====== Stairs ======

There are two reasons to reconstruct the stair ceiling. The first is that the bath was poorly sealed originally and caused some destruction to the plasterboard (and the boarded ceiling directly beneath the bath too). The second is that the original covered a portion of the window.

Unfortunately I don't have a before picture, which would show how the old ceiling was two pieces of batten attached to the wall, with plasterboard sitting on top of it. That's right, the battens were visible from the stairs and barely attached!

{{gallery>:house:stairs?01*.jpg&150x150}}

The glorious black line is a remnant from when the upstairs ceiling was painted black. We've since painted it white and painted the hall a fetching shade of yellow. It's hard to see exactly how much of the window was covered, but it was enough to really darken the hall. The wooden frame by the window (on the right-hand side of the picture) is part of a grander plan to build a floating ceiling.

The blue part of the wall shows the old gradient, which was (unnecessarily) the same as the stairs. Since the stairs have been moved 180 degrees, that's really the wrong gradient. The window ended up being covered presumably because it was easier to put in the plasterboard that way than shape it.

The battens that you can see now are more in line with [[:house|the steps in the bathroom]]. At the bath end, there's a U-shape piece that'll be used to provide support for the access-hatch (should I ever need to get back under the bath) and the new ceiling under the bath.

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The frame is now covered with plasterboard. It's a manky bit that's been reused, but I figure with enough filler it should look just fine. The second photo shows the covered battens, and finally the last shows the new under-bath-ceiling and the access hatch.

Because of the order in which the plastboard has been fixed, that panel that faces the stairwell and provides access under the bath may be removed without messing with the rest of the boarding or battening.

{{gallery>:house:stairs?03*.jpg&150x150}}

Still to be painted, but polyfila and some sandpaper has fixed the worst of the wrecked plasterboard.