The 'big project' that I hadn't really thought about or planned for...

[James Harrison]

I think that calls for a drink.  Pity the boiler setup doesn't dispense gin 

[Sir Henry]

My apologies for the delay; welcome to my nightmare



I am not happy that it has taken me 18 months to get this far, but at last I have finished restoring the attic to something rather larger than its former glory.

When it was first built it was two separate attics, each with a staircase and a couple of rooms - one in the middle of the space with the staircase down and one with the dormer at the front. The dormers were interesting in that they were glazed on the sides as well as the front, so the views would have been wonderful.
Unfortunately, since then skylights were added above the stairwell and then tiled over again. Then the two houses were joined, allowing for a door between the two spaces and the removal of one staircase.
At a later date, probably the 1980's, the walls were taken down and the sides of the dormers were replaced with plywood sheets, the floors taken up and insulation put between the floor joists. The remaining staircase was boxed in and the whole place was ignored for the next 40 years.



This, of course, is the best thing to do with a roof space; the deterioration allows access to birds, rain and all sorts and there were so many holes in the roof when we arrived that you could happily stargaze from inside as long as you were very, very careful where you put your feet. On the plus side, the layers of fibreglass and recycled paper insulation had kept the joists surprisingly dry, along with the desiccated dead birds.

Then we arrived. I think I have already posted about removing the dormers so we could have solar panels, discovering that the second (abandoned) stairwell had no joists over it, just a few legths of 2'x3' nailed at their ends to the existing joists but not the sheet of drywall underneath to stop people from falling through. After sorting out the wiring )see posts above) I levelled the floor as well as I could and boarded the whole space, somewhere near 80 sq.m./100 sq.yds.



It was shortly before the delivery of all the boards that my best friend and helpmate slipped a disc and had to give up helping for good. So it was at this point that I started to change shape. Also, throughout the rest of this remember that I am also a carer (for two adults with multiple problems), cook, housewife and mediator which is why it was such a slow job.

I don't think I mentioned the largest part, by far, of the job - installing a double layer of insulation between and then below the roof joists. I used solid insulation because there needed to be an air gap between the under tile sheet and the insulation but the insulation needed to be airtight so spray or Rockwool wouldn't have worked. None of the joists were parallel so every section needed to be measured and cut to millimetre accuracy and there were 4 sections of insulation to each inter-joist gap, floor to peak. The peak is about 16 ft. up - did I mention that I have a fear of heights?



Spring, summer and autumn, all day in a breathing mask and the space getting hotter and hotter - never again! Impressively it wasn't until the two days when I stuffed all the fibreglass insulation that had been on the floor into the 3-foot high (at the apex) roof voids that had been created, wearing a hazmat suit, breathing mask and close-fitting goggles in the height of summer, that my breathing problems started.
So while the insulation is mostly 250mm/10 ins., at the top it is an impressive 1250mm/50ins.!


If I were better at plastering I wouldn't need to sand so much!

After that it was just a case of removing the chimneys, building the stud walls (parallel studs for easy insulation!) and installing a fuse box and sockets throughout. This entailed learning a bunch of skills that would have been so useful had I learned them 40 years ago, but we didn't have the internet back then, so information was more limited. Having used multiple youtube videos to learn all of this was a bit worrying, but when the electrical inspector came to check all my wiring he was very impressed, commenting that it would be great if more of the new builds he inspected were up to this quality.



became


So now we have two huge spaces, each about two thirds the area of a floor of the house (the other third is under-eaves storage) to be used as maker spaces, one for me and the other for my wife. Mine is totally undecorated because that will have to wait until I have finished Phase 2. This includes emptying some of the rooms downstairs of boxes of stuff, putting them in the attic storage spaces, then decorating those rooms. Roughly in this order: kitchen, front hall, living room/library and bathroom. Oh yes, and the garden, but that's an epic post of its own.
After I've done one about the stairs and banisters.

There is a good chance that I won't be able to wait that long for some of my ideas. For instance the entrance to the storage space at the front of my attic room is 1/7th the width of the whole wall and positioned so that if I put in panelling with 7 panels, one of them will cover the gap perfectly. I may need to do that at some point to cheer myself up. The depression is also why I've finally sat down to write this up - I've found that working in this state of mind leads to mistakes and injuries, so best avoided.

[Madasasteamfish]

A very compressive and impressive update Sir Henry. My compliments on the work accomplished so far and commiserations on the cowpats that have been strewn along the path of your life (my own struggles with mental health have shown me how difficult it can be to actually complete projects).

I'll try and refrain from expressing my extreme envy at your property...

[James Harrison]

Wow.  Very, very impressive indeed.  16' ceilings in the attic really gives a sense of the scale of the project. 

[Sorontar]

Nicely done. Slow and steady(ish) wins the race.

Sorontar

[Sir Henry]

I've only just realised (l'espirite de l'escalier) that the title of my last post should have been

The Neverending Storey



I'll get my top hat...

[Cora Courcelle]

I've only just realised (l'espirite de l'escalier) that the title of my last post should have been

The Neverending Storey



I'll get my top hat...

Nooooooooo         

[Sir Henry]

One of the first things that I realised when we thought of returning the attic to its former glory was that the opened-up stairwell would need bannisters around it. We did consider solid sides, maybe book shelves or similar, but quickly realised that the stairs needed more light than that would allow.

So I kept an eye out and after a few months came across a place that was selling spindles and handrails cheap. They were 'seconds' so needed sanding and there were a few rather prominent knots and so on. But they were delightfully cheap so we got a load.

In order to hide the more egregious flaws I decided to stain them, but what colour. As you may remember, I have a large selection of wood dyes to choose from. Darker would hide the flaws better but lighter would be better for the room. Then I thought of all those Natural History museums from the 19th century with pillars of different types of stone and the decision was made.

Much later, when it came to doing up the stairs themselves I found that the original stairs were such a mess that covering them was the only sensible option. As I had a few laminate stair steps left over from downstairs I didn't need to buy a complete set, just another 7 steps. And as they were being bought individually they may as well also range in colour, going from dark on the half-landing to light at the top ("Go towards the light!"  ;-)  )

And I think it turned out rather well:

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