steve's new gaff

Haha. Nope. Not at all.
The way we're planning is that the experts come in one lot at a time so they don't get in each others' ways & avoid spending time gabbing about footy or telly.
Not going to be in there much before new year really.

Floor's all swept & vacuum cleaned. Needs to be free of dust before the insulation goes down & that gets delivered tomorrow. So the weekend's all sorted for me

It's extruded polystyrene/ polyfoam boards that we're using.
I have the cutter & everything

Nope. Nothing. Except the living room windows & terrace door.
The place was in a pretty run down state. The old dear who had it before basically filled it up with all manner of junk & never threw anything away. She also appeared to get family members to do the occasional repair here & there & those repairs were terrible. There was a repair around one window frame in the main bedroom where someone has jammed old folded bits of news paper in the gap around the top &, in some place, you could actually see right through the gap.
Same with some door frames. Wherever there was a gap to fill, it was filled with old news paper, plastic shims, bits of asbestos tile!!. Just about any old tat that was to hand.
The plastering on the walls had never been looked after or renewed in 40 years & is literally falling off in some places.
So rather than moving in and doing bits & bobs over time, it made much more sense to just do the whole lot in one & get all the messy stuff out of the way.
Digging up the floor wasn't in the original plan until we discovered there were some parts that were so badly poured they were literally moving. The heating stuff needs a perfectly flat, smooth, dust-free & stable floor as the mats that the tubes snap into have a self adhesive backing.
So when we found that there was a layer of rubbish under the existing cement, it had to come out which gives us the chance to insulate properly. Otherwise we'd be losing heat to the basement/ garage.
That's actually a positive because it means the new cement should be absolutely perfectly level with proper insulation & will not be at a level where we'll need to buy a new door for the terrace.
The zero level (reference level) is critical for the height of the floor or else the doors won't open, the toilets won't connect to the consoles, the sparky won't know where to put the connectors.
Absence of floor right now also meant the sparky can run a lot of the ducts for the cabling in the floor which is less work for him & so he finished sooner than planned.
The insulation arrived today
 
& I also got the steel re-enforcement mesh to go down before the cement's poured so things are picking up pace


 

There'll be periodic updates and certainly after photos.
Go you! I have learnt a heck of a lot these past couple of months.
Never used a jack hammer before I did the floor. The construction of the house itself. It's a real buzz to be able to look at something & say, "I did that."

I spent the best part of today putting insulation in & cutting up polystyrene slabs with my new tool to the point where I can now only smell molten polystyrene. 

There's a huge spier just behind that wall .....