6 Weeks On

Over 6 weeks have passed since my last proper progress report, so my apologies for tardiness. Progress has been slow, and also, the tasks we are doing now are largely ones I have documented several times before.

Our attention is now focused on the old lounge. As a reminder, this is the room that has always been there, but had it's two end walls rebuilt in stone and new joists and floor for the room above.

To follow on from a couple of posts ago, we have taken some more actions to try and cure the creaking floor above. Firstly, a couple of noggins that I did not replace (mainly because they had been drilled for pipes or cables) had wedges of ply hammered in to take up any play :


The staining where the underside of the floorboard meets the joist was another creak suppression attempt-a whole can of WD40 emptied into these joints. I used the little red pipe that is always missing once you have used your WD40 a couple of times. Fortunately Dad is more careful with his and I was able to borrow it ! Sadly, this trick proved relatively ineffective.

Finally, I found a doubled up joist (extra support for a stud wall above) that had not been bolted together. I inserted some ply spacers and M5 bolts to clamp these firmly together :

By this time, ideas and patience had finally run out, so any remaining creaks we are going to have to live with.

Before commencing the ceiling, here is a view of the main services conduit under the upstairs landing. You can see the single step down at the point where we re-enter the old part of the house. This is to ensure sufficient head height upstairs.

With the usual "ceiling team" of myself, Dad and Adam, plus Victoria we lined out between the joists with insulation and got maybe half of the plasterboard up this week :

I know in a previous post I remarked how ineffective this insulation seems to be in suppressing sound, but as we had bought enough to do this area, we thought we might as well use it.

The final task of the week was to line the window and door reveals with foil backed plasterboard. As before, this was glued in place with grip-fill and held in position whilst drying with sprung lengths of timber :


This time, I didn't use the scissors jack.