First impressions

We thought we’d start to tackle the hallway and it needed everything, new ceiling, plastering, flooring, and as this is the point where the different screed pours meet it also need a decoupling membrane to ensure the tiles don’t crack with any movement with the heat in the floor.

We thought we’d start with the plastering, and as it has small walls Mike thought he’d give it a go… and it turned out great… no more plasterers required 🙂 We had to put a hatch in to the new lowered ceiling section as to cover the mains power board.

As the walls looked so good (ignore the walls to the side of the front door… they’re next on the list) we kept looking at the ceiling and figured we may as well pull that down and reboard and plaster that too. The beams were quite easy as for some reason they had been wallpapered so it came straight off – and a little sand later they were looking perfect.

After that came the floor and as none of our walls are straight I think it looks amazing. First we laid the decoupling membrane to cover the joins in the screed, and to make sure the tiles don’t crack with any movement in the floor when it heats and cools. Of course I seem to have forgotten to take a photo of that but you can see from the photos it’s a white membrane that you use tile adhesive to stick down! We followed on from the kitchen so that set the starting point for the tiles.

and ceiling… minus the grout and the skirtings and architrave!

Now all we have to decide is what colour to stain all the beams. The bathroom beam is just a clear danish oil. These beams we tried out a rustic oak, which is a lot darker but I like it too. It’s so hard to decide – if we vault the kitchen ceiling in phase 2 there’ll be a lot of beams so do we want them to be darker – decisions decisions.