with the polymer coating and to make sure he covers all of the joints with the sandstone as well.

When the ladies come back from their fence work at lunchtime Eve asks if he can put something in place to minimise the wind and rain from coming in from the side right at the door. After thinking about this during lunch Pat goes out after lunch to buy sheets of Plexiglass to fit the area of the wall to the middle upright and from the top rail to level with the slab. His afternoon is busy with making suitable frames to hold the sheets in place. They have to go on the outside of the cover frame as there’s a small gap between the wall and the first upright. Pat needs to cut up several more boards to get enough suitable frames made then he puts them in place. This time he uses angled dowels to hold the top, bottom, and side frames in place. They’re angled down to minimise them coming loose. Since he may have to replace some of the windows the frame across the middle rail is wider with more of the horizontal dowel plugs to hold it in place. Once all are in he goes back around them with the polymer to coat them.

After Mr Flowers fits the stones on Friday he seals the work. So the finished entry is a dark hardwood frame and roofing over the sloping medium grey granite slabs with sandstone blocks appearing to hold the slabs up.

Driveway and Car Park

While Pat is busy with the entrances Serge’s people are very busy with the car park and driveway. In two weeks the old drive is dug out and crushed as it’s cheaper and easier to use as some of the gravel base for the carport area than to remove it. The entire driveway and car park area in front of the garage and the main house is made out of one hundred and fifty millimetre thick reinforced cement which looks like large sandstone paving stones while the gutters are like shaped sandstone blocks. It looks real nice. The carport framework is in place with a twenty degree sloped roof. The single line of solar panels along the lower edge of the roof to power the carport lights are hidden by the gutter, unless looked at from above. The carport’s steel roof is a nice mid-green similar to a lush lawn. From above this will look like a grass area in the middle of the drive. The men are attaching the fencing lattice for the carport walls to finish it the day Pat finishes the ramp covers.

The ladies have done all of the fencing except putting in the gates, the posts and spaces are there but the gates aren’t hung yet. At the moment the ladies are very busy planting the bushes around the house. The ones along the front fence and the driveway are all in. In the last two weeks the place has changed a great deal, except the doors aren’t done. But that’s in the hands of an expert and the end product will do them all proud. Pat knows this because he knows the quality of Mr Dove’s work. While in high school Pat and five other students did an external shop course doing carpentry training with Mr Dove. Over the years those lessons have been very useful to Pat, especially of late with the rebuilding of the mansion.

Finally, the Doors

The Saturday before Christmas Mr Dove arrives with the doors and architraves. He and his two sons get very busy in the doorways. They drill holes and install the architraves then they attach the doors. It takes them all of the day to do the four doors. Mr Dove cheated and he sent the doors out to be done by a milling machine to ensure they’re all perfectly the same. But the architraves he did himself: shaping them and warping the curve into them before trimming them. Most of what holds them in place is very well concealed with the only visible items being the bolts, the locks, and screws for the hinges which are all made of brass.

Mr Dove explains the set up while showing them the doors, “All of the architraves are held in by a dozen concealed spring loaded steel pins, four in the curve and four more on each side. The four hinges on each door all have three screws which go all the way into steel plugs set in the stonework. I’ve used bent hinges so they aren’t visible when shut, and the bolts are actual period bolts. The brass receivers for them all go deep into the stonework as well. It’ll take one hell of a hit to knock this lot out of place.” Pat smiles while he nods. “The bottom architrave is just a small strip of the same wood set into the stone with hidden steel pins as it’s only there as a weather strip. The locks on all four doors are keyed alike, so are sixteen more in the box marked ’alike’ but the other eighty locks are such the keys will only work the one lock and all of the keyed alike locks. Thus you can use them to come in the outside doors and your place, but not another apartment. I got Tim at Rivers Locks to do them that way for you. I wanted mortice locks that looked like brass ones from that period but gave you modern strength and security. Tim had to get them in as a special order from a new supplier so I had him get enough to do all of the doors in the place so they’d all look the same for you. They’re over half of the bill. I got the number after talking to Nadia about how many interior doors you needed.”

“Yeah, by the time you’re talking ninety or so locks a hundred will get you a worthwhile discount. Thanks for that. The apartments will all be modern looking on the inside but I want the whole of the halls to be period and this will do the job.”

Robin hands over a brochure, “This mob can supply you with good period looking doors in a range of patterns.”

Pat grins, “Actually, I’ll get you to look over and help me install the doors in storage. It looks like the original solid wood doors were all changed out at the last renovation. I’ve got them, along with a swag of period fittings. I figure we can clean the doors up and use them because all of them are already at the original period sizes.”

“Good idea, I’ll see you to work on them in the new year. I’ve got some family to go visit over the next two weeks.” Pat thanks him and they exchange season greetings before going on their way.

Sunday

On Sunday the family attends the Christmas service at St Michael’s as they have a Christmas service on the Sunday before Christmas so those travelling to be with family can attend the Christmas service here at their usual church. Another short service is held on Christmas Day as well.

