THE BEDROOM FLOOR

1 Aug 2018

The plumbers had refused to do any work upstairs until I had fixed the bedroom floor.  I don't blame them.  It was a tad bouncy and there was about a foot drop between the door way and the middle of the room.  

We decided there was a fair chance that the modern chipboard flooring might be holding the old joists together, so rather than lift the boards from above, the builders took down the lathe and plaster ceiling from underneath to expose the beams.  The ceiling wasn't salvagable anyway, as it had been boarded underneath with plaster board and then artexed.

It was exciting to remove the modern ceiling and finally uncover the 400 year old beams, but unfortionately they were both undersized and extremely flimsy and couldn't be saved.

The beams spanned the entire length of the room, and were very curved.  

I wanted to keep the ceiling the same depth and I didn't want to put any extra holes in my walls, but I couldn't just replace with new wood because they would be undersized.

So the builders put in two crossbeams (two 4x2 beams bolted to either side of a steel plate).  The joists were then bolted to the cross beams and went into the original holes that the old wood had been in.

They only had to make two new holes in the end wall to support the crossbeams.  The other end of each beam rests on the chimney breast.

The ceiling did end up being a bit higher, because the builders had a lot of trouble leveling the joists.  I wouldn't have minded keeping the wonky floor, but as I was in charge of building the new floor upstairs I'm glad they got it as level as they did.

Then it was my turn!  I decided to use square cut planed planks instead of tongue and grove and screw it down because sods law - it i did anything else it would need to come up again..

Spot the complete absence of power tools - There were no electrics at this point! I cut every piece, drilled and countersunk each pilot hole and screwed in every screw by hand.. Sarah arrived at about this point to help, thankfully!!

All by hand, with help from my awesome Brother Vinny and Sarah..