Another End of Year Review

One good thing about a blog like this is that it helps me keep track of what I have achieved with this house and, possibly more importantly, what I have NOT achieved! Hence this end of year review is largely for my own benefit.

Frankly, I don't feel I've done much here in 2017. I did accomplish the previously reported refurbishment of the two remaining large sash windows - both hard work but very satisfying to see (and feel the benefit of reduced draughts). I also managed to repair the corner of a back wall where many stones were loose - I was worried that if my neighbour's side was as bad then the wall might collapse but, fortunately, his side was better anyway. The rest of the list from earlier this year is still outstanding.

There has also been a lot of clearing out in the second bedroom where I have made a wardrobe. This clearing task was made much easier after August as our daughter's wonderful wedding dress was used for its intended purpose and now lives at her house. Otherwise my shed is now full of stuff from my Dad's house that I would like to use, restore or sell - that last task seems to be a lot more work than one might think. I have not done much in the garden except to keep it tidy; I was really annoyed when the people at the back started to cut the ivy on my back wall - I asked them to leave as much as they could as it breaks up the appearance of the wall and adds some privacy, as well as giving food and shelter for birds.When they finished, it looked the same on my side, but on their side they had given the bit on top of the wall a short back and sides - the vertical wall was totally clear and so all the ivy on top had been cut off from its roots! Sigh.

It might be considered that I must have been lying around doing nothing this year, but this is definitely not the case. Leisure wise, I have bought a one-tenth share in a small aeroplane which is older than I am, and refreshed my private pilot's licence, so there is a bit of flying to look forward to in 2018.

At the church, we have done a £250k job on the exterior, thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. In the course of this work we suffered some vandalism when some little sod got up the partially completed scaffolding before the alarm was fitted and literally kicked a couple of stained glass windows to pieces - this repair should be complete at last in early January. You can hardly imagine how much work is caused by an incident like that, and most of it fell on my shoulders.

That reminds me of something that I need to pass on about the erection of scaffolding. It appears to be customary trade practice not to fit a scaffolding alarm until the erection of the scaffolding is finished. Now, I can understand why that should be the case for scaffolding around a house, as the alarm will get in the way of the next day's erection work. However, when you are putting up 13 lifts of scaffolding around a church tower, the job will take several days so I cannot understand why the alarm cannot be fitted once you have done the first three or four lifts, as all subsequent work will be above the alarm. If I was the insurers I would be insisting on a change to the current practice, but fortunately they are paying (apart from our excess)...

At one stage recently, one of the two temporary plastic sheets fell out of the window and made everyone very cold for one weekend. To fix this, I hired a 7.2 metre double width scaffold tower which was erected and dismantled by me and two men of similar age. To my surprise, I found that the double width tower was no more difficult to erect

and, in fact, the platforms were easier to manage, so I will use one of these in future. The window job itself took only 25 minutes and our end result is much more secure than that of the professionals who fitted the stuff.

This year we have had a cruise from Jordan to Malaga through the Suez Canal, seeing Petra in Jordan and calling at Crete, Malta, Palma and Gibraltar; we also spent a week in Sicily in September, so we have done OK for holidays. (NB From our cruise we flew back from Malaga and had the most dreadful airport experience of our lives - don't go there! If it's a bad as that on a Sunday in early April, what was it like in August?)

We have become used to being in each other's company for most of the day, almost every day, now that we are both properly retired, and I expect to end my six years as Churchwarden in May 2018, so I will then have even more time on my hands.

Using a Scaffold Tower

I have been very busy this last week.  I hired a scaffold tower for the whole week, as the fire alarm in church needed a servicing; they need a tower to get up high enough for their long pole to reach the detectors in the ceiling.  As this is an annual task, it had to be done in July, and so I had saved a set of other tasks that would be done at the same time.  These included a repair job to the CCTV camera which is mounted high up, the replacement of some high light bulbs, and the removal of the string from balloons which has got wrapped around the fans in the ceiling of the church hall.

