Blog

Constructed Finishing Surfaces for the Walls in Great Room

We spent the last one-and-a-half weeks doing the work of building up the double layers of finishing surfaces for all the walls. Now that the floor is done, we can construct the various layers of the wall surfaces. We tackled doing the first base layer of 18mm OSB boards for this stage of the work in the Great Room.But, we need to make sure that we have put in the required conduits from the Utility Channels, going up to the lighting channel running around the top of the walls, going to the upstairs Gallery and so on. This included checking the hearing loop wiring that we had already fixed up above the doors and windows. It is a standard network cable, made up of four super-twisted pairs of thin wires and we wanted to make sure that a loop amplifier could generate a good strong signal, using this choice of cable. Normally, a induction loop that is fitted to a room is usually a single solid copper core wire but instead of having to buy this wire, we had loads of CAT5 network cable so we used that instead, plus also, this allowed us to experiment because, an electro-magnetic field is generated by two main variables, one is being the amount of current you can shove down the wire, or, increase the number of turns you have in the complete loop, or both, to strengthen the power of the magnetic field, hence making it louder for hearing aids users. So, we pulled out our existing hearing loop amplifier we had in one of our temporary bedrooms, and connected it up to our new network cable in the Great Room. Just by connecting the four twisted pairs together, so that it formed a single “wire”, worked just a treat. We even quickly tested the next configuration by joining up two twisted pairs together and then got it to go around the room twice before the signal ends back to the amplifier. That works nicely and it possibly sounded louder too. At this point, we accepted that the wiring was working just fine and we could continue with building up the wall surfaces, and bury and hide this network cable inside the wall. We won’t be able to replace it etc. It was a compromise between installing 35metres of black plastic 20mm conduits like we have done for the other rooms, or install the wire directly inside the wall and have the two ends dangling in our control box.

But first we nailed up a complete loop of 63mm CLS timber pieces near ground level that we deliberately left for construction later on, to make it easier to lay down the floorboards. The rail sits the top of the Air Channel which is 150mm high.

The next task, we noticed that our existing sixteen air distributors needed to be more secured so we went around anchoring them into place so they did not protrude beyond the CLS rails, avoiding being squashed when we put up the OSB boards, or fall backward into the wall cavity. We used little stainless steel screws to lock each plastic unit into place.

The next job is to put in the Air Channel backing strips, to guide the air around the room and float gently outwards. We use our stock of 6mm MDF strips to go around the entire room but we discovered that we were short so we went out to buy another sheet of MDF material and sliced it up into more 150mm wide strips.

We sealed both the MDF strips along the top and bottom edges and also the Air Distributors themselves so all the air will get sent out into and along the Air Channels and into our Great Room.

Great room air outlets

We also painted the lower 50mm black so no one will be able to sneak a look along the carpets and perhaps notice something pale lurking inside the wall!

We put up the top rail precisely so that our lighting channel is one aluminium strip gap under the slope of each roof. We had to do four sections of the roof, the “A” section which has a 32degree angle slope, then coming around the corner, is the “P” roof which is a 40degree angle inclination, which reaches the “O” section that is even steeper at 45degrees and finally, a short “N” section which is back to a 40degrees angle. We wanted to be able to slide in our lighting modules which will be housed in an aluminium extruded U-channel shape. It is quite thick walls so it can spread the heat from all the individual LEDs but these long units needs to be able to slide in and out for servicing, hence why we needed to make sure that the top CLS horizontal rail are positioned so that the metal U channel will slide in and rest on this CLS timber, after we have put on the wall boards.

We then went around putting in a layer of glass wool horizontally, between the wooden rails so it fills the gap that would exist behind the OSB board and reduce the hollow sounds of wooden walls. This glass wool is supposed to be 100mm thick, but it is never is. We believe that the manufacturers are not careful enough when they squash the output of their factory productions into those rolls, ready to be transported. The gap that we are filling is only 38mm deep and so we staple up these so-called 100mm thick wool strips and they swell out only about 30mm or 40mm beyond the horizontal rails. This is sufficient for our purposes and the wall boards will squash this wool down and provide some degree of sound adsorbing filler, to make the overall resonance sound of the wall more solid.

We then measured the two “control” boxes, one is the electrical junction box for all the cabling coming into the Great Room, as well as having a computer sitting there, looking after the various components that lives in this room, like lighting, sockets and speakers etc. The second cavity is over the doorway and that space will have the sliding door mechanisms and controls. Both of these boxes needs to have access panels and we will cut and remove the OSB sheet material later on after we have glued and screwed all the OSB boards up on the walls. Hence why we needed to measure the exact location and size of each box and its access hatch.

Great room Control panel location

Great room Door panel location 1

Great room Door panel location 2

One of the task we had to do before we got into putting up wall boards, was to re calibrate our two router machines that has tongue and groove cutters in them. We wanted to move the cutters further out of the machines so that they could cut thicker materials we may need to do in the future. But we needed to make sure that we set them exactly the same position so that the tongues and grooves came out in the same place as before as the walls coming down from the Gallery and the gable wall coming around each side of the Gallery, has already a groove cut into the bottom edge of the boards, ready to receive the new sheet materials later on. So, we readjusted the two routers so the cutters are now sticking out by 25mm, each tongue (and groove) are 8mm across at the widest point so in 25mm, there will be three tongues (or grooves). We have two machines because we discovered that these sheet materials, especially the OSB boards, are very slightly varying in overall thickness so you cannot just simply flip the board over and run the cutter on the other edges because that produces a very slight misalignment and does not bring the two surfaces to a smooth finish. So, years ago, we invested in two machines, one to do the tongues and the other one to do the grooves, without having to flip the board over at all. It produces a very very good joint that is very smooth indeed, and incidentally, makes a very strong joint as well, especially using PU glue too!

