Boarding: Window reveals

After months struggling with heavy Fermacell boards through a cold winter in a decidedly unheated house, we'd finally finished boarding the walls. Well, not quite... we still had the window reveals to do.

With our stock of Fermacell running low, (it's a relatively expensive material, so we'd only calculated for minimal wastage) we had left the window reveals until last. We'd used full sheets wherever possible on the walls and had retained a stack of off-cuts to use for the narrow strips that line the windows.

The first to be tackled was the feature window in the main bedroom.





All the windows in the house are secured to the frames using effective, but rather ungainly metal straps. These turned out to be a complete pain to board around because they prevented our reveal boards from sitting flat against the timber around the windows.  

The one good thing about the metal straps is that they were riveted right on the edges of the aluminium window frame. This meant that the boards should leave exactly the same amount of frame showing all the way around the window, without us having to line anything up. Hurrah! 

But because the metal straps were often bent outwards at an angle from the window frame, it meant we also had to pack out every single window reveal so that they sat at right-angles to the window. Gahh!

The top two reveals lined up and fixed in place. The red bit below is the large steel frame that wraps around the window. We insulated this inside and out with Celotex to prevent any cold bridging.

The bottom two reveals fitted around the sides of the feature window.

We really should have bought a scaffold tower before starting the build... Alan perched precariously up a ladder fitting the 'box sections' that join the window reveals. Note the indoor dust storm caused by sanding and cutting Fermacell; not a healthy environment. 

Once the dust had settled (literally), the completed window reveals could be, erm, revealed.

We didn't glue in the bottom wall panels yet, as we may need to access the steel frame later on in order to secure the balcony rails.

Next was the main bedroom window that looked west.  

The window reveals pictured below are all fitted perfectly straight and at right-angles to the window, however the metal strap issue (coupled with more wonkiness in the timber frame) meant that it left us with lots of gaps at the corner joints. Not ideal but we should be able to put everything right later using the Fermacell jointing compound.   

After so many months working on blank, grey walls, it made a nice change to be working around the windows. Especially as we could keep a look out for any local wildlife, like this very well-camouflaged stag in the field opposite the bedroom window.

The window fitters had done a decent job; any adjacent window frames were set at the same level, so it made life easier when trying to get the window reveals to be evenly matched. 

Exactly the same height top and bottom.

A lot of windows in the house, meant a lot of window reveals for us to do. Down on the ground floor, we also had doors and full-length windows to tackle.

First panel going in above the front door.

Levelled using a laser.

Reveals fitted around the front door. We secured the boards using screws and glued the corners using Fermacell's special expanding adhesive. Any excess glue is scraped off the next day leaving a clean, solid joint.  

The first of the three big windows in the dining area.

The panel above the double doors in the dining area was longer than the Fermacell sheet so had to made of two pieces. These had to be carefully lined up and securely fixed to avoid seeing any joins in future.

Back door in the utility room.

Kitchen window. The sink should be directly below it so this will be the 'washing-up view' (minus the huge pile of rubble).

With 27 windows or doors that needed reveals, we got progressively quicker at measuring, cutting and fitting them.  

Office.

Since we were using up lots of narrow off-cuts on the reveals, it seemed like the perfect time to also box in some of the pipework.

The soil stack runs directly through the larder. Although the pipe is a completely sealed, single section, it's still not the most appetising thing to see nestled amongst all the food...

First step was to screw battens to the wall. These timber battens are usually supplied twisted and warped to some degree, so using the laser to line them up all the way along their length ensures everything is straight.

Unlike plasterboard, Fermacell is very rigid so could be used to carry another batten to support the corner of the box. 

Boxed in soil stack. It will be easier to build shelves around the square shape and looks a lot better than a big plop pipe sitting in the corner. 

Same treatment for the ventilation duct in the landing cupboard.

That's just about it for the boarding. We were very relieved to finally get the job finished and desperate to get on with the next stage of the build.