End to end
What we did:
- Remove the walls back to brick
- Check the chimney was adequately supported
- Insulate the roof and external walls
- Restore the room
How it started
In moving the bathroom upstairs, we had to steal a section from the back bedroom. We measured this carefully on squared paper to try and salvage as much width as possible to ensure a bed could be stationed in this room if desired. This room had been particularly cold during the winter, even for a Victorian house, due to having 2 exterior walls and the single brick and thin lime plaster layer of insulation.
What we did
We started to manually strip back the walls and ceiling. Although bashing out the old plaster on the walls was somewhat theraputic, turns out the attempts to strip the ceiling were a waste of time.. given we then decided best to insulate the roof.
The ceiling was insulated using an insulated material and then plasterboard. The external walls were covered in insulated plasterboard. 2 electric sockets were added to give maximum flexibility of use for the room as a bedroom or a study. The upvc window was replaced with a wooden sash window with rollers.
The wall entering the room was deliberately slanted rather than a narrow corridor into the room to enable the wall to lead directly to the far edge of the window so that morning sunlight would shine through the room to provide additional light to the first floor hallway and down the stairs.
Conclusion
Wish we’d just taken a sledgehammer to the whole room and started again (not the only room where this is the conclusion). Worth insulating as it’s made such a difference to the temperature of the room over winter.