Here, at this point, we started putting up the first layer of wall boards, using 18mm thick OSB sheets. We started on the wall that divides the Great Room from the rest of the house and the two nearest rooms, namely the Kitchen and Bedroom One. It goes under the Gallery, but we needed to connect to the existing wall that is already fixed to the upper half of the Gallery. It was a bit fiddly but we made it, on both side of the Gallery and concluding in the far corner where we got our 4foot wide window. Next, we tackled the two short ends, also cutting the top edge of the OSB board with the appropriate angle, to match the slope of the ceiling as mentioned earlier about the aluminium lighting modules.

All our walls that goes up to the sloping ceiling are extra tall, measuring 2780mm or a bit over 9feet tall. That is just the wooden material itself, there is another 40mm gap at the bottom, and approximately 60mm gap at the top which makes the total height from floor to ceiling of 2880mm, or 9feet and 5inches!!
And to just finish this little point, the middle of the room stretches up, and up, and up to our mobile lighting unit, hanging at the apex of the vaulted ceiling, is very nearly 4800mm tall. We know this because we could almost get a standard length of CLS timber to stand upright in the middle! That is nearly 16feet!!

Anyway, we continued putting up the wall boards, having completed the two short ends, the “O” and “A” sections, and then we tackled the last long section that goes pass the Patio and Conservatory. We started at the doorway for the Conservatory and then worked back towards the “O” completed wall. It is much easier to put in the last piece of OSB board, cut down to exactly the correct size (and sometimes angle) and slide it into place by using the completed wall surface to slide along and force the joint nice and tight.

The other thing we needed to do special along this section, is the Dormer where we got our exposed rafters and gable triangle section of wall that defines the start of the Conservatory. We are wanting to mount our lighting modules, the same aluminium U channels, to slide in but this time, to sit vertically so the light output will shine upwards into the Dormer section. This meant that the top edge of the OSB board is shaped differently and also it is slightly lower as well. The aluminium channel will sit on this cut edge, providing a small gap underneath, approximately 15mm, to allow for our electrical cables to run pass and continue the circuits. We tested this arrangement by screwing up a small piece of OSB in various positions and holding up a piece of our fermacell plasterboard and tried to slide in the aluminium channel. We discovered that the vertical layers of fermacell plasterboard that we had fixed up a couple of weeks ago, and painted white, was very slightly causing the metal U channel to jam. So, we scraped the bottom edge of this vertical fermacell material, to increase the gap, and angle, to allow the metal channel to slide in. We used our trusty little surform “razor” tools to go along the entire length of this Dormer section. We have exposed the grey interior of the plasterboard again so we will have to paint that little bit again!

Great Room OSB Finished

Great Room OSB Finished 2

Great Room OSB Finished 3

This pretty much finishes the first stage of constructing the wall surface, the basic “rough” structural walls and they are now ready for the next stage, when we are ready, of putting up the fermacell plasterboard, shaping them nice and neat and painting them to the required colours, whatever that may be!!
But, for now, we are going to have a change of scenery and go back upstairs to carry on getting the First Floor rooms mapped out and some of the wall’s framework built so we can build things like the water header tanks and ventilation ducting etc. We wanted a change! But, We promised ourselves that we will get back to the Great Room and finish it off during the Summer and present a completed “show room!”

27 March 2024
The Floor Is Completely Filled and Reassembled Permanently

We spent the last two weeks in getting the flooring in our Great Room permanently fixed down at long last. We had originally laid the floorboards down a couple of years ago, but we weren’t ready to glue and fixed them down, because we needed to get the insulation put into the roof rafters and any rubbish pieces left-over, needed to be shredded and ready to put under the floorboards in the Great Room. The shredded pieces was used to insulate the room against the cold concrete foundation, but also to insulate against the heat that will be rising off the buried Energy Module we had under the concrete slab. It could reach 90°C and we didn’t want that kind of heat to flow into our Great Room, so we knew that we could put all the final rubbish and trimmings, under the floorboards and also protect ourselves from the very hot Energy Module.
The first thing to do was to empty the entire room of all the items we had stored in various corners and move everything into our Kitchen, so we could lift the floorboards up.

We started at the right hand end of the room, standing at the hallway door but it was locked into place by the tongue and groove system. Therefore, we had to move all the floorboard pieces towards the left end, by about twelve inches and keep each row of boards unconnected so we could move each row more easily. Another thing we did during this process, was to label all the individual piece with a row “letter” and “number” for each piece as the whole floor have been measured and laid down to fit the two doorways etc. We didn’t want to mix any up and run into trouble later on. So we pulled up three complete rows at the beginning, under the “O” window, looking out to our swimming lane at the back, and started filling in the huge pile of insulation boards pieces we had prepared from our time of doing the roof rafters last year. They are stored upstairs so we started chucking them off our Gallery, bit by bit!
We also had six “ton” bags of random odd sizes and pieces of PU foam rubbish as well and we dragged each one down the stairs and along the hallways to the Great Room.
And not forgetting a room full of “fluffy” stuff we had previously generated, being stored in our Entertainment Room downstairs!

It is a slow job of laying down sheets of the insulation boards, skipping around air ducting, conduits, water pipes and so on. Building up the layers until we reach underneath the cross rails that is 63mm from the top. That is about 320mm to 330mm of cavity to fill up, depending on how thick the original concrete slab was. We first tried to fill the remaining space with fluffy fragments but we discovered that it is so light and “fluffy” (Of Course!!), that it would not keep still. We wanted to glue the floorboards down tight on the wooden framework and this fluffy stuff kept going everywhere!!

