Gypsum in the ceiling on the ground floor Sunday, 05-Sep-21 20:47:43 CEST

Finished the ceiling of the ground floor Sunday, 19-Sep-21 20:59:41 CEST

Sunday, 12-Sep-21 20:45:22 CEST

Gypsum from living room to hall

Mounted gypsum plates in the ceiling from the living room to the hall.

Monday 6 September

Tonight, we decided to put up a special gypsum plate: Just above the stack of gypsum in the living room. So how should one do that? We decided to extend the surface of the gypsum so that all three feet of the gypsum elevator were firmly supported.

The hole for the outlet of the light came at the exact right place in the plate. Here, it was just a question of screwing in the screws along the edge of the plate.

See how a chair supports one leg of the elevator!

It had become dark when we were done with all the screws for this plate. With this plate done, we can now progress north in the room.

We were satisfied with this result of this evening.

 

Tuesday 7 September

Today, I had a regular work-from-home day. My wife went to her office for the first time in a long time.

In the evening we went to our new house to work on the ceiling. It was time for the next plate below the steel beam.

It is going around the corner of the kitchen wall. When we had cut the plate, it was lying like a piece of graphic, charming, I must say.

But we were working on the ceiling and not abstract shapes. The question was, how were we going to get it at the right place?

With the gypsum elevator, obviously. The plate was a little narrow, so I put a more comprehensive support plate below it. That worked out well because there were enough places visible to screw the plate to the wall.

I had hoped we would achieve a little more this evening, but this was good enough. If we had continued, then chances are it had been failing somehow, and that had annoyed us a lot. So we stopped there and then went to our old home.

Wednesday 8 September

Today both of us had a full day off so that we could work in the house. We kicked off the work today by having a cup of coffee with the help of the coffee machine that our electrician put in our new house. In the beginning, we only had instant coffee. I suppose he wanted to have better coffee, so he brought this machine.

The first task for today was a simple one, fill in the remaining plates next to the chimney. That was easy. With this, we had finished the living room.

Next, we removed all stuff we had lying in the kitchen. It was ventilation material and things of the electrician. We moved all this to the living room to get an empty floor in the kitchen. That way, it is possible to use the gypsum plate elevator.

I took a couple of pictures of the kitchen ceiling before we had put up the plates.

	Here is the west wall of the kitchen.
	And here is the northeast wall of the kitchen.
	Finally, the southeast wall of the kitchen.

The first plate in the kitchen had a cutout for the wall. It turned out that we had an angle less than 90 degrees between two plates, resulting from adjustments that we did on an earlier plate to make it fit the beams better. It was complicated to have two electrical outlets for lamps and one for ventilation plus the cutout for the wall. We fixed it in the end, but there was a seam that got a little more crack. That is resolved with putty. We will become champions in applying putty.

Then we did a narrower plate inside this plate, and that was easy. The next plate was a complex project because it also had a cutout for the wall between the kitchen and the hall. Not only that, it was located below the stack of gypsum plates. We have done this before. It was just a question of doing it again. I think it looks funny with the elevator on top of the stack of plates resting on our chairs. It worked well!

We had lunch, rested, and continued to work, and when all that was done, we had almost finished the kitchen ceiling. At that time, we were exhausted.

The stack of gypsum plates is not that thick anymore. Will we be able to finish the ceiling?

We had a little energy to go out in the garden and potter around for a while. I discovered a birch leaf that was decorated with Craesus septentrionalis! The caterpillar is eating from leaves growing on trees that lose their leaves in the autumn. I don't understand why they operate in a group like this? They were having a good time here. I suppose we need more birds to feed on larvae.

It was some time since it was raining, so it was getting dryer in the garden. Rain is forecasted in a couple of days. That is good news.

Thursday 9 September

It was warm today but not that warm as yesterday. Yesterday it was warmer than it has been any day the whole summer. That is special. This summer was not bad because it was the thirteens hottest summer measured by the 121-year-old Dutch weather service KNMI. In the United States, this summer was the hottest ever. The record of the summer of 1936 was surpassed with a bit of a tiny margin. People in the Netherlands complain it is not hot enough, but they don't know what they are begging. This year goes to the history of a freezing year because you could skate in the winter. After all, this is a La Nada year. When we enter an El Niño year, things get problematic. I guess that is in one or two years.

Enough about the climate. We worked from our old home, and it was quiet; I could concentrate well, and it was all pleasing and efficient. Tomorrow I go to the office again doing loose end tasks because that is the most sensible thing to do while I perhaps cannot concentrate so well. I had a great time during the pandemic working from home, and if I see no point in going to the office, I am clear about it. A newspaper article in a Dutch newspaper talked about that the authorities might reconsider the need for more lanes along motorways, and that sounds logical to me. You don't need motorways when people commute to work from the kitchen table to the home office, four steps away.

In the evening, we went to the new house and put up two small gypsum plates along the wall in the kitchen. As a result, we can start working in the hall along the south wall, but we did not start on that tonight.

Instead, we expanded the area where our sheep are grazing. It is the zone outside the dike on the north and west side of the plot. We got an agreement with the northern neighbor to let them graze a little on their land. We don't have that agreement with the neighbors on the west side. That does not matter because we got plenty of grass for them to eat.

The grass on the north side of the house is not that delicious. They have not eaten so much of that. I think it is the second time they leave that grass.

