Preliminary Plastering On Ground Floor

With a view to retaining as much original plaster as possible and at the same time achieving a fresher, clean finish, much of the ground floor walls will receive a skim coat of St. Astier Ecomortar R100. This is a ready-mixed lime based plaster, which is specifically designed to adhere to a variety of surfaces, including lime or cement mortar, lime plaster, gypsum plaster, timber and even painted surfaces. It has high vapour exchange qualities, allowing vapour to evaporate outwards from within the wall, maintaining the breathability of the structure as originally intended.

The only original lime plaster to be removed from the walls is unsound or cracked plaster, which is replaced with lime mortar. Damaging cement mortar which lines some of the hallway walls may also be removed to an extent, depending on how fragile the internal brick walls are.

Patching of damaged plaster began in the hall with regular lime mortar:

Routed sections for wiring was also filled in (any gaps are now fully completed):

The fireplace in the kitchen-to-be has been bricked up and since been plastered also. Note the large amount of modern gypsum plaster in this room:

Front room:

The all-important archway joining the front room and kitchen:

I also scrapped 144kg of lead, which was made up of the pipework in the old bathroom and the pipework leading from the back-boiler in the fireplace downstairs yo the hot water tank. The copper tank itself was also scrapped, netting a total of €132. Certainly worth holding on to!

Category 6a & Co-axial Cable Installation

I spent several weeks running Category 6a (CAT6a) network cable and co-axial satellite/antenna cable throughout the entire house. This involved running it through joists, over joists, through certain sections of wall and terminating in each room. The idea is to run all this cable back to one central location downstairs in the return, where a wall-mounted cabinet will interconnect all rooms. This will allow for the distribution of internet to each room, as well as numerous other media options like HD video, satellite feeds, CCTV, HDMI sources, WIFI etc.

CAT6a cable allows network speeds of up to 10GBASE-T (10-Gigabit) and each room receives at least two cables. Each room is also supplied with two CT100 co-axial cables, allowing the sharing of both satellite feeds and terrestrial digital TV. There is also five co-axial feeds to the attic to supply an antenna and satellite dish.

Alarm cable was also run to every window, outside door, control panel location etc.

Running the feeds to the attic (black cable):

Top floor bedroom:

First floor living room has the most cable runs, as the main TV will be mounted within the archway. The corner beside the TV will have a small cabinet, housing amplifier, video sources etc. There are also speaker cables run through this room for 5.1 surround sound (6.1/7.1 would be too intrusive with the amount of speakers required):

TV location has numerous power, CAT6a, speaker and co-axial runs:

First floor rear bedroom:

The hallway:

Ground floor dining room:

The kitchen:

Feeds throughout the house:

The main access hole from the house to the return:

All cables as mentioned terminate in the downstairs of the return, to become the utility room:

The automatic roller door was finally installed and works very well. The steel beam will be painted to match the door:

With the light in the mews now installed, it's clear to see that there was once windows in the wall that backs on to the garden. It would be great to open these up once more:

Kitchen Ceiling & Mews Work

The kitchen ceiling was reinforced today, in preparation for slabbing. All joists were also treated with a wood preservative:

I also brought power out to the mews and wired a light and sockets. The automatic roller door is to be installed tomorrow.

I had some spare Kingspan board lying about so filled the large gap between the two steel beams: