Insulating my ancient living room

[Rob G]

I had a somewhat similar problem in my lathe and plaster cottage near Edinburgh. It was last 'updated' after WW1 in the 1920's when the lathe and plaster had been fitted along with the wooden floors.

What I found was an excess of ventilation below the wooden floors such that in using a small drill to find the studs some 50+ years ago, every time I took the drill out a puff of plaster dust came with it.

In the end I had to bite the bullet and take down all the lathe and plaster on each external wall - making sure that the skirtings was off first and plywood jammed in the make sure that all the tails of the plaster didn't fall below the floor level and bridge dampness to the joist ends.

I used blocks of fibreglass insulation as far as I can remember, but one the things that I also made sure of was that I put up a 'damproof course' of polythene pinnned to the studs to make sure that there was no room moisture getting to the insulation and and creating dampness due to the dewpoint being reached.

As an extension to this story of this cottage, it was only in relatively recent years that I spotted that the stonework in my attic indicated that the cottage had originally been thatched - the angle of thatching is something well over the angle of a slated roof. I projected the angle down and it comfirmed something that had always puzzled me that the wall heads showed additional stonework had been added at some point.

 

[endecotp]

A quick update:

The main part of the panelling was finished a while ago:

And the same on the opposite wall.

I’ve painted the ceiling. I won’t bother with a photo, it just looks like a white painted ceiling. As usual for me I took ages. It was not in a bad condition - not bad enough to want to skim it - but not perfect with some lines visible at the board joints etc. So when a neighbour told me that Aldi had a pole sander for £29.99 (the Parkside Tools 30th birthday) I decided I’d try sanding the ceiling before painting it.

Of course when I got there I found the sander wasn’t £29.99, it was £69.99 - he had confused it with the electric plane next to it, or something. But I bought it anyway and attacked the ceiling. Frankly it seems that emulsion paint is hard - certainly harder than plaster or wood. With quite a lot of time spent I was only really removing the old paint roller pattern.

I then painted it with Dulux Supermatt, which doesn’t seem much more matt than regular (half-the-price) white emulsion. The result is fine, but the old board join lines are still somewhat visible.

One lesson I’ve learned is not to paint a ceiling in November: it’s too dark to be able to see what you’re doing. I took the ceiling lights down but had an LED work light, but that wasn’t really bright enough. I could tell where I’d already painted, but I couldn’t really tell if I’d done a good job.

Next job, the floor.