Wednesday, April 06, 2011

The Loft is Drywalled

Although this room looks full of stuff, it is now drywalled. Here I am facing the front of the house. Above is the large skylight/velux that will be cut out very shortly. They are waiting for the roofer before doing this because the lead flashing has to go on first. The cubby in the lower left is our eaves storage and on the right the light is coming from our little sitting space (ideal for kids visiting). You can see facing the back and the hallway where the bathroom door is to the right when you walk into the hall. The little sitting/reading nook. I will have to make a big comfy floor cushion for that area. The shower room. I think our plumber is going to finish this room off when he plumbs the whole thing. Looking down our soon-to-be stairwell. The floor is being cut out tomorrow and will descend in line with the stairs below. The skylight in our roof that will light this area has yet to be cut out, as you can see. A view from the loft room looking towards the future hall and staircase. You can see the original brick party wall. We arrived home one day to find part of our banister missing. This bit will be cut out anyway as the new staircase will come down here. It took us awhile to figure out that this is the piece that is taken to the company who make the spindles and banisters. They will make a match for our original spindles and hand rail that don't exist in stores anymore. Our existing end posts are very 60's style. We asked to have made an original design copied from a friend's house who just used the same company to build their loft. They should have the design already on file as a result. This is the middle floor looking towards the front of the house. Soon the stairs will come down at the far end. Because regulation states you need a 2 metre head space between the stairs below and the ones coming from the loft they will have to shift the upper stairs forward into the small room. This means the wall ahead of you (the blue one) will have to be shifted into the room about 6 inches to accommodate the staircase.

3 comments:

Laura and Ryan said...

Coming together nicely!!

Anonymous said...

Hey Michal and Nigel, will you be leaving the bricks exposed at the party wall adjacent to the new stairs?
Geo

michal (W.I.T.W.I.M.) said...

I would love to, but it is a bigger job than one thinks. The bricks up close are wonky and in poor shape. You would have to scrape out the mortar and repoint it. Our builder said a lot of people ask if there is something they can put on to fix it and leave it as is. I think the answer was no.

Plastering the wall is much cheaper. Too bad.