Getting ready for plastering and tiling

The slabbed wall in the kitchen

This week there was quite a lot of progress in the kitchen and in the bathroom. Both of these rooms have drywall walls and outside walls which need to be plastered. We knew that Biller would be sending somebody to do the final measuring before the kitchen is sent to production, so we needed to do something about the kitchen walls - all of them except the exterior wall, which Chrisch plastered a while ago. One issue was the supporting beam which was to be cased in by the drywall. The beam and the triangular drywall component that was installed by Stuckenberger's team while the roof was off are not in line - they couldn't be (the beam is skewed, off plumb and not at 90° to the exterior house wall). After messing about all last Saturday trying to get the wall some way straight (using long timber wedges to locally support the plaster slabs) we decided that we would put up lats on the whole wall and be done with it. It took about 4cm off the length of the kitchen, but at least it meant we had a straight wall and the Biller chap could properly measure the kitchen. The other wall in the kitchen (the north wall, the back of which is the corridor between the kitchen and the bathroom) was much easier as it was straight and plumb already. All we had to do there was screw the boards on, without even needing to cut them (the room is 250cm high - exactly the length of the boards). We had to cut out the holes for the wall sockets, but that wasn't too bad.

The bathroom is slabbed - almost...

The bathroom also needed a lot of work. The next big steps in the bathroom will be to get it tiled - that needs to be done before bathroom "appliances" can be installed. Before tiling, the walls needed to be slabbed and walls which won't be getting slabs (the north exterior wall and the ytong walls) need to be plastered with Hasit 650 (lime/cement plaster - you can't use normal chalk plaster in a room with high humidity). Sven and I did the slabs in the bathroom relatively quickly - even the view block in front of the toilet was relatively easy to do (investing more work in straightening the OSB below paid off). The ceiling was a bit more of an issue, though, and it isn't finished yet. What we decided on was putting 20cm of rockwool insulation in between the joists, cover the lot with a diffusion layer (a bit like baking paper - it allows air through, but not water) and seal all the joints and around the edge with an incredibly sticky tape (SIGA). The idea is that the whole ceiling should be hermetically sealed against water vapour, but it should be able to breath.

On Saturday I have Chrisch coming to plaster the bathroom (not the slabs - they will be tiled up to 120cm and will be painted above that - though a fibreglass sheet comes directly onto the slabs first, so that movement in the slabs won't cause cracks in the paint). In the meantime, I'll hopefully be able to slab the ceiling with Sven. Once the bathroom is done, the tiler will be able to tile the walls. He can't do the floor until the underfloor heating is properly tested and the concrete is slowly heated and cooled. Apropos the heating, Strohmaier's team are coming tomorrow to installed the water meter - which means I'll be ready to fill the system when Niedermaier's team are ready to carry out the underfloor heating test.