Wall Insulation

We've had a long and rather tiring weekend, making a start on the internal wall insulation. Although we'd hoped to get started straight away (which would have meant we got further), we suspect that our potatoes have been hit by blight, so we actually started by digging up the remaining earlies (a few Royal Jerseys, the British Queen, and the main crop Lady Balfour). Especially in the case of the maincrop, it's several weeks earlier than one would ideally harvest them, but the haulms have collapsed, and so the tubers won't get any bigger. If it is blight, too, the sooner we get the tubers out, the more likely they are to store and be usable.

The yield, however, is somewhat lamentable.

We're going to rethink potato growing, I suspect, and decide whether, in light of a couple of poor years, it's worth the space and effort, for a crop that isn't actually expensive to buy. We might decide to grow a couple of packs of Lady Christl, say, which come out early (leaving useful later space), taste really good, and have been very reliable; but ditch the maincrop. Instead, we'll have a think about some alternatives, possibly including Jerusalem artichokes (possibly in the back corner, where perennials might do better than annuals, and where their height would help), oca, and maybe dahlias. We'll have to see. I'm also going to consider whether we should turn off the automatic irrigation, as this might be exacerbating blight—it's not been a damp summer, so blight is a little unexpected. Certainly, we need to continue our plan of heavy mulching.

While out there, I also watered the vegetable garden with chafer grub/wireworm nematodes, Heterorhabditis megidis.

Having made it back inside, we only started work inside at about three, and had to stop at six because Cath and Jason were round for dinner. In that time, we managed to make a complete mess of the master bedroom and ensuite, ripping the old plaster off the external walls, including the plain white floor-to-ceiling tiles of the bedroom. Quite the mess.

The master bedroom before IWI work (© Ian 2014)

The dressing room before work (© Ian 2014)

En suite before work (© Ian 2014)

The en suite before work (the most tasteful of the three, a blue floral pattern) (© Ian 2014)

Today, we got an early start, and having moved the bidet and toilet out of the way, finished the de-plastering. Then we battened, insulation foil, and plasterboarded the bedroom, taking the oppportunity to move the single socket on the left of the room to a more useful position, while making it a double, and added a second double to the right of the room, using a previously 'lost' socket hidden behind the radiator.

The master bedroom's wall stripped back to stone (© Ian 2014)

Horizontal battens in place (© Ian 2014)

The master bedroom with vertical battens, and one of the plasterboards (© Ian 2014)

The end/gable wall of the en suite stripped back to plaster, and with the 'missing' wall on left under the window (© Ian 2014)

We still need to do the same in the bathroom, as well as sort out the window reveals and windowsill, which may actually be rather later. We need, really, to get the walls proper done as soon as we can, because the radiators will be impossible to work round once the heating's on: we can do the other tidying up bits in more leisure in later autumn and winter.

In taking down the tiles in the bathroom, I was very surprised to find that the wall under one of the windows is a single stone skin, with a timber frame, which explains why that wall was always cold: it's even less insulating that the rest of the (500mm sandstone) walls, as it's only about 200mm thick. We'll replace the timber frame, but I'll fill it with glass wool slab, which will really help.