Remember yesterday when I was busy putting that piece of wood in to fill that unexplained gap in the woodwork and ended up falling down the stairs?
This morning I started to fit the plasterboard into position, and after a good hour or so at the cutting, measuring and fitting, and also fitting in some bracing which was unaccountably absent, the light suddenly went on in my head. Yes, where is the insulation in the wall?
Off came all of the plasterboard that I had cut and shaped, and off came the bracing that I had fitted, and on went 40mm of polystyrene insulation. And now I can see why there was that unexplained gap – it was for passing the insulation through and out behind the stairs. Still, it’s too late to do much about that now.
Before I had started on the plasterboard, I had taken the masking off the floor under the stairs on the landing, and put the first coating of varnish on there. I’d put the second coat on and fitted the stairs too. So that’s another job out of the way.
I’ve even had a bit of good luck too. Aeons ago, when I lived in Brussels, I bought a pack of 100mm wide 25mm thick planed wood planks to make some shelves, but I never used it. I discovered two of the planks and tried them as end-stops for the plasterboard stud walls. They seem to be perfect for this job and so tomorrow I’ll have a go at fitting tham.
I’ve also rerouted a pile of wiring so that it will run under the false ceiling on the landing and then down with all of the other wiring between the stud wall that has the shower room on one side and the head of the stairs on the other side, and I can’t think why I didn’t do this ages ago.
As for the water issues, the front tap thawed out slightly today and the leak isn’t anything like serious. It’s losing about half a litre every hour, but more when the tap is open. The rear tap is still frozen up so I can’t isolate the front tank.
Mind you, the frozen tap is doing that so it’s the same thing really, and as for the leak, the front tank needs to be emptied anyway so that I can change the tap so it’s neither here nor there. I’ve emptied 40 litres out of it today into various containers and I’ll keep on doing that for now until the weather warms up and I can isolate the front tank.