Starting to fill Greatroom floor

So, we switched over to Plan B, and laid down 100mm layer of glass wool over the fluffy stuff. This helped greatly to contain the fluffy stuff and made it much easier to vacuum the rails clean and get the glue down without any problems.

We used our spray gun foam to squirt a line of PU Glue Grade foam and then lay a floorboard on top. Next, we put in a collection of 50mm screws in each cross rail, to make sure that the 22mm thick chipboard boards will squash tight down onto the glue etc. For our first row, it started off at the left hand end, with a small piece, to bridge over the smaller spacing off the framework enough and the next board goes into the tongue and groove joint, getting knocked sideways to make sure the joint is nice and tight. This joint is also glued with more of our PU foam and this board is screwed down too. The final piece, is another larger piece, to finish the row. Each row always has three pieces but the first and last piece changes in size by approximately 600mm, to make sure that all rows do not have any joints aligning up consecutively, to improve the structure and strength of our floorboard generally.
We then carry on doing each row in turn, making sure that we knock each row tight into the previous row, by using a small piece of the same chipboard material that has a groove on it, plus a piece of CLS timber glued on to the back edge so we can thump it hard using a club hammer, to provide a reinforced tool, that slots into the tongue on the board and that will not damage it, while we are knocking each piece into place.

First row down

One of the jobs we had to do while the floorboards were up, was to seal the ventilation ducting to our wall distributor modules. The orange flexible 50mm conduit comes from a four way splitter and each duct goes off to various locations around the wall. Each end needed sealing up with aluminium sticky tape.
We got to the spiral staircase position, row number “G” and “H” and one of the thing to do was to reinforce the flooring, to make sure that this zone is strong enough to support the entire stair case, in one single small spot. We are going to have a pillar going up the middle of the spiral stairs and it measures 200mm across, which will be the main load bearing element. So, we built up the framework structure, putting in a zone of 400mm by 600mm of solid layer of CLS timber pieces, all glued together into a single block. This is then supported underneath by a couple of sturdy cross pieces using a wider 89mm CLS pieces and then finally, underneath those two pieces, we put in four legs down to the concrete floor slab, two legs under each cross piece. Everything glued and clamped together.
The final top surface was planed smooth, to remove excess glue and excess timber and made it level across neighbouring floor joists.

Reinforcing floor for spiral staircase

Staircase Reinforcement smoothed

We built this reinforced spot near a couple of existing legs so we have six legs in total in the immediate zone but there are a further two legs only 300mm away and also the floorboard itself will help spread the load right across all the framework and in turn, down to the concrete slab.One of the things we tried to do, is to run our shredding machine and get the output to go straight down into the cavity space under the floorboards but it proved rather awkward to generate a constant flow of shredded bits coming out of the machine. The machine itself couldn’t shred the foam and let the pieces fall naturally downwards underneath the machine, it was “fluffing” up all over the place! So, we tried to combined the large vacuum machine we had used before, but instead of filling up domestic bin liners of foam bits, we tried to connect a plastic conduit to the bottom of the plastic bin liner so that the shredded bits would fly down the tube and into the floor cavity. But, as soon as the bits started building up in the bottom of the black liner, it would block the output tube and no more fluffy bits would fly along the tube!! We abandoned that method and just took each lump of foam and fitted them in a collection of random positioning, mixed with fluffy shredded bits we already had done months ago. We also took many of these lumps and arranged them into larger blocks before putting more fluffy stuff in on top.
It was a bit fiddly but we got there!

We got the middle section where our Utility services runs across the room, heading at a diagonal for half the distance and then straight to the Conservatory doorway point. We will have air, electricity, compressed air, and hot and cold water coming in and out of this zone, so we needed to seal off the rest of the floor on either side, to stop an avalanche of fluffy bits falling into this section. So, we cut pieces of 25mm thick foam sheets and glued them vertically into place. The 100mm “purple” air pipes, four of them in total, were supported with lumps of foams and then held into place through these vertical barriers. All the other utility like water pipes was already fixed in a neat line coming through a sheet 12mm board of plywood.

Now, we tackled the last furlong of the race of filling the floor and gluing and screwing down the floorboards, to the left of the Utility service channel, by removing all the floorboards and heaping them up over on the finished side, stacked in the correct order.
We went around the edge of the room, nearer to the outside world, and put in a solid arrangement of narrow strips of foam boards so that we maximise the heat retention for the house against any temperature differences in the outside world.
This left the middle area of the space to be filled up so we spread out all our remaining chunks of foam rubbish, and poured in all the last of our fluffy bits. And finally, topped the whole lot with two or three layers of 100mm glass wool, depending on how much there was to finish off.

Starting on second half 1

Starting on second half 2

Second half nearly filled

Second half ready for floor boards

We then could get on with laying down the final rows of the floorboards, getting them glued and screwed down, all the way to under the window looking out to the Loke. The rows that went over the Utility Services, we had to mark very carefully to exactly where the floor support framework is located because we needed to know precisely the positions of the “hatches” that we will cut out after the floorboards have been glued together using our construction PU glue instead of the PU spray glue. We also put a layer of parcel sticking tape on the surface of the framework so any excess glue that may leak through the joints, won’t permanently stick the floorboards down to our wooden framework!!
The final job was to get our track circular saw and slice down 22mm (and a bit), to cut our floorboards to those hatch markings. It was a nervous moment because we couldn’t undo any of these cuts!! But, It Turned Out OK!!

Central Service area Hatches made

That concludes permanently building the Great Room flooring, at long last! We can get on in building the walls next!

