Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Progress update
Progress has been fairly good recently. I've been a bit tardy updating the blog because of the long days and general tireness.
Some more of the plumbing has been completed with piping runs to the kitchen area and bathrooms. The hot water tank has also been installed, however not operational yet. Most of the pipework is turned off, isolated at the valves, whilst the bathrooms are being tiled. The only other work upstairs that has been completed is that the floors have been cleaned (with methylated spirits) and varnished.
The majority of the work is being concentrated downstairs at the moment, the reason being is because the staircase is due to be fitted in a couple of weeks and the lounge and corridor was still a mud floor. Also the oak floorboarding we ordered was available for collection. The floorboards have to rest in the room for a couple of weeks before laying to acclimatise, so we had to dig out the mud floor to lay the joists. 
Each joist is 6m long by 15cm by 5cm. The mud floor was covered with a plastic membrane then each joist laid at 40cm centers on the membrane and packed with concrete 'pads' every meter or so to ge the levels correct. 
This had to be done before collecting the floorboards, and the floorboards have to be laid before the staircase arrives. Everything has been a bit hectic, with everything, tools, equipment etc. all packed into the kitchen area, which still needs tiling, but there's no floor space, so the floorboards need laying, but... arrggg!!!!
Before laying the floorboards we have had to build the fireplace hearth using an old granite lintel and some other bits of stone, install the stainless steel chimney liner and woodburner (don't want rain and/or soot all over the new oak floor), new front door (the old one was rotten and too small and the rain blew in underneath), run electric cabling in the lounge/corridor for lights, cockets, TV, Telephone, heating etc, varnishing the oak beams, and what seems like dozens of minor jobs that should be finished before the floor and staircase.
Oh, the crazy picture at the top. That's the floorboard laying plan. The floorboards came in a variety of lengths, about 80% of them between 1.3m and 1.7m with some other shorter ones. Hence to avoid wasteage and cutting we have the plan :-).
| 9:22:27 PM
Progress update
