Tiling: Bathroom Walls (Day 8)

Having worked all weekend relocating the door and finishing the prep of the walls and floors for tiles, the bathroom was ready for Sean (our tiler) when he walked in on Monday morning.

Morning of Feb 27th - the wood batten is set for holding the tiles above.

Similar to how he started the shower, Sean set a wooden batten at the base of the 2nd row on the wall in order to hold the tiles. By locating and leveling the batten perfectly, it provides a stable and accurate foundation for the walls, and later, once the tiles are set, and the floor is tiled, he can go in and tile the gap precisely. This is one of those great tricks one can learn watching a professional -- if it was not done this way, I can now see that there could be inaccuracies that would be visible. Setting such large tiles is an extremely unforgiving task...I'm now really thankful that "Aglaya" talked me out of doing the tiling myself!

Late morning - most of the wall is finished.

After Sean finished the shower, it was amazing to see how fast he could work with just straight walls and full tiles -  in just a few hours he had finished one of the walls and had started the other. These walls are all in limestone - which is a beautiful but soft stone - and they are intended to provide a more neutral background against the bold color of the slate.

Turning the corner onto the final wall. You can see the red line of the laser level on the left side

By 1pm Sean had completed half of the final wall.

While Sean was working on the walls, I was resetting the loo's push-button flusher - it's wall mounted and had to be properly fixed to the wall before the tiles go over it. This was the last thing I did before heading to the airport...now it's up to "Aglaya" to finish overseeing Sean's work!

The mostly completed shower (with the laser level mounted on a pole)

Finishing the Roof Slates: small area, huge milestone!

Immediately after finishing the Dark Side, I walked to the back of the roof and got started on the only remaining area that needed slates - the little corner at the edge of the new dormer. This area is very small, but has an angled corner on one side and a small section of vertical wall on the other - which meant that it would be a huge pain in the neck.

And sure enough, it was. Besides the time-consuming angled cuts, the weather decided to be difficult once again. It kept raining on and off all day, so I'd get a little done, then have to move inside...this made the work go really, really slowly. I also had to keep going down to check on the plumbers, so I was only able to finish the roof portion, but not the wall. The wall only got done the next day.

But with that, we reached a major milestone - the slates are completely finished! The end of the roof work is in sight...

June 16 - before starting work

The first few battens in place

June 17 - installing the battens

The first slates installed

Starting the 2nd row - the vertical slate was used to locate the starting position (edge) of the roof

It was raining on and off, but managed to get a few rows up.

June 18th - Finished the roof slates, starting on the vertical wall

It's not many slates, but time consuming due to the cuts and hanging everything vertically

Almost every piece has to be custom cut.

3:30pm - Finished! Tired, but happy and relieved!

Batten Down the Hatches

I'm back in London after being in NYC for almost 2 weeks - it's now time to try and finish the roof. As mentioned in the previous post, the goal of my 2.5 weeks here will be to finish the roof and try to get all the other things done that need the scaffolding in place so we can take the scaffolding down. It's a lot to do in 12 working days, but let's see what happens...

So as part of the push to get the roof done, the first big thing that needs to happen is to place all the battens on the last roof slope which faces the street.

April 25th - the remaining roof slope

As you may recall, the battens are what the slates are nailed to, and they are screwed into the vertical battens, known as counter battens. These counter battens are nailed directly into the rafters so they provide significant support. The first step in installing rafters is to set a string line - it's critical to establish a straight line so all the battens are straight and parallel, otherwise all the slates will go wonky and they won't line-up - need to avoid that!

April 25th - Setting the string line

The first two battens set with string lines

Once the first few rows of battens are set, straight and parellel, it becomes a much simpler (yet time consuming) process to installing the remaining battens...

First four rows - now ready to move faster on the rest

April 26th - Making sure both sides of the corner align

Starting to move quickly up the roof

Halfway up!

