First Tentative Steps to New Extension

Sorry it has been a bit quiet Blog-wise of late.   I've just finished work on what turns out to be a 15 page feature in the next issue of RAIL magazine - on sale 10th April.   That being out of the way I have made a very gentle start on clearing the decks to enable work to start on building the new extension,   First job is to remove much of the external cladding from those bits of the existing annex which will be covered by the new extension.   That very cladding will be re-used to clad the new bits so that you will hardly notice the join.

Here is the south end of the annex with the first two bits of cladding painlessly removed:

'Rainscreen' cladding has had a bad press since the Grenfell Tower tragedy.   Ours is not plastic but heavy aluminium.   The rain is kept out as the name implies and there is an air gap to keep the block-work wall absolutely dry.   Only snag is that spiders love it and their webs discolour the panels if not cleared away.   Sorry to be a spider-spoil-sport and all that.

and today, Monday 8th April, Alan, James and I removed all but one of the top row.  The remainder can be safely removed from ground level.