Insulation
Fortunately for me I didn’t have to go out and buy any more insulation. My guess is the previous owner will have got this put in from a Government grant scheme as the rest of the house didn’t really tally up with the eco friendly mindset.
PPE
Whilst I write this we’re in the midst of COVID-19 and it’s a challenging time for PPE. Make sure you have face masks for a job like this because I was certainly breathing in dust older than my grandparents!
On another note for PPE. KNEE PADS! I didn’t bother as I thought they were for people who do this kind of work day in day out. That was a massive mistake. I felt like it took a couple of months for my knees to recover fully. Before you get round to laying your first loft board you will be in some terrible angles and propped up on god knows what. Therefore you can make your life that tiny bit more comfortable and invest in a decent pair of knee pads. I guarantee you will use them over and over in future jobs!
Roll it back!
If you’re lucky like me and have the right amount of insulation, don’t think you got out of a mess job. Because you haven’t. You could just start the timber subfloor and board it all up. But when the time comes for dealing with electrics such as light fittings in the rooms below or even plumbing, you’re going to have to take a lot of it apart to find out where stuff is.
So you need to pull it all back and map out any cables and pipework so that you can mark it down on top where the loft boards will be. Even if you think you don’t need to bother as you know, just save yourself the hassle and potentially future owners down the line!
Reroll some of the insulation back
Once you’re aware that you won’t be disrupting pipes and cables with your screws you can roll the insulation back down so that it’s flush with the joists. You can see in the image above there was some really old 10 mm insulation that must have been down from the 50s. This may mean that you might not make up the right number to make it flush with the joists depending on the packs the owners used.
Timber subfloor
I used 4 x 2 inch timber which added an additional 100 mm height to the existing joists. There are a couple of ways you can secure the height into the joists below.
- You can screw at an angle from a quarter off the bottom of the 4 x 2 timber into the joists. You can get a tool to help you do this such as a Pocket Hole angle guide. This method would be less physically strenuous as you have the minimal amount of drilling done for it.
- Screw in from the top. You need pretty long screws to do this and I would certainly recommend predrilling. I knackered Grandad Bob’s Black and Decker from an ancient time because I don’t think it had enough torque in it.
Packing packing packing
As with old houses, things are seemingly measured by eye. You might find that the timber batten you’ve laid doesn’t sit flush on top of all the joists it sits. Double glazers packing such as this one will help cover those gaps to ensure the screws have a tight bond. I used the one in that link and actually used a lot more than I initially thought I would have.
Let’s strengthen the fram for the loft boards
You could just technically board over the top of these (after the insulation was rolled out). But the new timber joists aren’t connected to each other and only to the original ones down below. Therefore you would end up feeling some sway walking across them. You can prevent this and make the fixture more solid.
It’s pretty self explanatory how to do these. Measure out the gap between two of the new joists you’ve secured. Don’t be shy and cut under just to make it slide in. Without that tension of it being taut, the subfloor won’t be as rigid. If you cut it perfect or even slightly over, you technically wouldn’t be able to slot it in. This actually isn’t a problem as you can use a mallet to wack it in. The two secured joists will then hold the new cross section in taut and you can screw it in from both ends. This combination gives a really solid structure in place for your loft board. Make sure not to align these battens otherwise you won’t be able to get screws into the ends!
Give yourself a step
You will notice that one of the joists is one step back. I did this just from an ergonomic perspective. My loft ladders come up to this section and I wanted to prevent having to make a big step up. I planned on putting a lower level board here that would make it easier moving around from the loft ladders to the loft board.
I had some 18 mm ply that was from an old job of boxing in pipes so it worked perfect for this.
Fill the new timber subfloor with insulation
Loft board installation
Now from this point you can start screwing in your first loft board! On the standard loft boards you get from major DIY shops here you would screw it into 8 places if you were doing the timbers at 400 mm centres. Nothing special here and standard wood screws will do. Just make sure to have the flat head screws being inset into the board otherwise you’ll end up catching the screws if you’re sliding things around.
