The Renovation #3: Ceilings Down & Loft Conversion

We are making some good progress with the renovation of our flat, but a straightforward renovation has never just been on the cards. I have been very keen on converting the massive loft into my office. Yes, I work from home and to a lot of you it all sounds like a great situation but in reality, it makes being at home more like work 24/7 so having space that I can solely call my office means I can have a work and life divide which is very important and so this loft conversion is very important to myself and Jane.

Before we started work on the loft, I needed to get the ceilings down as it was raging hot up there, and I needed to get some air flow, and also we are going to need to double up the ceiling joists and to do that the easiest way is to get the ceilings down. Any plasterer will tell you that the easiest way to get a ceiling down is from above, and this was not going to be any different.

In a couple of hours, all the ceilings were down and on the floor all ready for my good lady to come behind and start loading the car up to drive all the gypsum plasterboard to our not so local household waste site where it can be recycled. My “local” gypsum center is about an hour’s round trip for us, and so we really load the car right up and try to make every trip count.

With the ceilings down we had the task to go around and de-nail the joists which is one of the sole destroying jobs that you just have to dig deep, turn the radio up loud and get on with it and just keep pushing because it will drive you crazy if you think about it for too long.

I decided to take one room at a time (sounds obvious) and do a room a day and to be fair it was not as bad as you would think, but still I was pleased when it was all done.

We had a timber delivery from Travis Perkins and with over 800 kgs of timber to get up to our flat, it had to come in through the window. As you can see from the pictures its a big pile and with the help from my very old neighbours and lots of leg work from myself, the timber was all in and I was spending the next few hours scratching my head over the different wood specifications for the loft conversion.

The original plans for the loft conversion did not have any steel in it and after lots of head scratching and thinking I decided to go along the route of using a flitch beam as although a lot more work it was a lot easier for someone who is not a chippy to understand, and it made me feel a lot better as am very much a belt and braces kinder guy.

Take a look at that stack of timber…

With a vast majority of the timber on site, I was now really ready to get the loft started, and with the flitch steel ordered I was just waiting to get cracked on with the loft conversion. The Steel arrived when I was at The British Gypsum Mine Tour, and my good lady accepted delivery and organised my neighbours to lift in two 4 meter lengths of steel in through the window. When I returned from the mine tour, I thought the steel looked a bit short, but I thought it would be fine as the company took all the details.

It was only once the steel was in the loft space that I realised the company had used the technical drawings and not allowed for the steel to sit into the block work, and so it was about 500mm too short. A quick phone call and they admitted it was their fault ad they sent a welder out to weld on the 500mm on each of the plates, and I was happy as I was expecting them to argue but that was thankfully not the case.

I had Jane’s dad who is an sparky by trade ( I know, I know) come down and stay with us for five days as he had hoped to be doing all the electrics by then, but we were slipping far far behind and so he said he would come and give us well need hand, and I said that I wanted to get all the structural beams into the loft when he was there as that would help me a lot especially as I only had Jane for grunt and that was not a great deal of use.

The week flew by, and we made some massive progress with the flit beams fitted and the uprights from the flitch to the rafters all cut and fitted it was really starting to take shape.

One thing I did learn though while bolting the ashlar wall beams to the roof rafters was that don’t pull the ratchet towards you.  It hurts really bad when you do and how I did not lose my front teeth stiff baffles me. With my top teeth deep in my top lip and likewise, my bottom teeth and my nose propelling blood all over the walls I was not feeling very good. It hurt soo much, but I knew I should be pushing away but one moment of loss of concentration and the bolts sinking into the timbres it was no surprise that it happened.

However I pushed on and got the rest of the beams tightened and I have to say its starting to look very very good.

As you can see it’s taking shape and its a fairly decent space, and just so you get an idea, between the flitch plates its about 3.7meters and to the ridge form the floor it’s about 2.2 meters the length of the whole loft is around 10 meters as well. It should make quite a nice room and should be perfect for my office. We are still waiting for planning permission to come through for the skylights, and I am hoping that the planning department allows for the five skylights, but we shall see what they have to say but all going well we should have plenty of natural light up there.

The last day of having help from my father in law was the hardest day of the week. We were both broken and making silly mistakes with the tape measure and tripping over our own feet, but we knew that we need to crack on and get the ceiling in the lounge lowered and double joisted with the 5×2 timbers to add the extra strength into the floor and stop any bounce. We had to double the 5×2’s up, and this made it very heavy for us and had to resort to using acros to help get the timbers up there.

With this week done, we seem to be making lots of progress, but we still have the challenge of getting the stairs designed and while my father in law was here we had numerous joinery companies around to quote and help design the staircase to firstly work with the space that I have for the stairs but also needs to comply to the many building regs that are in place.

The stairs are the next big step we need to get over and will be the topic of conversation for a long time.

I hope you have enjoyed this update.