The Self Build Diary - Day 119 - A first floor and a few aches and pains!

Its been a while! one thing i have tried to do is only put a blog Post on when i have got something worthwhile to say....... some of you may disagree, Mrs G disagrees!

Well since the last post things have pressed on on site, the walls to the first floor continue up, in fact the block work is nearly up to the second floor joists, and the stonework is mid window.

the last fortnight has been about mentally and physically preparing myself for getting involved in the project in a more hands on way! Good Friday way my first part of the project which was to install the flooring to the 1st floor joists. A luxury that we can afford due to the tented scaffold we have (See the added dimension to the "Tent Counter" below. Normally this would take place when the roof is on and the job is water tight.

So planning for the future weeks has been tough, there is lots for me to learn and i have been bending the ears of all of those contact i have access to and potential suppliers. I have come to the conclusion that i don't need to develop long term relationships with suppliers as i am only doing this once, being shrewd and asking for discounts and pushing the boundaries of the pricing and terms offered is essential in controlling the budget, whilst that doesn't stop you being honest with suppliers and getting on with them, the project comes first. If your in the same position as us, please don't accept the first price you get offered on anything.

so my schedule for the coming weeks:-

• This weekend - Boarding first floor
• Next Weekend - Kingspan ground floor (preparing for UFH installers
• Then - Ground floor Stud work.

So how did the boarding go? take a look:-

The biggest thing that i missed was that i needed to factor in the time to get prepared. When I arrived, all of the tresseling and temporary boards needed moving somewhere before i could start, then i needed to get 90+ pieces of 22mm chipboard up onto the joists and then i had to put everything back on top when i had finished, I think there was about 5 or 6 hours this weekend on moving things never mind doing the flooring.

Things i have learnt.

1) we went for 22mm flooring, rather than the 18mm, there is a small price differential but there is a lot less movement in the boards, hopefully meaning a more stable floor overall. I think the increase in quality is well worth the small amount of extra cost (about 40p per board).

2) always send the boards the opposite way if you are flooring a different section of the house, this way you can use the offcuts on the other side, I made this mistake and nearly ran out of boards, this makes total sense to everyone, if only i had thought about it!!

Anyway I'm pleased with my first efforts, there is room for improvement when we do the 2nd floor but a good job has been done and only a few achy muscles as collateral damage!

Back to work tomorrow, so ill keep you informed of progress this week.

Neil