The Bierkeller, Part 5 - Done!

The beer cellar has come on massively since the last update. In the past two weeks, I painted the lime plaster, repointed another section of wall and built up the floor. That was done by last Monday, and I spent an hour just sitting in there, with a cold Galway Hooker Irish Pale Ale, taking a moment to just think about next steps.

But what was done this past two weeks? You can see a video here, or keep scrolling for nice photos. First, I cleaned back the floor, again, to get a relatively even surface, and then i painted the lime plaster areas with a highly breathable silicate paint.

Then last Friday week, I began with the floor construction. I hauled 2 tonnes of gravel in by hand - well, with buckets -  followed by almost of tonne of crushed stone. 

I laid a layer of geotextile to separate the gravel (actually, more like graded pebbles, with no sand content), from the crushed stone layer.

Then started the layer of compressed crushed stone.

This all took longer than expected, and there was a party to go to, so it was parked at that stage. On Saturday morning, I scavenged the barn to get as many bricks as I could find for the floor and, with the help of my son, gave them a good clean with a pressure washer.

Laying the bricks alone also took longer than I thought, and by six in the evening, I'd only gotten this far. At this stage, a neighbour who is renovating the house next door dropped by with beer, so that was that for the day!

Next morning (not too early) I decided I wanted to get this done, so put the skates on with a nice piece of hickory, and by 6 in the evening, had the brick part of the floor complete.

Essentially, I didn't have enough brick to do the complete floor, as I wanted, but our friend Sace, who always has good ideas, suggested wood to fill the gaps. We originally considered going to a sawmill to get thick fir boards, but given we had so many old boards in the barn, it made more economic sense to reuse them. On Monday evening, a few suitable boards were found and given the cleaning treatment with my trusty Makita brush sander.

Battens were laid and leveled on the crushed stone, at the appropriate depth, and the cleaned boards screwed to them, forming a floating raft that turned out to be very stable.

And it was done!

All that remained was to fit it out and get the beer in there! Yesterday I finished assembling and started stocking the shelves.

 And here's a reminder of how it looked when we bought the house.

There's even a special place for my Grandad's old crown cork opener.