Bungalow construction - Dry lining

Wednesday 30th March 2005, and a lorry arrived with 260 "eight-by-four" sheets of plasterboard. We managed to get them off the lorry and into a pile at the end of the driveway just as the rain began to fall. The following day Steve helped Ian (the Dry Lining contractor) to carry the sheets up to the bungalow. We paced out the distance from the pile to the bungalow - it was 90 yards. So a return journey was 180 yards, and 10 journeys were just over a mile. So 260 sheets means 26 miles - Marathon distance, half of it carrying a sheet of plasterboard! Neither of us believed this could be true so I re-did the calculation - it was right. It took two hard days.

The insulating material that went in the roof space and within the timber frame also got delivered and had to be carried from the road to the bungalow; but that was lightweight and much easier to carry.

Ian got to work putting up the plasterboard panels - walls and ceiling - and suddenly the inside of the bungalow began to take shape. For the first time we had a real sense of the size of the rooms. It's a bit late now if they feel too small! It took about three weeks to fix all the boards in place, and to tape and skim the joints.