exposed

Our bedroom and bathroom are up on the top floor of our house. The rooms are built into the roof space giving us high ceilings with lots of beautiful, old exposed beams.

It’s wonderful in the summer, as it stays pretty cool, however we have noticed, through winter, that the space does have quite a few drafts. One particular one I noticed the other night was in our bathroom.

There is a maintenance door, to all the plumbing in the bathroom, which was rather ill fitting. The icy wind that we had the other night was coming from this side of the house, and it was blowing a mini gale around the sides of this maintenance door, so we needed a plan to insulate it. Brian had previously put foam around the inside edge, but this was obviously not working, it was in need of a different approach.

He went to his woodshed and came back with some pine beading, which he carefully cut to fit around the edge of the door. I was a little horrified at this point as the pine couldn’t have been a worse fitting colour, but he assured me not to worry; it would work. He then colour matched it to the door with some watered down acrylic paint and medium oak wood stain before attaching it to the door. He then used some of the insulation tape we had bought for the gold frames to fix inside the lip he had made.

When he secured it in place, it fitted like a glove, not a draft to be felt.

There are still more drafts elsewhere on the floor, but we will gradually find them and fill them in. It’s a job you can only really do as you find them.