Now that the Easter break is well behind us, we returned to our refurbishment work proper. Mike connected up some pipework for the next bathroom, and when we turned the water on, we had ourselves a little indoor shower! You can see below that where Mike had resolved, with due emphasis on frugality, to reuse old piping, he hadn’t noticed that one pipe had been neatly pierced by a nail or similar (you can see the pin hole in the photo below…)
So we had a short pause whilst he repaired the leak, and then all felt we had done enough plumbing for one day. We decided to try something slightly revolutionary – to have all three of us working on the same project at the same time – and elected to try fitting the fire board under the stairs and landings in this experiment.
One of us measured, one cut, and one stood around scratching their chins through their metaphorical beard…
…and progress was pleasingly swift. We completed the floor 3 landing, then began working down the flights of stairs. Here you see Mike under the platform between floor 2 and 3…
…and here we see the stairs below that platform, complete with insulation to help deaden the thunder of feet pounding down the stairs.
Here you see Mike and Alex fitting a centre strut – as we didn’t want the fire board to fall under its own weight…
…and here you see Mike completing the underside of the platform between floors 1 and 2.
We worked as a single team for two days, and now have only the stairs from the ground floor to floor 1 to fit with fire board.
We decided to have another change today, partly because installing the fire board was very heavy physical work, and partly because it was Friday so I was in Welsh class all morning (after a very early trip to the cash and carry in Llandudno).
We started with a bare room into which Mike had installed the plumbing…
…we lined the external wall with insulated plasterboard, some of the internal walls with plasterboard…
…and then the ceiling was plaster-boarded also. Mike seemed to find it necessary to practice his ballet twirls in the middle of all this, but we forgave him.
Tomorrow, we will have to find something more to do – fortunately, we have quite a range of possible options!