Marching on through November

November has arrived and the weather remains mild, I thought it would be much colder by now so the central heating has been switched on to keep the house warm. I have to say this has not been as straightforward as you might imagine, you see, we had removed several radiators to enable the plasterer to do his work, we re-fitted the radiators but have had to bleed and adjust valve settings numerous times to get the system balancing correct, I think there is still work to do to get the heat distribution correct but I will deal with this after all the business of radiator on and off for plastering and decoration has been finalised. At least we have a warm house.

  During the last couple of weeks the plasterer has been doing his magic, I have to say this really is an art getting old walls to look like new and perfectly smooth, so far he has completed some new boarding and preparation work and has started to spread the new stuff, we have several walls on the landing areas completed including the beautifully curved wall on the first floor which is a massive relief as we thought this might have been problematic to retain the shape.

As fast as the plaster works we are trying to keep in front of him by updating the electrics, such as new  sockets and wall lights in the hallway, so far we have managed to get the cable run cut outs completed for the wall lights and new wiring, I do think sometimes what would we do without power tools, particularly the SDS drill and chiselling attachment which with very little effort cuts out perfectly 30mm wide by the 25mm of old plaster ready for the wiring. The next job this week will be to drop a supply from the hallway ceiling light which we have accessed through the first floor floorboards, fortunately the lighting circuit is of the junction box type which makes the job a little bit easier to connect to and then run the new cable through the floor and into the wall. 

You will see from the phoptgraph that whilst cutting out for the cabling we came across loads of old redundant cables buried into the wall, there are two editions here which I will do some reasearch on at a later date, there apperars to be the original single wire type in metal conduit and another version which looks like modern wires but in a lead sheath? as opposed to the modern variant of 2 core and earth in a plastic sheath, it would appear that all these cables came together here into an old type of fuse box which is a little strange as the unit would be 3m above the floor level?

large cut out where the old fuse box used to be

new cut outs for wall light and switch

Master Bedroom

We have just realised that the enormous task of paper stripping is 95% complete! the only outstanding room to deal with is the "Boys Room" and this cannot be done yet as it is currently being used for storage. Paper stripping is not exactly an easy or pleasant job so I think "An Awful Lot of Effort" has gone into preparing the walls and ceilings for re-plastering, a job very well done by you all!

This weekend has been primarily spent on two tasks, one being making a door frame for access into the loft space and the second, her Ladyship has been hard at it stripping paint from the window frame in the master bedroom, again, not an easy or pleasant task but as in Daels room the wooden surrounds when stripped back are beautiful and will be a real feature when completed. What would we do without electric heat guns, power sanders and of course determination?
 I wonder if originally the surrounds were bare wood or painted from the outset?

An Awful Lot of Effort

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Plastering time is close

Having decided to open up the second floor hallway ceiling we now have a 5m high ceiling which is currently being re-boarded following inserting foam insulation boards between the flat roof joists. The lighting wiring has been extended and re-positioned ready for an impressive 3m long chandelier, this will be a real focal point in the house, but before that the whole area now needs plastering which hopefully will be started this weekend.
I have to say Dael and Liam`s idea to fully open this area up was the correct one, the expanse is impressive to say the least and gives the house a grand appearance which it deserves. Why the original design had a "built in box" over the stairs just to provide a crawl through door to access the loft space is beyond me, our idea to make a loft entrance with a full height door through one of the 3rd floor rooms looks to be a much improved solution.
At a later date perhaps when the weather is warmer we will look at the installation of the dome or roof lantern in this area which will give the home a real wow factor in addition to letting in more natural light.

Bonfire time

We had bonfires on both the 4th and 5th this year, lats lats and more lats to burn after a mammoth demolition session of old lath and plasterwork ready for the new boards.

Roof Lantern or Dome?

This week has been decision time as to whether we open up the top floor ceiling to allow a roof lantern or dome to be fitted on the flat roof part of the house.
We had previously thought about how good a roof lantern or glass dome would add to the beauty of the house notwithstanding the amount of natural light it would allow to flood through from the third floor right down to the hallway, but we put it to the back of our minds as we pushed to prioritise other elements of the build, like plastering, wood work and electrics.
However, this week as Dael and Liam were preparing the third floor ceiling they decided it would be better to remove the old lath and plaster ceiling and re-board with Gypsum plaster boards and skim, well, this exposed the area through the loft to the central flat roof area which then led to talk of "whilst we are doing this we might as well take the boarding right up to the roof ready for a lantern or dome". Nice idea and with a couple of days work the area could be transformed into a very high ceiling open space, so, decision made "lets do it, and whilst we are doing that we may as well take out the ugly loft access area box and make a new access area from a third floor room", mmm more than a couple of days work now I think!
I am sure this is the way to proceed by opening up spaces and providing more natural light, as I have said previously the Victorians did have a preposition for making unneccessary dimly lit areas and lots of boxing in, the one thing we wanted to achieve with this refurbishment is to improve on their designs by opening up areas where we could and utilising more natural light.