I've been drawing, and I've had the flu. Flu is bad: don't get it.
I have managed a little work on the house. I wanted to get the dining room done so that we can empty the contents of our hired shipping container into that room, and get rid of the container. We also wanted the hall done such that we could walk through the house on a finished floor. So, here are a couple of almost "before" photos, which show the plasterboard going up in the dining room and hall. Unfortunately, I had the camera set to "Macro", so they're out of focus:
The plinth is plasterboard stuck double-thickness to the blocks, and then plastered with a rough undercoat plaster to mimic the typical rendered plinth look of old cottages:
It's quite a pain taping everything up. It was even more a pain when I used some old plaster accidentally, and it went off way too quickly.
After doing the plinth of the dining room and hall, I brought the stone flooring through the hall. I had to temporarily prop the stairs up out of the way to run the stone underneath:
The last photo shows a "well" around the temporary front door, simply because I don't want to be re-hanging this door an inch up just for the few weeks until it is replaced by the permanent door.
Focus moved to upstairs above the dining room ceiling for a while. This was so that nailing floorboards down happened before the ceiling got plastered, avoiding the danger of disturbing the plaster on what are pretty thin joists. So, here is the upstairs before work started, with a temporary board over a small area of joists:
This is a problem. The plumber had previously hacked out a big notch for the hot and cold supply pipes for the bathroom, through a narrow joist:
I decided to "sister" this joist:
......and the pipes will be re-routed later. Here is the progression of the floor:
Note the projecting bridging joist has been cut to length, and note the step. Here is the excess bridging joist in situ from below:
This is the tenon on the end of one of the joists, (and note the tapered peg I pulled out via the screw in the end):
This is one of the classic joints of English oak framing. The long projecting tenon is always bang in the middle of the depth of the bridging joist, on the "line of neutrality" (ie neither in tension nor compression. This means that the bridging joist is hardly weakened at all. However, to prevent twisting of the intermediate joists, the tenon is haunched. This removes as little timber as possible from the bridging joist, but still retains the full depth of the intermediate joists such that they can't twist. When I cut the end of the bridging joist away I had to clamp a piece of scrap to it to prevent it falling:
I could then build the floor up:
The chipboard forms the landing floor, and the old oak boards are going to be in the bathroom (and bedroom). Having done all that I could proceed with overboarding the dining room ceiling, and then plastering:
Another day for the plaster to dry and that room is ready for decorating.