My Christmas Holiday: Day 3

It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile documenting the work I'm doing in the house. I regretted not doing this last time. Also when my friends come back from their exotic holidays and ask me what I did, I can give them this URL...

The lovely Paula kindly took some photos (no, not with the D80 that I was supposed to get from Xmas but didn't, with her old camera...)

So today was ripping out floorboards day. I decided that since I had cleared out the room and was lifting some floorboards anyway in prep for sanding, it would be worthwhile to 'rip them all out' (like the wizard Sauruman tells his orcs to do) and put in insulation beneath. This idea dawned on me last night as I was reading the Collins DIY encyclopaedia and it mentioned that its illegal to build a new house these days without underfloor insulation and it makes a huge difference to one's quality of life...





So we shall find out if this is worth it for the warm cosy living room, or just for the fun of ripping the guts out of my house!

But first we had some shopping to do this morning:

-- floorboards (since I predicted that I would probably have a few casualties

-- insulation: extensive research revealed that the aluminium foil with bubbly plastic stuff is the best because it returns radiated energy. Since heat rises, I'm not losing much heat from convection, but simply by the face that all the heat in the room radiates into a dark, dank pit beneath the floorboards. So apparently the tinfoil material is the best choice for this.

-- Then the best thing: I've been having problems with lighting, so when I saw the industrial strength construction zone lighting unit for £15.99 -- 2x500w halogen lights with robust extensible stand -- just like the ones you see on the highway when driving by construction zones-- snapped it up. This thing is like having the sun in your living room!

-- misc other stuff including face mask to prevent repeat of yesterday's wheesing attack triggered by the severe dust accumulated beneath my floor since its construction in the late 30's

Made it back by noon, and immediately set to it...


After a few hours I had gone through the first 1/3 of the floor. The closer I got the the window the worse the boards got and many crumbled or snapped. Its probably just as good as I'm doing this now because they would have needed replacing anyway. The house once had a rising damp problem and this must have degraded the timbers.

I was hoping to avoid removing the kick-board under the bay window as that's nice work done by a proper carpenter. Somehow managed to curve a single piece of wood by cutting notched into it and flexing. Unfortunately his handcrafted original had been infested by some kind of woodworm years ago and crumbled like a rice krispy square. I will have a hard time putting that one back as it was!! But not today's challenge . .

This is what the floor looks like underneath. Its a concrete base about 2 feet down.

I found an old pack of cigarettes from the 1930's down there. Signed by Wild Willie himself! I wonder how much this will fetch on eBay... Maybe I can pay for the super strength dual halogen construction zone lights with the proceeds?


Next was time to cut up the insulation roll and begin to put in place. Apparently this material only works is there is an airspace between the tinfoil and the wood. So the prescribed way to do it is to drop the insulation 5cm between each rafter. At first I was worried I would rip the material but worked fine. I was also wondering how it would take to having the floorboard nailed down on top of it again, but it seems quite robust so hopefully will be fine.

Tomorrow's task: finish the insulation on this half, and put back the floorboards. Aim to finish other half of floor in the afternoon...

Here's a bonus picture: the cleared-out hearth, results of a stress-relieving afternoon last week.
More to come on this front later..