Friday 10 September

It is Friday! I worked from the office today. The colleagues I expected to be in the office were working from home, good for them, so I could enjoy the company of me myself and I. I listened to house music and could concentrate very well!

In the evening we went to the new house, as we usually do. Our electrician had been to our house and mounted outlets. This evening we worked on the ceiling in the hall along the south wall on the ground floor. This plate has one hole for an outlet of electric light. We managed to get the gypsum plate to fit into the hole, but from then on, it did not fit the edge of the already placed plate on the west side. To make it fit, I cut away a tiny part of the edge of the plate.

 

Saturday 11 September

It is already the second weekend of September. Time is passing by really quick. We were slow this morning because we were a bit tired. When we came to our new house, we started right away with the first plate. It had a hole for an electricity point, but unfortunately, this hole got drilled in an incorrect position. We had to discard this plate and start over with a new plate. The surplus of plates is less and less if we make mistakes like these. So far, we are probably on the right side of the gypsum stack.

Do, and redo again. We managed to get halfway through the hall without more mistakes. That is nice. Parts of the missed plate could be repurposed at the end of the hall. Then it was time for lunch.

After lunch, we continued on the ceiling of the hall. There is no such thing as stopping here. We have to finish this on time, and we will finish this on time.

Today we got help from our son. At some moment, he pointed out that the plate we were applying was totally off from reaching the electrical outlet it was made for. "There is no outlet above this hole," with a finger pointing to the ceiling. Luckily we could solve that by moving the plate towards the west.

When the hall outside the workplace was finished, it was time for the workplace itself. We got a lot of tools, and nice to have things stored in the workplace. It was not just a question of starting working on the ceiling. We had to move out all the stuff.

The tools were simple. We just moved them to the hall. The other things we didn't really need in the house had to move out to the container, and junk had to be discarded. Eventually, we had cleared the workshop enough that we could start work on isolating the ceiling.

We still got a bit of isolation material to use. If this is not enough, we have to buy more isolation material. In the workshop, we have to do all tasks in the ceiling, such as isolation, putting up support beams, and finally, the gypsum plates. It will take some time.

I took some photos of the ceiling to remember how it looked before working on the beams.

	The right side of the photo is the south wall of the workshop.
	Here is the left side of the photo, the east side of the workshop. I know it is confusing!
	Here is a photo of the east side of the workshop.

 

It usually feels inefficient to start on a new task. There are many things to move to the right place, and we need to figure out how things should be done, a process that is vital for the work, but you cannot see any immediate result. That is a frustrating moment after you have been able to put up one plate after another.

When we came this far, we called it a day and went outside pottering around a little. My wife harvested courgettes and corns. The courgettes are growing quicker than we can eat right now. We currently don't have any plans for how to conserve them. The solution until now has been to give away to neighbors. I don't know if this will always work. Another time, hopefully, next year, we will also have time to spend on conserving some of the food we are growing.

I planted viola wittrockiana plants. Yesterday evening, on the way home, we bought some food, and I found these plants as well for 1.49€, so I thought I would try that. I feel that it was good that we indulged in the garden a little bit this evening, like a reward to look after plants after a day of work indoors.

We were also looking after the sheep; they had collected some mud here and there in their fur. It rained a little today. Not much, but just enough to keep the garden healthy.

Sunday 12 September

Today it was overcast in the morning. Later it became clear.

Today we started working on the beams that will support the gypsum plates. It is tedious work; you cannot say anything else. The workshop is now fully emptied from stuff so that it is possible to work with the ladders over the entire floor.

We got all beams mounted today, but only three of them are fully leveled. It will take some time to get all of them at the correct level. I talked about this before and how I do it, but I don't think I expressed myself well enough last time I spoke about it, so we take it one more time! Each beam is mounted on the load-bearing beam. Unfortunately, the load-bearing beams are not lined up to the exact same level. Some are high, and some are low. The level at the edge is pretty much given. It is the load-bearing beams in the middle that goes up and down.

When I mount the beams at first, I don't screw them tight to the load-bearing beams. Instead, I am making them line up in a straight line. I watch the curvature along the edge of each beam, and then at some points, the beam needs to go higher and, at some places, lower.

I start the subsequent process when all beams are straight and hanging (sometimes a bit lose). In the next step, I cut a block of wood with no knots in it. There must be no knots because then I can put a knife along the wood fibers and cut off a shim from the wood. To make the shim of the different sizes, I just have to put the knife somewhere on the block before hitting the knife with the hammer. Many times it goes fine; other times, the shim is becoming too thick. Then it is just a question of trying again.

This work takes so much time!

After today's work on the ceiling, I moved the sheep a little. Not a completely new area, but I narrowed the sheeps' current area a little to get one net vacant. Then I placed the free net on the other side. Now we got an area on the north side of the house. The area extends outside the dike to the west side to the east side of the plot. There are a lot of dandelions growing there, and it is a treat for the ladies. They love dandelions.

Our sheep had some fly eggs around their rear. My wife and son trimmed off their wool and collected the infection, and it will be discarded. The sheep looked like they enjoyed the treatment.

Today's work on the sheep and the ceiling concludes our work at the new house this week. It did not feel like we made so significant progress today. This is a known phenomenon. In reality, we did what had to be done to mount gypsum plates in the workshop's ceiling. Next week the ceiling will be done!