Hey friends,

Apologies for the absence of late. Good news though - I've been getting stuck into the DIY and have lots to share.

Back on the boy's bedroom - we left off with the removal and blocking up of the window. All dry now.

Next up is to build the new wall. Previously I mistakenly said that one of the signs of the current wall not being original was that it was built on the floorboards rather than the joists. As Mike pointed out to me that's not the case in his house and of course he's right. Any wall with a doorway needs to have a floorboard underneath it.

But first I popped the floorboard up to see what was underneath - a load of cables notched in! Inconvenient but I couldn't find anything in the regs to say that they can't run under a wall.

The board needed replacing so I used floorboards from the bathroom renovation. I found my shoes, popped it in and screwed it down very gingerly.

I then got my bottom plate on, carefully again. I used screws for this wall and torx ones at that as you get a much better drive than phillips/pozi. The latter still have their place such as for drywall screws where you want your driver to 'cam out' preventing you from driving the screws too deep but for woodwork I may make the switch permanent. Bit pricier though.

I then marked up the stud locations.

My laser level showed me where to place the top plate for my wall to be plumb. I removed the L&P and screwed it into the ceiling joists.

I then filled in the studs at 600mm centres. It's very difficult to measure the gap to cut the studs exactly so an occasional packer came in handy. I'd started running out so I found a great value box of 1000 which should see me through the rest of the house renovations. Tip - don't open colourful plastic things in front of toddlers.

I went with 600mm mostly to save on cost but I may need to reinforce this wall later on when I renovate the landing as there's the dead load of the tank to consider. With the wider 600mm centres I want all edges of the plasterboard to be fixed - so my noggins are lined up in a straight horizontal line rather than offset and I used angle brackets in places to help with this.

The extra stud you can see second to left will be for re-routing the pipework and hence no noggin there.

Above pic - the 900mm wide passageway to the future side extension.

Below pic - the space gain in the bedroom.

Next up was the door. The span was a bit wider here so I went for a double top plate held up by two 'king' studs either side. Because this lintel-of-sorts is at the top of the wall rather than directly above the door opening there's no need for 'jack' studs.

Once that was done I could get the door lining in, ensuring it was properly squared up. They come sized for CLS studwork. This one is 120mm which equals 89mm studwork + 2 x 12.5mm plasterboard + 3mm layer of plaster either side. Like with skirting and architrave you can get primed MDF door linings. While I'm in favour of the former I think solid wood is better to hang a door on. Just a bit of a faff to prime it first.

This pic is after plasterboarding and I've got the door stops in as well which I attached with my second fix nail gun (pin/brad nails).

And then I removed the old wall with no issues to the ceiling so my investigative work beforehand seems to be correct. The room certainly feels bigger and I think it was worth the effort 😁.

The next job to tell you about is how I moved/removed 3 copper pipes, 1 soil stack and a bunch of aerial cables that were in the old wall. Having never tried plumbing I'm staggered I've done it so next time I'll put together a 101 guide to how I went about it :)

👋

Saw this, thought you might find it amusing:

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