Hey friends,

It's been a week of deep conversations on the merits of close-coupled vs concealed cistern toilets. The funny thing is I'm not sure either of us is particularly bothered, the concern is getting it 'wrong'. Our priorities are a bit different, though they do sometimes align - Abi is happy to spend more for aesthetics and style while for me it's solidity and durability. We may be some way off making decisions 🙈.

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Many thanks for the replies last week, I haven't got through them all yet so rather than ask for more replies, let's do a quiz! 1 question, multiple choice, takes 10 seconds to answer. I'll share the results next week :).

Click Here!

👷‍♂️ Stripping Back

Let's pick up where we left off.

Knocking the lugs off the back of the lathes was a good shout and made removing the plaster from the WC side a lot easier.

The next job was to remove the studs. I expected them to be toe-nailed (at an angle) but instead they had mortise and tenons which made an easy job of hand-sawing through the tenon to remove the studs. Nice bit of carpentry I thought; you wouldn't see that today.

The far stud in the pic above was trickier to remove along with the top and bottom plates but achievable with a lot of persuasion with my crowbar.

The remaining walls are a mix of brick and stud.

After some deliberations I decided to go ahead and remove the L&P from the inside of the stud walls as well because:

• If The Matrix taught me anything it's that tiles come off lathe and plaster really easily. (vid, 1:20 mark if you've no idea what I'm on about)
• The loo is next to the landing so some acoustic wool wouldn't go amiss.
• It will make installing the cables and switches for the light and extractor fan a fair bit easier. (new location marked by blue dot on floor plan above. The door will be reversed to open into the bathroom).

Sizeable...as an estate agent would say 😁.

Next I turned my attention to the ceiling which is also L&P. There's nothing wrong with L&P - I put downlights in the kitchen ceiling and that was fine and it can be re-skimmed. However, removing the stud wall had caused an issue.

The lathes were fixed to the 'support piece' that in turn was fixed to the top plate of the stud wall. With that gone the lathes were left flapping.

My first instinct was to take off the plaster back to the next joist, cut the lathes there and patch it with plasterboard.

As I was about to cut the lathes with my multi-tool I started thinking about the stud wall I'll be building for the bath and sink. Preferably I'd remove the L&P there too and install noggins for the top plate to attach to so heck, I'll just remove the lot and plasterboard instead!

The advantage of this is I won't have to wait around for a plasterer to skim the ceiling - who knows how long a wait that will be. I can just tape and joint it and, bonus, Abi informs me that we're tiling all the way to the ceiling so I won't have to T&J the corners, only the face. Now I could over-board (should really be called under-board in this instance) the L&P for less mess but I think it will be better all round if I can see the ceiling joists.

I can't believe the insulation doesn't extend to the outer wall but I'm not worrying about it now. I'll deal with the insulation from the attic above when I get round to it.

As I said last week, removing L&P isn't difficult but it's ridiculously dusty and leaves you with bag upon bag to dispose of, hence my deliberations. I like to do things properly though and would probably regret it if I didn't.

I'll tell you what I could really do with after each day's work - a proper high pressure shower!!

Joe did an excellent job of de-nailing the lathes so I'll store them somewhere for kindling, shims or if they are turned on their sides and laminated together they could make a good table top.

After a thorough clean up and vacuum, I pulled the carpet up (yes there was carpet in the WC room) and removed the garishly green loo. Then I could remove all the floorboards ready for the plumbing and electrics.

Not much in the way of hidden treasure here either though there are a couple of 50mm thick heavy pipes that go nowhere. They extend right under the walls so I can't pull them out. I'll ask the plumber about them.

With the dusty stage now complete I also removed the door and door lining from the old WC door. I'll be using the studs I removed to fill this in.

As for what to replace the floorboard with, from the replies from last week I learnt:

• tiling direct to floorboards = bad
• 6mm tile backer on floorboards = fine
• tiling direct on ply = not the best but you can put matting stuff on first
• tile backer on ply = great
• tile backer on MR chipboard = great

So I'll probably go for one of the last two. Chipboard is cheaper and the T&G means I probably won't have to add noggins at the edges of sheets. It's less structural than ply though.

Someone made an interesting point - if you're going to be doing a ground floor extension where one of the walls of the upstairs bathroom will be propped up and a steel put in (which is the plan), you want the floor to be as solid as possible because there's likely to be some movement which can pop the tiles. So in our case a belt and braces approach is wise.

Something I'm struggling to get my head around is how these light weight, easy to cut insulated tile backers I mentioned last week are rated to carry as much tile weight or indeed more than a cement based board like hardiebacker or aquapanel. The answer might be that the insulation slightly decouples the back from the front so if there's movement in the structure (floor or walls) then that movement, if small, doesn't transfer to the other side of the board and therefore the tiles 🤔.

Anyway, I'm past the messy stage 🎉

☀️ Meanwhile, Outside...

I'm loving this weather so when the boy was napping and I had to be quiet I got outside and organised the garage once again. It really doesn't feel much smaller with the log store.

I put in some more shelving and placed my old desk in the far corner to support timber for cutting on the mitre saw on rainy days. I can probably clamp something to the table to act as a stop for repeatable cuts.

For good weather days I now have the workbench that came with the garage outside.

👋

TV recommendation for you: I really enjoyed the 4 seasons of Yellowstone. Set on a vast cattle ranch in Montana owned by one family for nearly 150 years of which everyone else wants a piece. It's made me want to buy a cowboy hat. I'm now onto the prequel series 1883 about how the family came to own the land in the first place which is probably even better and could be watched before Yellowstone without missing out on anything.

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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