For this rather truncated week of work, we resumed the task of laying down the floorboards after a week of building the framework. One of the first things we did was to put in a load of insulation bits and pieces from our giant bag of “rubbish” we got outside into the area under the stairs. We also screwed a left-over piece of floorboard and put it vertically on the back of the 2nd step of our staircase and this will become the base of our control board for the stair-lift mechanism.
Under-stairs-with-insulation-strips
Under-stairs-filled-with-foam-scraps
Panel-for-stairlift-controls
We then installed more vacuum cleaner piping across the central cross hall with connections for a cleaning point and the Hall 2 side of the Tech cupboard and a T connection going upstairs.
Vacuum-ducting-hall-crossways
Vacuum-duct-for-hall-crsossway-point
Vacuum-duct-going-upstairs
The other thing we did was to sort out the front door. It was built way back before we had the new flooring so it is too low. We simply just sliced off a chunk of material using our wiggle saw after noticing where the new floorboards will be etc. Then we had to fix down a fresh new door sill (there wasn’t one there before) using another left-over piece of 2by4 pine timber and along with a sheet of 10mm cement board, we screwed and sealed both items down into the concrete blocks underneath. This is only temporary until we are ready to build and install the proper door structure later on, using proper Oak timber.
Temporary-front-door-sill
Then we carried on putting down lots of floorboards, starting where we left off, in both Hall Two and Hall Three (going off to Bedroom Two and Three respectively) and we were very lucky to discover that these two “arms” were right angles to each other so the tongue and groove slotted together very nicely. Going down the side of the Entertainment Room only needed to slice off a very small narrow strip which was also lucky and arrived at the front door. We soon got the crossroad all covered up and then cut around the staircase too. finally, we went down Hall One towards the Great Room, going past Bedroom 1 and the Kitchen. It all went very nicely in the end and to finish off, we made a wide step at the entrance to the Great room to make it easier for anyone stepping off the new hall floor surface (being 400mm- 16inches high) especially if we are carrying large or heavy material in and out of the Great room.
Hall-cross-way
Front-door-hall-1
Front-door-hall-2
Hall 1 from Great room
Step-down-to-Great-room
We had finished at end of Thursday. Friday was lost to Shaun having a minor eye operation and Stephen resuming doing the Grapevine Talking newspaper after 18 months.
On Saturday Stephen started slicing the nice solid floor boards up into Ribbons! Well the ribbons are about 1m wide and are cut into rectangles as well. These are the liftable hatches to give access to the utility’s under the hall floors. All the ribbons have been cut and cutting of the hatches has started with Hall 2 and Cross hall hatches being cut.
Hall-2-lifting-panels-cut
Cross-Hall-lifting-panels-cut
There will couple of slower days next week because Shaun needs to keep quiet and recover from his Op.