Pot Noodling along
Up early again and straight into warm work gear, the house was now getting really cold and I needed a solution to my plumber dilemma. Travis Perkins had recommended a plumber yesterday and I’d phoned him to arrange a visit on Friday, this couldn’t come quick enough. I’d also got up early to head off my Travis Perkins delivery and supplement it with more timber I thought may be necessary to complete the work. Before breakfast too I’d been into the log store and chopped up two large piles of logs to fuel the fires for San and Russ’s visit tomorrow, all in all a busy start to the day.
The fire was still burning in the living room but really wasn’t hitting the cold. The heating system from the back boiler was still passive and I needed a plumber to insert a pump into the stove circuit in order to get the heat from the stove into the thermal store and then into the central heating system, until then I really couldn’t afford to heat the house using the oil fired boiler, it would just get too expensive. I really needed that plumber. Couple this with the big hole up to the attic and things were getting a bit breezy.
The morning was punctuated by a couple of deliveries, the first being my new loft ladders and the second my timber delivery from Travis Perkins. The loft ladders were carried in by the driver whereas the timber had to be man-handled by the delivery driver and myself into a pile in my garden, it was great to see both deliveries arrive as planned.
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Anyway I cracked on and managed to do a bit more work in the attic. Starting the boarding was the hardest thing, figuring out how to fit the legs and getting them square made the first board the hardest to do, the rest although quicker to fit still took some time. Further to this I also had to cut the board to size and make up some spacers to fit the joists that sat higher than the standard roofing joist. To aid this I had my new compound mitre saw and table now, this I’d bought the week before on Black Friday, I managed to get a bit off with a 15% discount code and a £99 offer on the mitre saw. This made cutting wedges a doddle but it did take an hour to build it out of the box, still it works wonderfully and will be a great asset once I get around to chopping up floorboards.
Generally I had a very busy day and after only stopping for a Pot Noodle. I worked all day between attic jobs and fixing a computer (turned out to be very tricky) the day flew past and suddenly – it seemed – I found myself working in the attic at 10:30 PM having completed only four floor sheets of chipboard. This might seem quick inadequate but the install was more elaborate than planned, the legs did take some time to install and I’d also supplemented the loft insulation with more of my own insulation. Basically the insulation that was fitted between the joists was supplemented with more insulation running perpendicular to the existing insulation, giving the Holy Grail of 200mm + cross-hatched insulation.
I decided to crack on, but after a wander in the back garden I realised I could hear my attic radio very easily. Clearly this meant that it wasn’t like working indoors to the wee hours where the double glazing and detached nature of the house meant I couldn’t be heard, it meant that I had to stop or have the villagers out with their pitchforks.
I decided on light duties and sitting cross-legged in front of my stove I proceeded to pre-drill 30 Loft Legs, four screws a piece. Phew… 120 screws and a bad back later and I headed off to have a bath and a bag of crisps, crawling into bed at 1:22am.