Floor Reinforcement & Plaster Removal

As I mentioned in the last update, the steel T-beam was to be installed into/underneath the top bedroom floor. Here it is in place:

The same horizontally spanning joists that the beam sits under were cut into to allow the upper T-section of the steel beam to slot into place. The chimney breast side had brick removed and was then rebuilt. The same was done on the other side of the room, except this was an external wall so had large pieces of stone removed which was then rebuilt with brick.

Some of the stone that was removed from the outside wall:

The underside of the floor will now be levelled out with plywood to tie the ceiling together, but even as is, the huge amount of deflection in the centre of the floor is now gone and there is virtually no bounce. Once the floor is plyed, it should be rock solid. A huge success.

I also started removing some of the plaster from the stairway walls today. All original plaster will be kept throughout the house where possible, however around the stairs it needs to be removed to attend to the structural issues in this corner of the house, including the large crack that traverses the entire outside right-hand wall and the bowing brickwork on internal walls. Below you can see the crack in the outside wall:

The pink areas are a concrete render that was used at some stage to bind the crack. It will need to be taken off with a hammer drill.

The opposite wall, with bowing brickwork:

The resulting mess:

And lastly, I completely forgot about the original window architrave that was removed from the new bathroom before it was plastered. I spent about 2 hours very gently stripping it back to the bare wood as it was quite fragile in parts. I also had to fabricate a small filler section as someone had chopped a square out of it at some stage over the years:

Some unavoidable damaged to a dry-rotted section:

The small insert which will be filled and sanded:

Filled, awaiting sanding:

Back in place: