The woody has landed

For the past two months myself and Rory have started to realize our dream of having a wooden training wall in our back room. Winter training was on the cards for some trips next year. The plan was to make it as steep as the room would allow and as wide as possible. Our landlord is very tolerant and relaxed with us and the house as long as we have respect with whatever we do. Since we moved in we've put in shelves and a campus board, modified things in the garden etc and they have been perfectly fine about it. Our wall would require a few screws into the roof on the floor rafters and about 15 x 1cm wall fixings along the back. Nothing we can't easily poly-filler and plaster upon removal.

We were lucky enough to get all the panels we needed from TCA when they modified the wall over the summer. This meant we saved money and a lot of time putting in T-nuts. Simon Brice kindly gave us a few metres of 2x4 beams and Gav gave us a load of wall fixings and various essentials too so with all this help we saved a significant amount. The rest of the 2x4, probably about 40 metres worth, we got for £75. Joe Day gave us a good starting plan and Mike Sowell was a massive help in giving us a hand with some of the technicalities with the tools and plan of action. With all this professional help and guidance we began the build!

First up we had some major amount of prep in the form of belt sanding the large panels. This was probably the most hard work of the entire build, requiring many shifts from us both and a lot of arm endurance. We had to pull a lot of T-nuts out and replace them for good ones. The garden was also coated in an inch of saw dust and ziggy hated the noise of the power tools. A few days later they were done and we moved onto sawing up the ply triangles.

We applied the brackets and made the 90 degree vertical pieces that would go into the masonry vertical wall. We then spent a day drilling and getting all the fixings in as solid and as accurately as possible. There were a few moments when we drilled and only black dust came out meaning less bolts in places, but in all we were happy and it still felt a bit over engineered. Next we secured some ply triangles and made the roof pieces rigid.

Next up was time to put in the overhanging frame, measured with string and sawed in a fairly ghetto fashion and with a few moments of that doesnt quite fit in the way we thought it should, and a bit of creative use with the chisel we had the overhang in. I then went on a mission and the next couple of days I managed to get all the panels on, more supports made on the inside and screw a horizontal across the roof and into the floor rafters above. I then made a small room inside the wall to store bikes and boxes. It came together pretty quickly taking about 7 days of prep and building effort. We need to get a lot more holds and sell a few too. The plan is to make it primarily a woody with with the exception of a few nice bleaustone resin slopers and and mini jugs for warming up. We've ordered some 'Magic Wood' wooden holds, these are the same that we have at TCA and are amazing on the skin and for a good training effect. Check them out there BLOG. More photos of the build on my Flickr