9 March 2024
Dismantling Of Temporary Flooring

We spent the last couple of days dismantling our very lovely and useful temporary flooring, the false floor that allowed us full and safe access to our sloping ceilings in our Great Room, plus also the Dormer section with its exposed rafters as well, plus also access to our Skylight too.
The first job before we unscrewed anything, was to give the surface a thorough clean by sanding the OSB boards using our 9inch rotating sanding machine with a 40grit paper loaded on the head. It cleaned away plaster blobs, paint blobs, PU glue blobs and allsorts! It did a very good job!

Next, we removed the 18mm thick OSB boards, unscrewing each one at a time and carefully removing the sheet back to the Gallery and brought through the doorway and stacked up to one side, to be reused later on when we build the First Floor rooms. We had to blast each the screw heads to clear out any rubbish. We worked our way from the furthest boards around the Gallery, taking up the last few sheets right next to the Gallery.
Then, downstairs, we tackled the job of dismantling the forest of wooden legs using ladders, and then unscrewing the long horizontal wooden beams as well, including the horizontal rails we mounted on the walls too.
We put back these CLS planks back into our stock pile, ready to be reuse for construction of the framework of the First Floor rooms.

Temporary floor removed (1)

Temporary floor removed (2)

Temporary floor removed (3)

Temporary floor removed (4)

That concludes the massive and complicated job of getting the upper half of the Great Room finished including putting in the foam insulation, vapour barrier, plasterboards, painting, veneer on rafters and building of our lighting gantry plus up inside the Skylight too!!

27 February 2024
Cut New Trench and Install Conduit for Full Fibre Optic TelComm Cable

We were having an upgrade of our phone and internet connections but the old conduit that we had running from the telegraph pole out on the Loke, going all the way to our Garage, seem to have been blocked or damaged by something. It is possible that our twin wall corrugated 50mm plastic conduit that we originally installed back in 2010, may have suffered in a location where there was more load pressing on it than we expected. The original phone line is still working and it even moves so it probably would have been ok to thread in the new fibre optic cable but we decided to have a complete rethink of where we wanted our new high speed data communication channel to be routed and now that we have our main house constructed and we got our Tech Cupboard available, including already having a WiFi hub and switch located in there.
So, over the last four days, we decided to lay in a brand new conduit, a black 20mm thick walled plastic pipe, from the Tech Cupboard, under the floor in the Hallway, around into the Utility Room and through the Utility Cupboard and through the wall to the outside, all below the floorboards, right down near the concrete level.

Then, outside, we cut a 18inch 450mm deep trench, using a narrow long bladed spade, coming away from the building at right angles, curving around in front of the front porch legs and near the fence line, continued all the way past our house and eventually, reaching opposite the telegraph pole that is located on the other side of our Loke.

Fibre Conduit trench (1)

Fibre Conduit trench (2)

Fibre Conduit trench (3)

Fibre Conduit trench (4)

We then had to cut our way across the Loke, using our electric super heavy “kango” road breaker machine, to cut through the highly compacted tracks, to reach the telegraph pole. We were careful during this segment because there are existing utilities running up and down the Loke, so we only went down 12inch 300mm, to make sure we avoid accidentally hitting a gas pipe, mains electricity and water. We did find a virgin media conduit and also we did discover our own previous conduit for our telephone and we skipped underneath both of those ones.

Fibre conduit across Loke (1)

Fibre conduit across Loke (2)

Fibre conduit across Loke (3)

The conduit pipe snaked around to the back side of the pole and then climbed up another 3metres, held on using three copper pipe clips and stainless steel screws.

The next task was to thread the fibre optic cable that was coiled up and left behind by the engineers, waiting for someone to thread it into our garage. So, we did the job for them!!
We sucked a length of string through the pipe using our most powerful vacuum DIY cleaner machine and join the end with the fibre optic cable and reversed the process by pulling the string back. We had measured forty-three metres of conduit that we used to go from the Tech Cupboard, all the way to ten feet up the telegraph pole! It was hard work pulling that length of cable back through the conduit, but, slowly, and finally, we made it !!

Fibre comes into Tech cupboard

At this point, there was a pause of some days while we waited for the OpenReach engineers to come back with the necessary fibre optic junction box and modem which will convert the laser light into an electrical network signal and that point, we can plug it into our network, and it is all done .. Just Like That !!

Broadband Fibre all connected

We now have 500 megabits download speeds and about 75 megabits of upload speed, all only costing us a very similar price to our old broadband connection! Amazing!

26 February 2024
Exposed Rafters Covered in Veneer in Dormer Section Over Conservatory

These last few days had us covering our rafters we have exposed, seven of them, situated over the section where we have our Conservatory, like a Dormer sticking out of the roof and will eventually join to a glass structure that will be our Conservatory.
We never intended to have exposed rafters in our original design but the idea came along when we were building up the ceiling in the Great Room and we wondered how to “fill” in that Dormer section and it came to us that we could leave it open and have exposed rafters, to make it a talking point for the room, especially if we also installed discrete lighting to light up inside the Dormer as well.

