Bedroom 4 continued

So we've finished insulating and putting up the vapour barrier in bedroom 4, and started to gyprock the walls now. We've run out of gyprock so we can't do the whole room, but we are getting a delivery of 30 more sheets on Monday. We had our first visitor over, who helped us put the gyprock in place on the sloped ceilings. We've plastered what we can and finish that side of things once the delivery has arrived. Unfortunately the ceiling got damaged whilst we were taking the walls down, and the cracks in the original plaster have got so bad, I feel it's not salvageable. This means we'll have to take the plaster off the ceiling too. So I'm going to have to hire a drywall hoist to lift the panels up to ceiling level as I can't lift a panel over my head (yet!). This isn't a major problem as such, as there are several other parts of the 2nd floor which are going to need a hoist to get the panels up. So I'm going to have to wait to do that - prep the ceiling in bedroom 4, then remove wall covering and prep the landing.

All this with a baby coming soon. Hmm - not sure how successful that's going to be!

Below are some photos of the state of bedroom 4 as it stands.



Still to do in bedroom 4:

• Remove the ceiling
• Add vapour barrier
• Insulate the ceiling
• Re-gyprock the ceiling
• Finish plastering (aka mudding) the room
• Add a closet
• Add coving round the room. This might involve moving the light switches too.
• Prime and paint the walls
• Add cubby holes above the stairs?
• Replace the bannisters
  
  • Work out how to replace the small square spindles with more attractive spindles so the railings aren't at a dangerous height.
• Sand and varnish the floor

Bedroom 4 - the beginnings

One of the problems with gyp-rocking is the 4ft by 8ft panels are heavy, too heavy for me to lift over my head on my own. The pitched roof invades the bedrooms and landing space. The pitched roofs are difficult to gyp-rock because it involves holding a panel over my head whilst someone screws it down. So I've been delaying approaching these areas - until now. We have our first visitor from England coming over, and with it the opportunity to get these areas - particularly the high areas, done. So I've started removing the old plaster and lathe from the walls in bedroom 4 - currently the only room which has no real purpose, and has two long areas needing covering. The video below is about an hour and a half of me working away on the wall. Unfortunately I didn't adjust the camera angle, so you only get to see the bottom of the wall, so I've cut out the end of the video. YouTube limits the time length of a clip to 15 minutes so I've upped the frame rate significantly to make the whole thing shorter.

You can see day light coming through the wall. The previous owners have removed the exterior shingles covering the outside wall at some point, but didn't realise this compromised the air tight spaces - so I've filled them with expanding insulating foam. It shouldn't get wet at all, because it's below the drip line of the roof.

Not sure what happened to the videoclip I uploaded, I'll try again

Tomorrow I'll finish stripping down the room. Then the insulation and vapour barrier go up. I'll try and get as much of the gyp-rocking done before my friend arrives so we're not wasting time. Hopefully I'll have time next week to start work on the landing - although we have a midwife's appointment, ante-natal classes as well as a visit to the Obs/Gynae facilities at the local hospital. No rest for the wicked.