In which battens are fixed to the wall

After all the measuring, calculating, running around and general faffing around, the afternoon was pretty well gone and we decided that there really was no point us starting to do any actual work. We might as well relax for a while before getting cleaned up to go out for a meal. Chris could relax with a glass of Scotch, but I had to content myself with orange juice as I was driving.

Next morning we were up bright and early, raring to get started. We took great care as we fixed the battens to the wall: they needed to be perfectly level round all four walls. Actually, there were six walls as the hall is L-shaped, but that is just splitting hairs. Despite all our care, we did make a small mistake. We started at the wrong end of the hall.

The front door to the house is recessed into the two-feet thick wall, but the recess does not reach to ceiling height. If we had thought about it, we would have fixed the batten above the front door first in order to ensure that the tongue and groove timber ended up at the same height as the top of the recess. It would not have been the end of the world if the false ceiling had been slightly above the door recess, but going into the recess would have led to some tricky cutting of the boards as the recess is not square-shaped. But for once Lady Luck was on our side. As we fixed the last batten to the wall - the one above the door - we realised that the ceiling would line up exactly with the top of the recess.