This means that we need to cover up the exposed rafters, which were never designed to be visible and rather ugly to look at. We found some natural looking wood effect veneers and bought three sheets, each measuring 3000mm long by 1300mm wide, and only 0.7mm thick.
They are resin coated paper, just like the original Formica products are.
The rafters are 400mm wide, plus 11mm for a strip of OSB strip that has been fixed to the front to cover up a rough edge, which might have made it difficult to stick our veneer to.
This means that we can get three strips off a sheet, measuring 433mm wide. One of the sheets came damaged on both edges (we got a 50% discount on the price and that is a bargain as we can easily use the major middle portion and only lose about 5%!).
We then found an old roll of backing wallpaper we had loads of, in our garden shed and this provided a stiff thick pieces of paper to place on each rafter and fold the ends at where the rafters disappears into the surrounding plasterwork. Our first attempt didn’t work out too well but we were able to reuse the cut veneer on another rafter, after trimming it down so the angles became closer together against the wall and ceiling.
We joined all our track saw segments together to form a single 3.5metre long track and that allowed us to cut the sheet into the 433mm strips. We also changed the circular saw blade to a fine tooth one, having lots of tungsten carbide teeth on it, to minimise the force on the cutting process.
Another aspect of our first attempt that we forgot to recognise, is that the paper template needed to be put on backwards because we are cutting the veneer strips with the face side downwards, to also minimise any chipping on the cut edges as the rotating saw blade always comes around and cuts upwards.
We had measured rafter number 3, on the right hand side of it and therefore our first attempt was able to go over to rafter number 5 but on the left hand side instead .. phew!
Our second attempt, we thought that we were being careful enough but we discovered that one of the ends didn’t align very well, and unfortunately this time, we could not use it on the other rafter because it turned out to be too small as well. This meant that we needed to slice up our third sheet for another 433mm wide strip. Oh Dear! But Thank Goodness that we bought a spare third sheet!!
We change the method of placing the thick paper up on the rafters and this time, we used the straight edge to align it along the bottom edge of the rafter, stapled it on to the rafter, making sure it was nice and flat. Then, we bent the two ends carefully one at a time. This time, it was much more successful – Phew!

Paper used fror templates

As you can see, we now have a large pile of backing wallpaper in a heap!
We now have a collection of veneer pieces, ready to go on the seven rafters, ranging in size from two tiny little exposed bits of a rafter, right up to the longest single rafter in the middle of the Dormer.
Next, is to glue them into place. We are using a brown universal “stick-all” glue that has proven to be very good at sticking many types of materials together. So using a fine tooth notch trowel, we coated the sides of the rafter with a complete covering of the brown glue, pressing the glue hard into the wooden surface, which we had blasted with our compressed air to get rid of as much dust as possible. We carefully placed the veneer piece into place and then pressed hard to work the glue into the veneer as well. Each piece still got it protective plastic film stuck on so we could press hard with our fingers and occasionally leave behind little blobs of brown glue. Mind you, we had to be very careful not to touch the surrounding “beautiful” white surfaces and alas, we have accidentally did leave tiny blobs there too, which we dealt with later on.
We made sure that the veneer pieces were big enough to overlap the bottom edge of each rafter because we had noticed that some of them were not completely straight. This meant that we wanted to trim the veneer so that is follows the ever slight bend of the rafter as closely as possible. We also ran a bead of the brown glue behind each edge of the veneer and used a small scraper to carefully fill in and smooth the surface.
We bought a trimming router bit that is a solid tungsten carbide blade that has been grounded into a sharp spiral shape, so it actually will slice the thin veneer some what like a pair of scissors would do, making sure that it cuts downwards into the veneer.

It went very well indeed using our smallest router machine and finished off the trimming with our wiggle saw that has a very fine teeth blade and also the blade is designed so it is flat against the surface you wished to slice to. We then sanded the front facing surface to remove any excess glue and ever so slightly wavey edge.

Rafter sides laminated

The final task was to cut narrow strips to go up on the front of each rafter. The rafters are approximately 63mm wide, but just in case they varied, we sliced 75mm wide strips off our remaining 3metre piece and covered the seven exposed rafters, the two smallest ones on the outside, measuring 500mm on the front, then the next two inwards measuring 1200mm, then the middle pair measuring 1750mm and finally the single central strip measuring 2400mm. Then, we had a small left-over piece where we used a pair of heavy duty scissors to cut the top end at the correct angle, making slight adjustments until it fitted nice, and transferred this little template to the strip being fitted to that particular rafter. Then carefully, measured the exact length, added 10mm and cut the bottom end. The extra 10mm then allowed us to slide the front covering strip sideways so that it overlapped both sides and ready to be trimmed later on. We proceeded to do the other six strips and the last one, the centre one, had a more complex shape for the top end to cut, but we managed it.
And finally, we cleaned their back sides with methylated spirits, put a thin layer of the brown glue all over it and then rolled each strip onto the rafters, to dry and cure overnight.

The final step was to trim them using our router again with that fancy cutting bit and very carefully cut the tops and bottoms where router couldn’t reach, using the wiggle saw. Then, using a metal file and a fresh fine sanding paper stuck to a length of CLS timber, we rubbed the edges to take off a tiny bit of excess material and make it all smooth. We pulled off the protective cling film and doubly made sure that the edge was nice and neat.
The final job was to scrape off blobs of the brown glue that we had managed to get on our beautiful white wall by using a razor blade and then paint over any remaining colourations.

Dormer rafters complete 1

Dormer rafters complete 2

This complete the coverage of the three visible sides of all seven rafters and turn them into “look-alike” solid wooden plank of timber.
This concludes the work on getting the upper half of the Great Room completed and now we can dismantle the working temporary platform and start work on the lower half of the Great Room!!

20 February 2024
Great Room Ceiling, Lighting Gantry and Gallery Wall All Prepared and Painted

Since our Christmas break, these last few weeks, we have been working on the upper half of the Great Room, including getting the Gallery’s wall constructed with all its gaps (ready for shelves and cupboards), above and below the Utility Channel plus the doorway too.
Since we had finished the Skylight and didn’t need the use of the mobile platform anymore, we constructed the remaining wall framework in the middle of the Gallery, between the metal legs that are holding up the Skylight. We put in two more “gaps” for 600mm wide shelving units and cupboards, alongside a standard 800mm wide doorway that gives access to the First Floor room beyond. The wall surface was built up to match the rest of the wall that goes past the Gallery and down to the Great Room, forming an internal gable divider to the rest of the house.