In the afternoon Pat changes, drags a plastic two hundred litre bin, a hose, and a large box of chemicals into the main house, taking them down into the basement. After putting on the breather mask, gloves, and goggles he has Eve stand in the doorway while Alice works the tap. Opening a packet of chemicals he pours it into the bin while the water flows. When it reaches a height he has marked on the bin he waves to turn the water off. He adds a second, smaller packet of chemicals while he stirs it until it reaches a certain colour. The others are in the doorway watching him work. Once happy with the mix Pat tips the barrel up and pours it into the space between the steel beams in the first square in the corner of the basement - the mix foams as it comes out. Once Pat has the square covered and halfway up the beam he moves the bin to pour the mix into the next square. When the bin runs out of mix he makes another and continues to pour it into the squares the beams make.

The beams aren’t sitting on the stone floor so the mix flows under them and into the adjacent space, but its movement is slow so it’s no problem while Pat moves about the floor pouring the mix. By the time he’s halfway across this half of the basement the first areas have foamed up a bit more and the foam is now level or almost level with the beam tops. For five hours they work making and pouring the mix, stopping only when the last section of the other basement is done. The only break he has is when they move the hose to come in the back door so it reaches to where he’s working when he moves into the other basement area.

When he’s finished Pat takes the bin outside and he fills it with water before pouring another chemical into it. He looks up and says, “This is a solvent to neutralise the mix and clean the bin out. That’s foam under-floor insulation to reduce heating bills. A few minutes to clean up and pack up then that’s it until after the Christmas holidays so it can set.”

The Holidays

The family takes a break for the whole of the Christmas / New Year holidays, enjoying time together with family and friends. They hold a BBQ party on the grounds on the afternoon of the Saturday between Christmas and New Year. All of their friends and family come to it.

Most of those who attend haven’t seen the place in months and many haven’t been out here in daylight since last year’s party while most haven’t been since they came to look at the results of the fire. All know Pat has had people working on the place but they’ve no idea as to the amount of work they’ve done. Will Dunn is one of the few who has a real good idea; after all, he pays the bills for the work and materials.

When Will arrives he drives in, stops in the gateway, gets out, stares at the Mansion and the grounds, walks out the gate to check the address, and comes back in. Most laugh at his antics. Most just drive in and follow the many signs to park in the carport out of the way and in the shade before walking over to where Pat has a couple of large spit roasts set up. They speak with him then get a drink from the nearby drinks trailer.

After Will walks up to Pat he says, “I knew you were doing a lot of work, but damn, I don’t think the place ever looked so good before. I really like the work on the grounds.”

Pat grins when he replies, “Please make a point of telling Mum, Alice, and Dean that as they did all of the gardening and fencing work. I’ll take kudos for the entrance covers.” Will laughs, later he does speak to the ladies and Dean about how much he likes how the grounds look now.

All of the guests like the mix of colours: the two sandstones, granite and the wood with the green of the grounds. Thanks to the bushes and the window height off the ground no one can look in the windows and Pat has the doors locked with a notice on a post saying the interior is a construction area that’s unsafe for casual visitors. Thus they don’t know what the inside looks like. After the rest leave Pat shows Will the interior before he leaves. The party is a good success, like they usually are.

Floored

On the 2nd of January Pat is hard at work in the basement laying the floor panels. These composite boards are two metres by one and a half metres with tongue and groove edges to lock together. He puts the first sheet in the corner after he trims it to fit then he uses self-tapping screws to secure it in place after he drills small starter holes for the screw head to recess into. The next sheet is put beside it and it slides into place prior to being screwed down. While he works Pat marks the boards with the locations of the steel beams to know where they are when he puts the wall frames in. He gets one row in from front to back in quick order. At the steel uprights the sheets need to be notched for the uprights and the last sheet needs a little trimming to fit. Before starting the second row he cuts the left third off a sheet and he uses the remainder. This is so the joints don’t all line up, the part he cut-off gets a little more trimming when it goes in as the last piece in the row. For the next row he cuts off the right third and starts with that piece. Thus only every third row has the joints line up, giving the floor a little extra strength. When he finishes the floor in the first basement it’s on to the other one, then the ground floor, and so on until all of the floors are done.

Pat breaks for lunch on the first day, then Dean and Alice join him after lunch. Dean marks the beam locations while Alice does the drilling and screwing as Pat puts the boards in place. It takes them a full day to do each level. Naturally, the empty pallets and the few offcuts are taken and put in the garage, as they might be good for something in the future.

When all of the floors are done all four family members have fun with the next task. The two hundred litre bin is used to mix up a waterproof sealant which Pat tips over and rolls along the floor when ready, then it’s everyone on hand to have fun using brooms and mops to spread the fluid all over the floor in that section; repeat in the next section, until all of the levels are done. They start on the top floor, then the middle floor, the basement, and the ground floor is last. They work from the ends to the stairs on them all, except the ground floor where it’s the far end back to the entrance at the garage end. The boards are termite proofed and are now sealed against water.

