To prepare for Bump’s arrival we needed to clear some of our junk out of the spare room and into the loft. We’d recently had the loft insulated and the picture on the left is the view that greeted me when I opened the hatch. I decided to board a small area which would provide enough storage for what we had to store and would hopefully dissuade us from putting much more up. Unfortunately you can’t just throw some boards on top of the insulation as this crushes it and renders it less effective.

I needed to raise the height of the joists and decided to do this by laying new joists perpendicular to the existing ones. We were lucky enough to have Mike help us clear the loft in advance of the insulation installation and Steve kindly offered to help with the boarding. I was really glad of Steve’s help as what I thought would be a quick job turned into a five hour effort – this is the first major bit of DIY I’ve had to do and none of my planning accounted for uneven joists.

You can see the results in the final two pictures. I boarded an area 2m by 1.3m on which to put boxes and used some remaining wood to create a ‘landing area’. You can see the extra area at the bottom of the picture with Jessica in and it has been very useful. Heavy boxes can be hefted onto the landing area using the ladder as a ramp so I don’t endanger myself trying to climb with a box in hand. I’m pretty pleased with the results and can’t thank Steve and Mike enough for their help with the project.