In the meantime, the fermacell boards that got put up before Christmas, had all their joints thoroughly sanded using our trusty old belt sander with a base plate fitted that allowed us to remove any slight ridges formed between sheets. We decided that because we had a solid OSB backing layer all over the ceiling, we didn’t have to “Tongue and Groove” the thin 10mm thick edges of the fermacell boards, only relying on the PU construction glue in the joints to hold everything tight together. This meant that there were a very slight variations in how flat we managed to staple up each sheet and the joints had a tiny steps in them. So, we came along with our belt sander and using a 40grit belt, went around “ironing” these steps and smoothed out the whole surface.
The Dorma section was similarly done but had to be done by hand as the machine was too large to fit inside among the rafters!
As that was happening, the staple holes and the now smooth joints were filled with good quality decorators filler. The initial wall, the “A” section, was done using a standard spatula tool but then had the idea of using a piping bag so we raided mum’s baking supplies for those disposable plastic bags and nozzles! It was a very good idea as we could squirt in the filler into the staple holes, after we had blasted them out using our compressed air, and leave a little sausage of filler proud on top, to allow shrinkage. On the first section we were doing, using the spatula, discovered that the fermacell plasterboards were so absorbent that they sucked the water content out of the filler hence shrinking it down in the holes, causing us to repeat the filling again. But, using the piping bags, it was much much better, in both time and efficient use of the filler.

A roof of blobs

P Roof filler dots

The intersection angle between two roof surfaces were trimmed and also smoothed with heavy use of the sander and manually using a surform shaving tool. We did the “M” and “N” long sloping junction, as well as the Dorma section over the Conservatory, showing off the exposed rafters. These were also filled in with filler especially around the exposed rafters so it comes out all in a straight line in both surfaces as they meet together.

Then came the messy job of rubbing down all the filler! Fortunately, our orbital sander had a vacuum port, to suck up 99% of the dust. We had another lovely tool to help us with this task, a 9inch rotating disc sanding machine attached to a long handle grip, with the vacuum tube running up the handle. This made quick work on sanding down all the surfaces and only needed hand sanding around the edges and corners.
Oh yes, we filled in the three corners between the sloping rooves, by using a piece of 110mm diameter drain pipe as a shaped spatula, to create a smooth curved surface to smoothly sweep around from one surface to the next.

Initial sanding A

Initial sanding O&P

The Gallery section also had all the staple holes and joints filled in, including rounding the corner on the three edges around the doorway, and then all smoothed down too.
The next task was to drill large holes for our lighting units we are going to have in the two wings of our Skylight, the flat strips that are coming perpendicular out from the Gallery wall and joins to the Skylight. We bought a sharp tungsten carbide teeth circular cutter measuring 95mm in diameter and proceeded to drill a set of eight holes staggered across the surface on each wing.

Gallery Wall Built

We also lowered our mobile Lighting Gantry unit and turned it upside down on four trestle tables so we could finish with that as well. We first installed the aluminium U-channel bars, which will contain strips of LEDs to shine down the slopes of the ceiling, all the way around the edge of the lighting module. Then we surform the fermacell edges that overlapped the U-channels so that both came together with a smooth graceful line. While we remembered, we stuck down a line of masking tape inside the aluminium channels, at the base so that we had still a bare strip of metal after we had painted them white, for the LEDs to have a good thermal conductivity to aid keeping them cool and long lasting. Most LEDs products these days are over driven and have very poor thermal cooling, and unfortunately, these lamps have short lives. We do not wish to suffer this fate so our LEDs will be under driven, well cooled and hopefully long lasting- fingers crossed!
Anyway, back to the gantry module, we then sanded the flat surface to make sure the joins are smooth and any screw points that pushed a little hump out, is all cleared away and left flat and smooth. Then, we drilled a further twenty-four holes, equally spaced out all the way along the module, only having to adjust very slightly their position twice to avoid internal metal framework. We now have plenty of downlighters to help illuminate our Great Room!

Gantry Spot light holes drilled

The other thing we did to the lighting module, was to take one length of the aluminium U-channel and cut a very shallow groove inside the metal surface, near the front so we can slide in a short length of plastic diffuser in the section that will look over the Gallery under the Skylight. We didn’t want to have the LEDs fully visible, poking their bright pin prick light sources at you, and also to avoid being able to see the electronic control circuits as well.So we were getting closer to the actual painting at last. We double checked everywhere, put in any filler in missing holes and scrapes, installed a little conduit under the cupboards on the Gallery for future lighting options and then gave the whole area a good and thorough vacuum and sweep. Also washing with plain water all the painting surfaces with a floor mop to remove any dust, sanding a couple of missed “bumps” along the way!
We then covered up the naked exposed rafters with masking thin plastic sheets, to protect the wooden surfaces so they can have the “pretty” veneer stick nicely to them .Finally, we can actually proceed to the painting at last! We got out our paint sprayer and got our 10 litre of white emulsion paint. It was quite thick and the sprayer said that it should be diluted with water, to make it thinner. It recommended a minimum of 10% of water and that the paint dribbles off smoothly and doesn’t form “bumps” or “tracks” in the paint before settling down. We ended up diluting it to about 12.5% before it looked ok. We had two spray nozzles and the wider fan nozzle, doing 50degrees wide fans, seem to be making a slightly bumpy surface on a sheet of insulation board. We switched over to our second nozzle, which produces a finer and narrower 30degrees fan, seem to be better.
So we proceeded to spray the ceilings, starting on the “A” section and working around clockwise. We managed to cover almost all the ceiling surfaces before we ran out of paint. We were surprised that we couldn’t get the 10litres to last long enough to cover all the ceiling and walls. The instructions on the paint pot claims that it should cover about 130 square metres and we estimated that our Great Room ceiling and Gallery is about 70 square metres. It looks like that we had put it on too thickly. Then, we spotted that the paint pot also said that they recommend diluting their paint 25% if one was using a sprayer. Oh Dear!!

