Dry Lining

Dry lining of the hall wall facing the front door was completed at the weekend. Continuing from the previous weekend, the framework was first completed :

You can't see very easily from these pictures, but in order to achieve a flat and vertical finished wall, many of the frame attachment points have small spacers to take up the unevenness of the underlying stonework and plaster. The idea is to choose the "high point" as the starter for the frame, and project all fixings thereafter using a spirit level or plumb line. I nearly got it right, but to avoid too many spacers I took a long section of even original wall as my start point (top right), so had to plane some off the back of a couple of attachment points, rather than stand them out with spacers. Still this still achieved the necessary clearances for the pipe work, so not a problem.

Once boarded, it looks just like one of the many other walls we have done on this project :

The open edge of the frame is covered with a narrow strip of board to integrate into the existing wall. This will be feathered over with the skim coat and will hopefully disappear :

Because this was once the outside wall of the house, unfortunately there is an air vent to provide underfloor ventilation to the dining room. We can't really block this off completely, so instead we have opted to hide it behind the skirting board, and fit a sliding brass cover plate so it can be closed off in really cold weather. It looks to me like the floor in the 1920's hallway extension has subsequently been concreted, and provision to feed that vent from the outside should have been made at that time. Never mind - hopefully it won't be too bad, as long as we remember to open it occasionally. I am sure Building Regs would not approve, but this is the existing house, not the extension, so not in their remit this time.

To allow for all this, the framework has some holes drilled in it to allow airflow, and the plasterboard has been cut short :