Mick’s big week off

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So my lovely husband decided that he needed a week off work, since he hadn’t had any time off yet this year, and last week he put in a massive effort to get the house more or less ready for the trades to start.

He got a little over-enthusiastic in the bathroom – we’ll have to rig up a sheet for some privacy!  Pete, Dougie and David all know each other well, but possibly not THAT well!!

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Bedroom one – wall ready for raking out and repointing.  You know that the hot water cylinder was there a long time when there’s a perfectly circular dent in the floorboards.

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Studwork removed between the rooms upstairs – that’s standing in bedroom one, looking through bedroom three/the landing to bedroom two.

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Lime plaster coming off downstairs.  Still waiting for the final verdict on supporting that lintel, which means it’s not a ‘No’ yet!

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Living room lime plaster coming off.  I’m sure there are probably better, safer and faster ways to do it than knocking it off by whacking it with a hammer, but I did that wall in the second and third pictures (and about a wall’s-worth in the kitchen) and it’s bloody good fun!  On a more practical note, I am a lot happier with my balance on a stepladder than I was before I started.

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He really did pick the right week to take off – we’ve enjoyed some stunning weather here over the past 10 days.

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So we are more or less there on the stripping out part of the job.  Upstairs has now been swept up and is ready to go.  Downstairs we still need to bag up and remove the lime plaster on the floor, but decided that a better breathing mask were required first – the filters for it arrived today, so we should be able to get tidied up downstairs by the end of the weekend, particularly since the Rayburn was rehomed today to someone who’s prepared to give it some TLC and restore it (and he very kindly brought us a bottle of whisky to say thank you!).

A tale of two fireplaces

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The weather here today has been completely horrible – sleet, snow, hail and wind.  In other words, not ideal conditions for getting up on a roof, so Pete and his crew abandoned their current job up the road in Strathy and came to have a look at our fireplaces.

One end went REALLY well – this is what the living room fireplace now looks like:
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Those stones will clean up nicely with a wire brush, Pete will repair the back with matching stone and I’m going to try and find an old oak beam to put above the lintel – the plan is to box around it with the plasterboard and leave the stone exposed.  Although there’s a hearthstone there, the floor level’s going to be raised up with the underfloor heating, so if we can find a big enough bit of Caithness flagstone (or two bits to go side by side), we’re going to use that, as Pete says he can fit it for us – but has warned me that the three exposed edges need to be natural, not cut, otherwise it won’t look right.  We’ve got a couple of bits here and a friend of Mick’s has got some he’s willing to let us have, so hopefully we can find one or two pieces that work.

In the kitchen, things haven’t quite gone to plan.  The guys got the Rayburn moved out of the way and the fireplace was revealed in all its glory (husband included for scale! – he’s 5’7″)
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Pete carefully chipped out a corner of the rubble – it’s 17″ from the front of the lintel to the back wall of the house!
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BUT we have two enormous load cracks in the lintel (one shown below, the other is a mirror image).  Pete is doing the calculations to work out if we can still break it out by inserting a big sheet of steel into the wall under the lintel to support it – essentially functioning as an RSJ, but less visible.  Fingers crossed!
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Another find down the back of the Rayburn – this looks handcarved.
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Damp corner.  The concrete floor is going to be cut back, the wall tanked, a new membrane put down on the floor going up the wall and then the floor re-poured.
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I don’t know what wood this is, but it’s obviously tasty!
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Yet another vintage wallpaper, this time in the bathroom.
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Mick has made a temporary sign for deliveries – 75p of stick-on letters and a bit of wood and two screws that came out of the house!
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Discoveries

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It’s been a day of discoveries in the house.  We’ve spent the last couple of days concentrating on the kitchen, which we knew was going to be hard work, but our efforts are slowly paying off.  Pete the Roofer came over this evening to introduce us to Dave the Joiner, and it was great timing because we were able to ask him about a couple of things we uncovered that looked slightly worrying!

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Yes, it’s a very big crack and that whole white bit wobbles, but fortunately it’s old lime plaster and just needs to be knocked off the stone and picked out.

We made a good start on breaking through the plasterboard and oooh, look – is that a lintel I spy emerging?

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I think that’s definitely a lintel!

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Would you look at the size of that fireplace behind??  It’s blocked up with cement and rubble, but we’re going to get it opened up and see what’s there (subject to the crack in the side of the lintel not being an unresolvable structural issue…).  It’ll make a fantastic feature if we can do it!

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The remains of the pantry innards have been removed.

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And would you believe that behind the plasterboard we removed, we found at least five layers of wallpaper??

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I ended up making a collage photo of all the different ones we found that still had enough left to photograph the pattern – this is just the kitchen, remember.

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And finally, scratched into the plaster behind the wallpaper, three names – Ethel’s three children

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Anyway, the good news is that we’ve found nothing that worries Pete and the even better news is that he thinks he’ll be able to start on the roof in about three weeks’ time.  I’ve spent very little so far, but now the bills are really going to start rolling in.  Pete’s bill will be split into three, the first part paid when materials are delivered to site, the second at the halfway point (to be predetermined and agreed) and the final third once I’m happy with the completed job.  Time to start working out the best way to extract the cash off my 0% balance transfer offers.