Framed

On the Monday of the second week of January a stream of trucks arrive to unload galvanised steel frame units and battens. Each item is marked with a code Pat worked out. He has all of the Murphy teens on hand to help him and each has a list of the codes with where the frames are to go. Pat is paying them to do this for him so Sean allows them to skip the farm work today because they’re doing paid outside work.

The trucks place the materials on the driveway then the teens work in pairs to pick them up to walk off with them. The largest frame unit is two metres wide so they’re not heavy, just awkward for one to carry up the stairs but easy for two people to carry. The five metre long battens are awkward on the stairs, but since they’re only a hundred millimetres wide and are carried in stacks of three or four they go easily enough.

By the end of the day all of the materials are delivered, unloaded, and in a number of piles on each level. The codes indicate the floor, the front, the back, the hall, and the end; so each end of the building has six piles on each floor. After an early dinner of delivery Chinese the teens are all going back home with a few hundred dollars each, a welcome payment at this time of year.

The next day Pat is putting up the frames for the walls between the apartments. No rocket science involved as the walls are the same: find the right pile, grab a frame unit, go to where the steel upright is, and set it over the floor cross beam between the floor and the ceiling joints. It’s a snug fit, but no major effort is needed to get it in. Line up the next one until you have the wall set up. From the stone wall you have a one and a half metre unit, three of the two metre units, a one and a half metre unit, two of the two metre units, and that’s a wall between apartments. Check all is lined up right then screw into place to the next panel, the upright, the ceiling beam, and the floor beam. Then on to the next wall.

Once he has all of the walls between the apartments done on one side of the hall he places the appropriate frames for the interior walls of that apartment and its ceiling battens inside the marked areas. Stacks of similar materials are placed in piles opposite them, and then the walls for the back apartments are done. Repeat on the next level.

With the four of them working on the walls they go up very quickly as there’s not much that can go wrong. By Friday night all of the apartment areas designated with the materials for those rooms in them.

Saturday is spent working down the halls installing the hall walls. For the end nearest the garage it’s simple, two of the two metre units, a two metre unit with a door space, four of the two metre units, a two metre door space unit, keep it up until you hit the stone wall. For the other end you keep it up the same until you have the fifth door panel in, then it’s three of the two metre units, a one and a half metre unit, a two metre unit, a one and a half metre unit, a two metre unit with door, a one and a half metre unit, a two metre unit, a one and a half unit, and a two metre unit. That works for all but the ground floor because the common use areas have very different spacings for the general use toilets. The hall doors to the lounge and dining room are, from the stonework, a one and a half metre unit, a two metre door unit, a one and a half metre unit, four of the two metre units, a two metre door unit, and then on as the others.

Where the stairs are requires they secure the wall units to the stair frame as well for added stability of the stairs.

When they finish the hall walls Alice asks, “Pat, is there a problem with the floors since none of them are level with the stone doorways?”

Pat grins when he replies, “No, everything’s OK. By the time I put down the hardwood floorboards and carpets they’ll all be even.” She slowly nods while they walk out to get dinner.

The next two weeks are spent putting up the battens and the walls for the rooms inside the apartments. This is trickier since the unit choices are larger and they have to be very carefully checked as to their placement.

All of the frames are put in and up when it’s time to start university again. Because this is Pat’s fourth year his class choices are less and so are the options for available class times. Due to these limitations his class schedule is a lot more complex this semester.

Woodwork

About three months after the trees are cut down Pat arranges with the Ryan’s Ridge sawmill to cut up four fifths of the trees. Actually, one of the crew who cut them down spoke to the mill owners about the trees and the mill manager came to speak to Pat. After some talks they reach an agreement. At the time the money to do things is still a major concern so an arrangement to get the trees cut up and all of the new wood Pat wants for the floors and hall walls made in return for them having the wood from some of the trees is too good a deal to let go. Pat keeps back some trees for later projects, but the mill staff take more than enough to do what Pat wants as well as plenty to also give them some profit.

The mill collects the trees, runs them through a kiln to dry and age them a lot quicker than naturally drying them, then they cut them up. There are two hardwood trees of different shades so Pat is using the darker shade for floorboards and the slightly lighter shade for wall panels. The floorboards are tongue and groove boards a half inch thick, four inches wide, in set lengths of five to eight feet with the bulk being for the halls and the rest for the communal areas. The wall panels are tongue and groove panels a half inch thick, one foot wide, in lengths of just over eight feet with the ends cut at a thirty degree angle to fit on an eight foot wall. A few are a bit shorter since some will need to go in the end corners. For the bulk of the boards and panels Pat won’t have to cut them because they’re precision cut to the wanted sizes and lengths, but some of them will need trimming.