After a few weeks of procrastination it was finally time to tackle the overboarding and insulation. My new ladder would get a real test with 420 kg of wood plus many more of junk going up it over the next few weeks. Try this yourself and you'll see why I don't need a gym membership.
But shortly into the process, I found my first obstacle, a hornets nest. And of course this was in a fairly difficult area to get to - right in the corner. As it was still winter, I was fairly confident that the nest was dormant and that I wasn't about to wake up hundreds of angry mini beasts. Well hopefully.
Still, I took precaution. I had a flat board underneath to catch the debris and used a long, long pole to knock it down. And thankfully I managed to carry out the task unharmed. Still, I wasted little time to put the nest into a rubbish bag and get it outside in the bin.
Coincidentally, the next day when I was up in the loft I found what looked like an angry queen hornet looking for a new home. But she was quickly reacquainted with her former accommodation back in the bin.
With the adventures hopefully over, it was time to get back to the job at hand - insulating and boarding over the loft.
This is a fairly easy weekend job for the average DIY'er .. but since I really like to over-do things, it actually took me 2 weekends.
The first step was to run "proper" 2x4's perpendicular to the original ceiling joists to provide some additional structural support. I say proper as these ones had to be a full 100mm high to match the existing cross beams - versus the typical CLS wall studs you get which are actually 83mm. These beams were fixed with many, many heavy duty angle brackets and a generous helping of 50mm #5 woodscrews
I ran the new studs at 600mm centres to minimise the amount of timber that I'd need - I was still short however. The wider centres will mean more flex in the floor but seeing that we don't plan on hosting any break dance competitions in the loft, the wider centres should be ok. The loft boards are 1220mm so this worked out well.
The only hickup - there is always one - was that the existing cross beams were at neither 400mm nor 600mm centres and they weren't made with the same precision that we find today. What this all meant was that the original 2x4's would stick up in the middle of the loft boards and it would be next to impossible to fit the tongue and groove floorboards property.
Two solutions came to mind 1. Plane off some of the old timbers or 2. Groove the loft boards to accommodate.
As the 2nd option would allow me to use my router (yeah power tools!) and also make for a better story, I decided to go for it.
In theory this was easy. Just measure out where to cut, fix some guide rails and router away. In practice however, it's slightly more difficult. The challenge is that chipboard isn't really wood and probably something closer to Adamentium (see here). As the smoke from burning wood and melting router bit was appearing before my eyes, I finally realised my predicament. For reference, chipboard contains wood chips, glue and likely anything else they swept from the mill floor including bits of metal. I ordered a coupe of spare router bits from Amazon to manage all the melting. I also went a bit shallower with my cuts to just shave a bit off at a time.
The loft boards are really easy to lay down (routering aside). The other point to make is that they are 1220mm long, so they can overhang or fit flush with joists. For 600mm centres, the extra 20mm needed to be cut from each board. This is best done in one go for all the boards. I just set the guide on the circular saw and cut away.
Now the loft was starting to look like a useable storage space. Notice my trusty Karcher vacuum .. it got a really good workout on this task. I think I ended up hoovering up about 10 bags of nastiness.
At the entrance to the main part of the loft, I left the floor at its original height so that I could get in without overly contorting myself and to make sure larger items could fit through the smallish opening.
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The nearly finished product. You'll notice that I had to notch out the boards for the roof rafters and supports. I found it easiest to bring my jigsaw up into the loft with an extension cord so that I could just do the cuts in place. Lots of sawdust, but I had my vacuum up there anyway.
So there you go. A finished, unfinished loft ready for storing all our junk. All in all, a good project. I think I spent way too much time up there - to the point that I was getting quite at home with my surroundings. Anyway, the last couple of weekends has been all about putting our junk up there - don't worry, it was actually to dull to write a post about.
