More Odd Jobs

We've been living here more than three years now, and I still have jobs left over from before we moved in. Recently I finished another of these, and 'Er Indoors is very happy with the result so I can feel quite smug.

The hall and lounge both have a wooden corner bead at each vertical right angle; this photo shows the hall as it was after the initial plastering and decoration:

The original feature was to maximise the amount of the visible wood by having a chamfer at the edge of the plaster instead of plastering flat up to the wood in which case you would only see a very small amount of wood. The chamfer allowed perhaps even half of the wood to be seen; of course at some time someone had papered the walls and covered all the wood!  I have been told that this plastering detail used to be quite common and is called a "quirk". 

My plasterer found the chamfer difficult although at each one he did make some sort of effort. As ever, there was no time to sort it before we moved in, so it has waited for my attention until this summer. Back in March I removed the paper and cleaned up the wood. Then in June I cut back the plaster to give a rough 45 degree chamfer on each side, and plastered these chamfers to make them smoother; finally today I applied the limewash to each of the four corners in the lounge (two for the window bay and two for the chimney breast), as well as limewashing various bits (replastered but unfinished) after the fitment of the new window in June 2011.

I'm very pleased that the limewash has dried to match the earlier stuff so you can hardly see the new application. Overall a messy job but well worth it. Now I just have to do the same to the ones in the hall!

I've been busy all summer with various jobs in the garden, as well as finishing a few other old jobs inside like the last of the tiles in the kitchen. One job that got done outside was to attach two pieces of coping on one end of the front wall which had also been waiting three years; as ever, the sort of job that you hope would take one hour actually took almost six.  At least I was right to delay doing it!! Now there's the other side to do, which I already know is a longer job as I have to rebuild the end three feet of wall as well.

The main reason for the lack of progress is that we have had contractors in the church for over four months.  They have laid 50 sq m of limecrete floor with underfloor heating and limestone tiles 2 cm thick, installed toilets and a servery, fitted a new boiler in the tower (instead of in the old damp boiler room) and all the associated drainage, electrics, pipework and the water and gas supplies this entails.  Since the church is Grade I listed, this is all far more complicated in preparation, design and approvals than your average house, and so has occupied a good deal of my time (being churchwarden). Now we just need £400k for the rest of the nave floor.