Max Headroom

Well after a small break I'm back in the saddle and the last remaining room is under construction. This will be what you might call the "Master" bedroom, which basically means the room above the salon. The room itself is about 5m x 6m so should make a pretty decent bedroom. This room has been hanging around now for a while waiting to be started, mainly due to reasons I wont go into here, but also because I wasn't sure how to do the ceiling structure. Originally on the architects plans the room was to be open to the roof, and the bedroom was a trendy box hanging in mid air. This looked great on paper but in practice would have been difficult to live with and ended up wasting a load of space. Accordingly there was not really any thought given over to the plans for a ceiling structure. Anyway to cut a very long story short I went into the local builders with a drawing of what I wanted to do. Normally this would have resulted in a few shrugs from the guys at the builders and little else. This time however as if by divine intervention it resulted in the chef himself popping round to my house, measuring up and specifying all the materials ET VIOLA! a plan in place.

The main ceiling joists were specified as 38mm x 228mm x 4.5m times 15 off. 13 of these to be cut as joists and the remaining 2 cut into two rows of noggins for lateral stability. The joists to be installed 400mm on centre and supported on the oversize perlins. From a technical point of view the installation was quite straight forward, however joists of that size are a bit of a bugger if you're trying to install then on your own. It can be done.....but very very carefully and you will be shagged by the end.

Now the main structure is in place there are a few jobs to finish it; there are a couple of metal straps to install between the ceiling and the second purlin about above to help take some of the load. This is only belt and braces but cheap and easy to do so why not! There is an inspection hatch to build and then metal rails to mount under the ceiling timbers. That last step it not strictly required, you could mount the plasterboard directly to the joists but the metal rails mean that getting everything dead flat is a lot easier. In England we wouldn't bother because the ceiling would be skimmed with plaster. Here in France its normal to just tape and joint the plasterboard and then sand down the joints. After doing both, I now go with the French method. 

Well I think I did OK to get this done, particularly when I'd been ill the day before with a absolute stinker of a cold/flue.

Next time plasterboard.

To end here are a few pretty pictures of the bits that are finished to remind me what its all for.

 Happy Birthday Libby!