Having been persuaded by our previous builders that we needed to order the steels right at the start of the project in December (then had to pay for them to be painted to stop them from rusting!), they are finally in place and looking great! There are 2 which sit at right angles to one another and kind of get webbed together. The first is internal and holds up the ceiling where there was once a dividing wall. The second is a replacement lintel below which will eventually be a four metre opening for a folding-sliding window/door affair. In order to put this one in the whole of the back of the house needed to be propped up so it didn’t collapse into the hole – quite scary to see one’s house held up by scaffolding with a huge hole underneath, but our builders Trevor and Bob (our very own Bob the Builder 
) have done a fantastic job with it and we can now get the sense of how wide the big windows/doors will be.
I did arrive at quite a tricky moment when they were taking out the old lintel and there was much cursing going on because the machine that was supposed to help with the weight was not helping and the whole lintel crashed to the ground! Turns out it was incased in about 1/2 ton of concrete!
Anyway, some pics for you:
The Lintel before it was put in place.
The Lintel in place above the new opening which spans approximately four metres … imagine the views Those poles you can see going into the house were actually coming into our bedroom and resting on the floor! The darker red bricks show where the new reveal has been built – everything between them will eventually be glass.
The steel for the Family Room having a rest before being fitted!!
The steel doing a good job of holding ’stuff’ up and webbing into the lintel
Tags: Farmhouse Renovation, Lintel, Renovation Project
Categories: Farmhouse Renovation, Home Improvements, Living the Country Life, Posts with Photos