April 27 - Continuing up the roof

Last few rows - have barely enough battens to finish

Looking west - All battens installed

All battens installed

Looking east - towards the neighboring building

So it ended up taking about 2.5 days to put up all the battens and to do a few other things, but overall this took much longer than i had anticipated,...hopefully the slates will go faster...

End of the day - all battens completed!

Roof Insulation & Waterproofing - Day 2

Today we continued installing the insulation on the roof and pressed ahead with the waterproofing.

As previously mentioned, the insulation is covered by a waterproof membrane that is breathable. This breathable membrane is required by the UK building regulations, but it's actually really great. Once it's on, the roof essentially become waterproof and can stay that way for several months before the slates get put on. The membrane is held by wooden battens which will ultimately be used to nail the slates in place.

The goal today was to install some more insulation, but to also put down the first few rolls of breathable membrane. This would also require us to fasten the first few battens using a special helical nail that is 200mm long (8 inches). This special nail should save us a considerable amount of time as it fastens the entire roof assembly (battens, waterproof membrane, 120mm insulation, and the damp-proof course) directly to the rafters with one nail. I had originally bought many wood studs to hold the insulation down, which would have taken considerable time to cut and install. Now we can use this wood to do other things.

The trick with these helical nails is they have to go into the rafters below. This is much harder than it sounds because we have 7 inches of insulation, planks and plastic hiding the exact location of the rafters. The way around this is to mark the rafters locations with pencil onto the top layer every so often, before covering everything up.

I was nervous to see if all of this would work and save time...

Bringing a new piece of insulation up

Insulation cut and placed into position on the side roof slope

View from the top

Transferring the location of the rafters so we could see where the battens go

The first two rows of the waterproof breathable membrane

The first two battens being attached with the special 200mm helical nail

Starting to come together

Looks like it's all working!

Towards the end of the day - most of the batten are fixed

That's one "Hot Deck" you have there...

I'll be returning to London tomorrow to start working on the next phase of the roof construction, which is the insulation & waterproofing. I thought it might be helpful to briefly describe what kind of roof we're going to do and what it's made of:

The type of roof we're decided to do is known as a "hot deck", which means that the insulation is located on top of the "deck", which in our case is the wood planks. Normally, the insulation is located underneath the deck, in between the rafters - here that's called a "cold deck". The disadvantage of the cold deck is that one can get condensation on the interior, and there may also be issues of pipes freezing. With a hot deck, all the insulation is on the exterior, so it minimizes any water or condensation inside. A "hot deck" also allows the underside of the wood planks (our deck) to be visible--which is a key aspect of the design.

So here's the composition of our "hot deck" roof: 

1. Directly on top of the wood planks is a heavy black plastic sheet known here as a "damp-proof course". While actually watertight, it is intended to prevent the accumulation and seepage of any condensation as a result of the insulation.
2. Above the black plastic is our rigid insulation which is required by the new building regulation to reduce the amount of heat and energy needed in homes. We're required to achieve a very high level of insulation, so it works out to be 120mm (4 inches). These sheets are large (4ft x 8ft) but fortunately don't weigh much and can be easily cut.
3. Above the insulation we have our primary waterproof membrane known as the "breathable membrane" As it's name suggests, it's breathable, which helps to prevent mold within the roof cavity. As far as I know this is not really used in the US, so I'm interested to see how it works.
   
4. The breathable membrane is held down by wooden battens which are narrow strips of treated wood. The battens are fastened to the rafters using a special helical nail that's 200mm long (8 inches) and designed specifically for hot roofs. These batten are installed vertically to allow any water to flow down the slope towards the gutter - with a vertical orientation, they become known as "counter-battens".
5. Above the vertical "counter-battens" are the horizontal battens which the slates are nailed to. These battens must be perfectly straight and precisely installed otherwise the slates will go awry.
6. Finally, we have the actual slates which are the traditional method of roofing here. The slates themselves are totally watertight and supposedly have a 200-300 year life expectancy (the modern membranes typically last about 20-30 years).