Paint spraying equipment

In the full daylight on the following day, we also noticed that we had missed sections. We were painting in the late afternoon and we hadn’t had enough lighting. We are learning!!

Another side-effect we have discovered, is that the fermacell plasterboards, which are made up of newspaper pulp mixed in with the gypsum, goes “hairy” when we do heavy sanding on the surface, like when we had to smooth out a joint. The paint has soaked into these hairy bits and produces a textured finish. But fortunately, we also discovered that by just simply sanding the surface with 240grit paper, it knocks off the hairy bits completely in one single swipe of the sanding paper. So, we went around the whole room with our large circular sanding machine, loaded with 240grit paper and got everything nice and smooth. This is good news and rather pleasing that it came out very nicely indeed.

The next discovery, was that we had missed several staple holes, staples that were not fully hammered below the surface and various gouges that revealed themselves by the high contrast colour of the white paint. We went around with more filler and touched up these spots.

Our new tubs of white emulsion, this time buying Dulux branded paint and discovered that their domestic grade paint is much thinner than the previous one we were using. We only needed to add 10% water to get it running and dripping quickly, as recommended by the sprayer people. We then used the first nozzle, the 50degrees fan and proceeded to finish those area we undone and we had to stop early to allow all that lot to dry and harden.

On the following day, we went around sanding smooth all the blobs of filler we had put on, gave the Gallery wall a gentle rub to nock off the hairs and even now, we keep coming across a missing staple hole once or twice. There was a case where we had accidentally put on a strip of the fermacell back to front and the manufactured grid pattern was visible. This was the narrow strip up inside the doorway on the Gallery, so we diluted our filler mixture and applied a thin layer all over its surface using a wide bladed scraper. And just to finish off our morning’s work, we proceeded to spray the second coat of “Pure Brilliant” white paint everywhere, using well over another 15 litres of paint. It seem that we cannot help putting on more paint than what the tin says. We just shrug our shoulders and it is not a great expense, considering the cost of the underlying material we had already invested in.
After lunch, we rubbed down that doorway surface, which came out extra smooth and gave that a coat of paint. While we were waiting for the second coat to dry, we remembered that we needed to cut two pieces of the aluminium U-channel, for the two Skylight Wings, to provide more lighting output to shine down the slopes of the ceiling. We took the metal channels and cut the grooves to hold the plastic diffuser strip and drilled a cable access port plus screw holes to fix the bars up and stuck down a strip of 19mm wide masking tape, like before, to maximise thermal transfer of heat being generated by the LED strips. Finally, we gave them a spray of paint as well.

On the morning, the surfaces were again very gently sanded, to get rid of more hairy patches and after lunch, use our finishing coat of white paint, this time using a brighter Absolute White colour, which claims that it will reflect 90% of the light back into the room. The colour of this Absolute White is definitely “whiter” than the previous paint which is called Pure Brilliant White and it says that it has a 80% reflectivity of light. This paint has a very very very slight yellow tinge to it, especially comparing against the new Absolute paint we had put on.

Upon the following day, the surfaces are looking much much better and we are definitely winning against any more hairy patches showing up. In the sunshine, we could see several patches of a slight difference in “Whiteness” so they got an extra squirt from the spray machine. And, after lunch, those patches have disappeared and it is looking very good indeed. We have decided that the job is finally done!

All painted (1)

All painted (2)

All painted (3)

There had been a great deal of learning involved during this particular task of building, preparing and finishing the final “plaster” layer for the ceiling and walls. We now know what to expect, what to do, when we repeat this kind of work again on other parts of the house, and it should be easier and quicker.
The next job to do, before we dismantle the temporary flooring, is to cut and shape our wood effect laminate sheets and cover the exposed rafters at the Dormer section over the Conservatory.

15 February 2024
Finishing the Skylight in Great Room – Part 2

We resumed work on the Skylight on Monday after the Christmas break and we got on with filling all the little staple holes all over the fermacell boards with a gypsum-based filler which has extra additives to make it extra sticky and shrink proof. One of the things we thought that would make a better job of sticking this filler into these tiny holes, is to air blast them clean of any crushed fermacell material when the staple was fired in. This will provide a longer term finish.
We also ran a bead along the joints and also the corners as well. We then ran all over the woodwork and filled in the tiny little nail holes in the beading that holds up the double glazing glass units, filling in knots holes and the various joints along the ridge beam and metal work.
All these fillings were sanded down and where discovered, refilled any holes that did actually shrink after all. This is a bit strange since the filler boast that it doesn’t shrink so we concluded that the water is being struck out into the dryer fermacell material (which is gypsum and newspaper mix) before the gypsum has the chance to form the lattice work during the curing process. Another job we did was to trim the bottom edge of the vertical sections of the walls and then rounded it gently to soften the edges plus also to protect against being bashed and having little chunks fly off.

Starting to decorate skylight

The next job is to paint the wood framework with universal combined primer and undercoat white paint, and a metal white paint for the steel cross tie. We had a little issue with one of the Skylight rafters where a knot hole kept on “leaking” colour when it got painted so we got out our oil-based primer and dabbed that area which did the trick. We repeated the undercoat for the second time all over to make sure that everything has a good strong whiteness.
We, while waiting for the woodwork to dry between coats, applied a coats of white emulsion on the walls, using a regular bulk white emulsion and then finishing off with a high quality brilliant white paint.

GR Skylight Decorated! (1)

GR Skylight Decorated! (2)

At this point, everything that we needed our mobile working platform to reach high up is finished so we moved it away to the other end of the first floor, ready for some future task like building the boxing that will hide the backs of the solar panels and the air ducting etc.
We can now finish constructing the rest of the gable wall going across the Gallery, putting in the doorway etc and shelving units, blocking off the gap between the two steel posts holding up the Skylight.

