As we left it, I had the first 3 courses of blocks done, the wall is now finished and, if I say so myself, a pretty damn fine job I made of it - you know when something is right and the attention I paid to the first course means I am pretty chuffed with the result.
The next thing to tackle was electrics - now, a word to the wise: if you need electrics installing you must get a qualified sparks to do it and provide you with a certificate otherwise you contravene building regulations. The fact that you may think you know what you're doing (I've been doing electrical work for over 30 years) does not mean you can keep on doing it however, the regulations say that if you are moving or replacing like-for-like then you can do this without certification: that's what I'm doing, just moving existing electrics to different parts of walls, even so, I checked the latest regulations so I could be confident that what I was doing would stand up to scrutiny.
So, channel the walls, run the cable, fix the sockets - sorted. I do need to put in a new feed for a garden socket so I checked on a reputable forum and was advised to get a sparks advice. So this is what I intend to do - get an expert and get it certificated - I could do it myself but I want a professional in as I believe in complying with the law.
Next thing to do was insulate the roof both in the utility room and the pantry. For this I used polystyrene blocks which fit between the rafters - a very easy but messy job (cutting the polystyrene). Then it was up with the new plaster board ceiling and also start to put plaster board on the walls. The technique I used was to screw the ceiling boards to the rafters but buy some plaster board adhesive, mix it with water and splodge it on the walls then, press the board (after being cut to size) onto this and support for 30 minutes. I was a bit dubious about this method but was surprised how easy it was and I would recommend using this method if you need to put up plaster board, it's a bit messy but very effective.
Sunday 13th March 2011
The next major work to be carried out was to remove the brick wall that I erected 26 years ago, blocking the old outside toilet door, as I need to put the new door here and block up where the existing door is, effectively, swapping them over. This came down nicely and with the bricks cleaned as I went, I have little to do when I use them in the existing opening.
That's it for now. We're caught up with the work so far.
