Battening Out

Worked at my brothers on Friday. We battened out his two external walls so they could be insulated and then plaster boarded. 

 Rather than just fixing them to the wall we levelled them up as well to make a much better job of it. although this takes a lot longer it's worth it in the long run. All the battens have plastic behind them to prevent any damp tracking through the wall. 

My brother now needs to run the pipes to the right places and new wiring run for the sockets before insulating it with 1 inch Kingspan. I'll then come back and give him a hand plaster boarding it ready for the plasterer next month.

Wet room Part 1

I started my wet room job properly this week. Its surprising how much work there is in such a little room. First off I had to strip out the old toilet and shower then remove all the tiles and plasterboard.

Not only had the root damaged the bottom of the boards and broke through the grout, this then allowed the water to travel up the plasterboard making it very weak. The picture above shows how bad its gotten. All the waste got skipped off site giving me a (unlevel) blank canvas to start afresh.

I removed the roots then repointed the wall where it had done any damage. I then started the slow process of battening the walls out to take the plywood. Slow because I want it to be perfectly level to enable easier tiling and so it looks right, the battens before were just fixed straight to the out of level walls and tiles cut to suit which doesn't always look the best.

I did cheat and use plastic spacers which save loads of time (although it's sometimes easier to use folding wooden wedges if you've got the saw set up to make a batch). The plastic ones are useful though as you can increase or decrease the spacing by 1mm just by changing the packer rather than knocking wedges all over the place.

With the external walls insulated its ready to have ply fitted next week and then I can tank it out to make sure its waterproof before I lay a single tile. I've also got to make a new little window for the room so that should be a nice job for a sunny day next week.

What goes on behind those walls?

Sometimes the best sign of a good tradesman is the fact that you can't see he's been there.

That was the case the week before last, as we were battening out an old brick wall. In the end all you could see was a perfectly plumb plywood wall but behind that there were all the timber grounds to straighten it out, full of wedges and packers, once its tiled there will be no clue a carpenter was ever there.

The shower floor will be another example of this. as we were raising the floor up 6inches anyway the customer decided that they didn't want a standard type shower tray. Instead they wanted one that was sunk into the floor. This meant positioning the trap to the shower and then making the floor fall in four directions into it, bit of a test of my geometry skills! It will then be tanked before the tiles are laid.

I've also been doing plenty of wood turning this week (due to the fact that we can't leave the village due to snow) but most of it is presents so I can't put them on here just yet!