The Suburbiton Project: Day 284: All the support a builder could ever ask for

This weekend's task was to get the ceiling up. Rather than unleashing Armageddon and raining down a torrent of lathe and plaster on the floor, the "cleaner" option was to overboard the existing. Apparently this is an age old argument that out dates even the chicken-egg debate (chicken BTW), After extensive consultation with google and diynot, I elected to go the overboarding route. The reasons: 1) less mess, 2) less mess, 3) the joists were already marked and 4) better sound insulation between floors.

Overboarding essentially involves screwing plasterboard to the floor joists above through the lathe and plaster. Since the joists were marked, this should have been an easy task. I enlisted the help of my 2 assistants: Care and the home made dead-man - essentially a 2x4 cut to the height of the room with some extra bits of week screwed to the ends. Both helpers had their strengths - Care proved more versatile in getting the boards up and held in place. The dead-man complained a lot less.The obvious challenge to this task was gravity. It's hard to hold the board in place and get the first couple of screws in place. Good thing Care was using her head ... literally.

I read that you should use 50mm drywall screws for this task. In reality, it's suggest going 70mm as not all the joists were the same height ... uneven=character I keep telling myself. Also the markings for the joists were more of a guidance than an exact thing as I found out. Regardless, with minimal wingeing and cursing, the first board was eventually up. A few more and voila, a new ceiling.

The Boss and Daddy's Little Helper also got into the task. Mostly though passing Daddy screws while he was up the ladder holding a drill in one hand, holding the screw with the other, and holding the plasterboard with the other ... yes, Daddy's are that good. With the lights back in place, all that is left to do is rough and finish plastering. However, as it stands, the room is staring to look much improved. Feels like we're nearly there now.