A Cross we have to Bare

The last time I talked about out second bathroom, I was working - very slowly - alone, building the new floor. Stéphane has now returned from his holiday, so work has recommenced and is being done a lot faster.

First thing that needed doing was finishing the frame and putting down the new floor surface. This was achieved quite quickly, which meant we could get on with building the frame for the insulation of the walls and ceiling.

The new floor in place, with part of the wall frame visible

Our plan has been to dry line the walls and ceiling, putting 100mm of glass wool behind the walls, and 200mm of glass wool behind the ceiling, with the final effect looking something like this) in cutaway).

It wasn't until the framing for the walls had commenced that I started having doubts about our plans: the new ceiling would leave the St. Andrew's cross visible, but there was a load of very interesting, quite historic, and (quite frankly) lovely carpentry that was going to be hidden.

The woodwork in the ceiling.

This was feeling increasingly wrong, so on Tuesday evening we told Stéphane that there was a change of plan, and that the ceiling line would now be like this.

Our change of plan was met with a certain amount of resignation dressed as stoicism, but the change was early enough that nothing we had done needed to be undone. It will make cutting the plasterboard a lot less complicated as we no longer have to cut odd shapes to accomodate posts and angle posts.

We realise that having all that exposed woodwork will mean dust, but it will be worth it. Not everyone has the opportunity to live with 16th century woodwork, so we feel really pleased to have made a decision that values the work of an unknown artisan all those years ago.

Simon