More This & That

For a couple of weeks now Jan has noticed a rather nasty smell in the bathroom. I checked for leaks and she cleaned a few things but it persisted. She suggested to me that maybe the changed roofline above and around the bathroom window might have disrupted the airflow around the sewer stack breather pipe.

On Friday I made a trip down to the plumbers suppliers and returned with various 110mm (4 1/4") angle fittings and 3m of new pipe. I extended the breather around the roof and well above the window :
So far, this appears to have been a successful cure.

Plastering has continued, though the main man's assistant has not shown up for three days. He is a little annoyed with him as he did not let him know. The job will not now be finished until Thursday or possibly Friday morning.

The main bedroom was completed today, apart from the window reveals, though these two photographs come from yesterday :

This latter picture is meant to illustrate something that is a slight source of annoyance. You may remember that when we built the stud-wall for my daughter's bedroom we re-used some old 4" x 2" roof timbers. When the walls were finished with 12.5mm plasterboard it left the door linings about 2mm proud of the wall on each side. This is perfect clearance for the plaster skim coat, leaving everything nice and flush.

On the recently built walls we used new "regularised" timber with a finished depth of 95mm. This is smaller than the old 4" and hence leaves the door lining too far proud of the plasterboard. This means I will need to use some filler when fitting the architraves.

Actually, I think I have worked out why this is. Reference to the specification document prepared by the structural engineer indicates I should have used 15mm plasterboard for the stud walls. I guess the dimensions of the door linings and regularised timber studs are calculated with this in mind. However, I must admit I thought 12.5mm plasterboard was the standard for walls. Too late now........

This lunchtime Jan and I took a trip to a local Architectural Salvage yard, and found this fireplace which is a perfect size to fit in the bedroom opening :

We have not bought it yet, but hope to do so tomorrow, now that the size has been double checked. It is not old - a reproduction, that does not look like it has ever been used.

The last event of the day, was a visit by another Central Heating estimator. This is the third this month. The first promised to do an estimate but didn't. The second eMailed me to say he didn't want to do the work. Fingers crossed that this one goes somewhere. However, it is a bad sign that he never once took out a tape measure.