Having missed almost three weeks of work with the flu over Christmas, Brian and I have both been working on very time-consuming jobs which are still not finished. Pretty much all we seemed to do last year was take stuff out of the house and throw it away, so it is a great feeling to finally be putting some stuff back.
The big job has been insulating the roof, which has proved to be much more time-consuming (and physically challenging) than we expected. The woodworm treatment was fine, and fixing the spacers to maintain the ventilation air gap went very well thanks to the bench saw and nail gun we bought. The basic problem is that the rafters may look evenly spaced, straight and parallel, but they really, really aren't! Brian has to measure and cut each piece of PIR insulation board perfectly, and even then it still may not fit perfectly along its length because of the variation in the rafter timbers, meaning it has to be carefully pushed in and often trimmed. I have since found that this is a very common complaint amongst builders who are doing this job, but add in the fact that Brian is balancing off a ladder and it is really challenging.
As you can see from the picture we have begun to put in the ceiling joists, partly to make it easier for Brian to get to bits of the roof. These are serious bits of timber as we've over-specc'd our ceiling joists to floor joist spec so we won't have any problems with flexing / cracking ceilings from people walking about in the loft.
Finally, I am still grouting the walls. Whilst not difficult, this is a pretty soul-destroying job as you don't see any signs of progress at all until the bit you are doing is finished. Even then there isn't much to see. It is also a bit like trying to fill a colander with cream! You can read why grouting the old walls is a good idea here