Not much to look at

Having once made the mistake of thinking an old floor would be allright we wern't going to make the same mistake again. We set about trying to find ours, and then we threw it out of the door alongside the dividing wall - which had to be done from the roof down for safety reasons. The ammount of stone in an 18" wall is astounding. The kitchen/dining room once was three rooms and covers almost the entire floor space of the original cottage - 50 sq yds so we couldn't afford to make any mistakes! 3" of insulation was first laid down and then concrete poured over the top to level up the 5" fall in the old floor. At last we would be able to walk around without feeling that we were onboard a listing ship.
A days work saw the new ceiling joists installed and then it was time start constucting the timber studding for the walls. Tip worth noting if you try to do this is to to hire a nailgun for the day becuase apart from saving your elbows, all the hammering tends vibrate loose the nails you have already put in. With a nailgun, the nails go in so quickly that it is quite possible to build a stud partition out of 2" x 2" timber rather that 3" x 2" whilst still retaining the rigidity. The saving in timber costs should more than pay for the hire of the nailgun.
Now that we had secured the studwork to the ceiling joists, it was time to put up the ceiling (great fun!) This accomplished we proceeded to the re-wiring. The whole house had to be done at different stages which could have proved a nightmare if we hadn't drawn ourselves plans of where every socket light and switch was going to be. At this stage it was a simple mater to "throw in" the wiring behind the studding, a feat that would be very difficult once the wallboards went up. We chose low voltage, energy efficient spot lights for the kitchen for many reasons, but the most important was................The wife wanted them!
Tip In the kitchen give her what she wants.
We had already decided that we wanted to incorporate as many energy saving features as possible and so we used an insulated plasterboard for the walls, which was screwed directly onto the studding. Tip Note that we screwed the panels on to avoid loosening the nails in the studding.

All of a sudden we had a kitchen which was looking like something other than a pile of rubble.