Easter weekend of 2022

April 28, 2022

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And so came the great easter weekend of 2022 with high hopes of lots of progress but as many times before, things didn’t work out entirely as planned although we did manage to make some good progress.

Big plans

We had prepared a lot of material and had huge plans, almost to the point where it was unrealistic. We had 18 pallets of wood fiber insulation, 250m² of wood paneling and 55m² of plank flooring all ready to be installed. The goal was to get all of that in place in 4 days with 3 people.

Not surprisingly our plans changed pretty fast as Erik could not join us this year, a bit unfortunate but these things happen. So, instead of 3 we were down to 2 people but we did as much as we could.

Loft flooring

We had ordered 55m² of 120mm wide wooden plank flooring. It was 30mm thick and would serve both as the load bearing surface as well as the finished floor. It’s a pine floor and as such it’s a bit on the softer side so we expect this to wear over time. We may put some linseed oil on it sometime in the future but for now it’s more important to have a functional floor so that we could work on getting the insulation and paneling in the ceiling.

Image Getting the first few strips of flooring in place required some balancing on floor beams and left-over panels from the roof.

Image Another view of the planks we were moving around on as we got the first rows of floor board down.

Image We tried to minimize the gaps between the boards as much as but as it’s not a completely dried out floor, it’ll shrink over time and larger gaps will show up.

Image The finished floor in place. Very nice and very sturdy to walk on. This took about a day to get in place. The black sheets to the left are oil treated fiber boards to be used as a separator between the insulation and the small air gap towards the outer roof.

Image A closeup of the floor and the cutout around the chimney.

Wood paneling & cabinet

With the floor in place we wanted to get as many things done where 2 or more people would be required to get the particular thing done so we continued with getting the southern wall paneling in place. With that in place we could then get the large cabinet into its final position and move all the drawers into it.

The 20mm thick wood paneling was of the cheapest sort but was pretty easy and quick to get in place. It took about a day to get the southern wall completely covered. This wall is about 14.5m wide and 3m high so almost 45m² out of the 250m² installed.

Image Getting the first rows in place were simple but as we got higher we had to use a few boards on a couple of saw horses to reach and nail the last few boards.

Image The finished paneling. It’s a tongue a groove board on both the long side as well as the short ends. This was great since we didn’t have to cut every board to length as the tongue and groove on the ends kept the planks in place between studs.

With the paneling done it was time to get the cabinet in place. It was impossible to push it into place so we decided to suspend the top piece from the floor beams above and then we could push the bottom piece into place. With the bottom piece in place we could then lower the top piece onto it. We did this a couple of times to get both sections of the cabinet into its final location.

Image The top piece of the cabinet is suspended just ever so slightly above the bottom piece allowing us to push the bottom piece in place.

Image We were very happy when the cabinet was finally in place.

Image With the cabinet in place, we could put all the 204 drawers back. Sofia had been going over a few of them but it took a few days to clean and sort each of the 204 drawers.

Image Sofia sorting and cleaning drawers.

Image At the end of easter weekend we got all drawers into the cabinet.

The result

We continue working on paneling and some insulation work the last day and got the east gable covered in paneling and a few more piece of insulation in place. In the end, we got a lot of things done but we also left the weekend with 12 pallets of insulation and 190m² of wood panel left to be installed. Very happy to have the cabinet in place and being able to start using it to store all the stuff we use for the build as well as getting all the drawers out of the way.

Image The east end of the house got insulated + wood paneling in place.

All in all a good long weekend with unrealistic expectations :-)


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