The house has been leveled!

No, no, not in the way you think. You see having kicked in the ceiling a few weeks ago we needed to put up a new one of course. Easy as 1,2,3 or so we thought. We bought plasterboard ready to put up, (fire retardant plasterboard for the ground floor ceilings our parent generation will be happy to note!) and thought we'd just screw it into the ceiling joists. A couple of boards into the job we realised that somehow the edges didn't want to go together... After some deliberating (why is it that the sensible option is always the less appealing one?) we decided that the only way forward was to put up planks of wood across the joists and leveling these, THEN putting up the plasterboard. Thankfully we learnt all of this with the help of Max and were able to complete this job while he was still here.

Upstairs in the bedrooms the situation was a little different. We hadn't actually taken the old plaster & lathe ceiling down here, but there were cracks across it. Our plasterer had recommended we put plasterboard here too. Again we made the mistake of thinking we could just go for it, but soon realised that the situation was even worse here! So the following weekend Paul and I set to leveling the bedroom ceiling. And boy did it need leveling. From the outside edges into the centre there was a difference of 8-9 cm! That's quite a saggy ceiling.

It took us all day to level (the dodgy spirit level which showed different bubble positions depending on which way you turned it didn't help) it, but the next day we were able to get on with putting up the plasterboards. Thankfully the small bedroom didn't need the special treatment and neither did the bathroom, so we were able to get all the plasterboard up in one day. We even managed to box in the pipes in the lounge too.