19 January 2024
Christmas Break !!

We are having a well earnt break from our house building project, to celebrate Christmas and to be with our friends and family.
We decided to have a three week break so we return back to work on 15th January 2024!
But, as usual, we are continually looking at alternative technologies, updating equipment like for example a new 3D printer and a new machine called a Pick & Place, or P&P for short, to help produce complete electronic control boards!
No Rest for Us !
Smile!

24 December 2023
Finishing the Skylight in Great Room – Part 1

One of the areas that need to fully completed, including painting the woodwork, steel cross ties and the walls with paint, is our Skylight in our Great Room. Because this section of the Skylight stretches over beyond the Gallery, we had to extend the Gallery temporarily so our mobile working platform was able to be employed so we didn’t have to keep climbing up and down ladders. It was far safer and much quicker to do the various tasks.

Work platform on Gallery

One of those tasks, was to build a blanking off wall, to extend our Gable wall, all the way up to the Skylight window frames themselves. Our interior Gable wall is aligned to the edge of the First Floor and it is thick enough to hide our large 6inch steel legs that are supporting the Skylight and we have designed the alignment to coincide with the Skylight Windows themselves, and it turned out to be very close to what we wanted. We had to lean backwards, very slightly, our vertical piece of wall, to meet the wooden framework of the window. We could have gone up perfectly vertically but we would have had a small 40mm “shelf”, collecting dust and dirt, hence we went for the gentle slope instead, which also will help reflect more light down to the Gallery and the Great Room.

Skylight walls (2)

We then turned onto the two sides of the Skylight vertical walls and proceeded to give them a good hard sand, to get rid of years of weathering and make them ready for gluing and stapling up more of our fermacell boards. We had to do these sections in two halves because we got a steel cross tie that is half way up inside the Skylight, which is there to support the ridge beam and rafters of the windows themselves.
Now, we tackled the last side of the Skylight, the one that comes down to align with our mobile lighting module. We wanted it to come down to our aluminium lighting channel that we got running around on all sides of the lighting module so we had to extend this fourth side further by another 150mm, making a total of 900mm. We also had to add an 18mm spacer, to bring out the surface, to align it with our aluminium channel. This meant that we had two “wings” to build as well, going underneath the edges of the Skylight and meeting up with the slopes of the ceiling. It was quite tricky to get everything measured and cut to the correct shape and size, but we managed it.

Skylight walls (3)

Skylight walls (1)

The next task was to put a narrow strip of fermacell just above the doorway in our gable wall, going from left to right so that we could then install a flat piece of “ceiling” board under the Skylight two edges, coming perpendicular out from the Gable wall. These will have further lighting units installed, to help luminate the Gallery etc.

Skylight wings (1)

Skylight wings (2)

One job was to put on a “pretty” cover on the ridge that is holding the windows and we used a piece of oak plank we had left over from doing the guttering. We trimmed it down to a 80mm wide piece and then created a “jigsaw” like joint, to go around the metal post. We chamfered a small 45degree bezel around the three edges and then screwed and glued it up.

We then, modified our belt sander machine, to provide a method of sanding the finished fermacell surfaces, especially all the edges and joints. We used the existing frame that came with the machine and we added two 3mm thick aluminium bars to sit top and below the sander. The sander is then adjusted so that it is just skimming the surface when the machine is flat on the surface, without digging in at all.

Surface sanding system (1)

We put on a very rough sanding belt so it didn’t take too long to tackle the job of removing the steps in the joints, which indeed it didn’t! We went around everywhere in the skylight area quite quickly which is good because we will have to tackle the rest of the sloping ceiling surfaces everywhere.

Surface sanding system (2)

Surface sanding system (3)

Wall after sanding

That concludes this first part of getting the skylight finished. We will have a Christmas break now and return in the new year for part two.
Merry Christmas !!

22 December 2023
Glued and Stapled up a complete layer of Fermacell plasterboard sheets to the Great Room Ceiling

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been putting the finishing surface on the ceiling in our Great Room. This material is our Fermacell a plasterboard like sheet material, it’s a highly engineered gypsum based product which much harder and flatter. We started at our interior gable wall that we have built to divide off the Great Room from the rest of the First Floor and went around the ceiling in a clockwise direction until we got to the O section of the roof. Here we had to skip over that section and do the N and finally the M section, arriving back on the other half of the gable wall. The, we went back to the O section and completed getting up the fermacell boards.

Fermacell allover GR

All our joints between sheets, are glued together using PU construction glue, to ensure that we don’t get “crack” lines appearing after a few years through the shaking and wiggling of the timber structure, when blown by the winds outside. We will run the belt sander over all the joints as well, to make sure that it is very smooth, especially after we have pasted on filler on these joints .. and all the staple holes too.
Oh yes, all our water nozzles have been well glued as well, so we don’t have to rely on a double spanner to unscrew the blanking plate and replacing them with a real spray nozzle.

Glued in nozzle point

Then, we covered up the first parts of the Gable wall, on either side of the Gallery with more fermacell sheets, so that we can dismantle the working platform in a few weeks and still be able to complete the second half, the middle section because we have the Gallery to work from. This middle section will have a doorway and a collection of shelving units, both above and below the utility channel, with the lower units being extra deep so that there is a natural exposed top surface underneath the utility channel, for putting your cups or books down on.

We also boarded the inside of the ‘Conservatory’ Dormer.

GR Dormer boarded

But before we can do that, we needed to work on the Skylight, to get everything finished, including giving it a complete paint job too.

16 December 2023