Dormer Window

Post 300 !!!!

I have been trying to utilise my time more efficiently, but still haven't quite mastered it. I have it my mind something my friend Dave, from Stubbington, said years and years ago when he was undertaking a DIY loft conversion - try to do a little bit every day and you will be surprised how much difference it makes to progress. Dave is (I think) one of my blog readers, so thanks for the advice Dave - I am now, 15 or more years on, trying to put it into practice !

I work for a company that allow me great flexibility in my working patterns. I work at home 3 or 4 days per week, and can work 9am to 5pm or 9pm to 5am or any other times, as I choose to. I am trying to adjust my home-working patterns to give me some time during the day to do some little bits towards getting this project finished.

However, as I say, I still haven't quite mastered this. I managed one day this week (though I should partially count yesterday as I managed to get the grass cut, which does not contribute to the build, but does get a chore out of the way that otherwise would need to be done at the weekend.)

My one day contribution was spent insulating the dormer above the stairs. It seems a long time ago now, but Dad and I started to insulate the soffits along the landing, in preparation for plasterboarding. We did the main, easy, slopes weeks ago, and the time has now come to address the fiddly bits, including the 2 dormer windows. These are much more time consuming than you would imagine. The pieces of plasterboard need to be cut to awkward shapes, but also need to be fixed to something. Take, for example, this picture :

Cutting and fixing the triangular piece of insulation is trivial. The piece of triangular foil backed plasterboard that fits over this is easy to anchor on the two roof timbers, but this covers them up and they are not then available to anchor the side pieces that would need to go on next. So, once the triangular plasterboard is fitted more timber has to be screwed through it to provide anchors for the side pieces. This "theme" continues through all these little awkward shapes.

In fact I have gone to some effort to simplify things by removing some of the timber cross pieces. The other dormer only has one cross piece which I guess is designed to stop the weight of the tiles from spreading out the sides. This one has 3 :

Our preference is to take the ceiling in this area up into the apex, so to make things easier I removed the two nearer cross pieces. This part of the dormer is cosseted in the main roof, so there is no chance of the roof spreading in this area. Both dormers now match too.

With the cross pieces removed, insulating the sides becomes very easy. Once the boarding and plastering is done it should look very neat, with just a single horizontal cross beam showing.