At this stage I will vent my anger at the church architect who told my precessors what to fit in the church without a thought for the subsequent maintenance or the running costs.  The uplighter bulbs fitted five years ago are halogens and I have proved that switching the uplighters off saves about £50 per month.  The fire alarm is overly complex, and is wireless even though you could have hidden cables in the roof structure without them being noticed.  The CCTV camera (also fitted five years ago) had a wonderful pair of devices which allowed the video signal and the control inputs to share the same cable.  Great idea, but it's another two components which can go wrong - of course one did, probably in my view because of the known dampness under the suspended wooden floor.  Guess what? These boxes are no longer made so we would need two new, bigger ones at vast price.  However, we fixed that issue by laying the extra cable instead so now there are two less components to go wrong.

Anyway, there was a need to remove the tower from the church for Sunday and, as the hall was also in use, I brought it over to my house for "storage".  It seemed sensible to make use of it so this weekend I have:
a. Refitted the stuff in the gutters that prevents leaf build up (and they are now held in by some wire)
b. Fitted tingles to hold the three slipping slates in the area of the vent slates in the roof (done poorly as they were an afterthought...)
c. Tackled the poor pointing and defrassing on the west wall - there was thin cement over the pointing in some places, and spalling stone elsewhere, plus some large holes which I had blocked temporarily three years ago...
d. Then I had to tidy up the bits and dust all over the path below!

The aluminium 6 metre tower is a wonderful design.  It has three pairs of frames, with easily fitted clip-on bars in two lengths - one for the horizontals and one for the diagonals. Every item is very light; there are four stablisers, and wheels on the bottom of the frames.  On Saturday, Jane and I erected most of it in about 20 minutes; the difficult bit is positioning the top platform at the right level, but I found that the height was adequate at the top of the second frame which avoided that difficulty. I actually got her to go up it once just so she could agree that it is safe when you are up there (and so stop worrying!).  On Monday after doing the wall I took it down on my own and moved it to the church hall, all in about 45 minutes.

Then in the hall on Tuesday we attempted to remove the string from around the fans in the ceiling.  This string is the residue from balloons released by hirers who think it's funny to watch them going round! Sadly, this was one job we couldn't complete, although we did remove the balloons which surprisingly had been there for over three months with no sign of deflating.  The reason we couldn't fix the string was that the tower was too low with two sections and too high with three.  It turns out that we should have had some half frames which would have been just right, so that job will have to wait until next year.

On Wednesday the tower was taken away at last, and I have to say that it has been a most tiring week! I lost count of the number of times I went up and down the tower - at least I should be a bit fitter!

Scaffolding, and the Driveway again

As I write, it has all gone quiet outside.  The scaffolders are here removing the scaffolding, but I think after 30 minutes work they have decided it's lunchtime so they have downed tools.  Mind you, these are probably the same wussy ones who didn't put it up (see "The Rebuild Continues") for fear of a bit of rain, so I shouldn't be surprised.  Why turn up at 12.30 and then stop for lunch 30 minutes later? Why not have lunch first and then

The scaffolding comes down!

At last, having had a nearly finished roof for several weeks, it is now complete (and is a thing of beauty) so the scaffolding was taken down yesterday - photo right (ours is the left hand half).  We have actually owned the house for only eleven weeks and a lot has been done, but I have really become fed up with ducking my head to avoid the diagonal scaffolding tie-bars between the French door and the front. I'll probably still be ducking for weeks, even though the path is now clear. 

Today it was quite a surprise to find how the left side of the house was now quite light, without scaffolding, undergrowth and leaves; working inside (with no electric light) is now much easier.  Also, we had not really remembered how light the house itself was, as we had only been inside it a few times before the scaffolding went up.  It was a real delight to find the sun shining into the front room this afternoon.

Apart from repairing ceiling laths in the two back bedrooms, we have been removing lime plaster in preparation for replastering.  Much has been damaged by water ingress from the roof, especially though a split in the lead in the box gutter. The two back bedrooms are separated by a lath and plaster wall, which also required to be stripped as the plaster was all crazed and had come away from the laths - huge areas moved alarmingly, and some had been patched with modern alternatives.  Don't ever assume, just because something is covered with lath and plaster, that it is not load-bearing.  Kirsty What's-her-name on one of those property programmes on TV loves to suggest that a wall will come down in minutes, just based on tapping it and saying that "it's only a stud wall".  It's not always true for plasterboard, and it is certainly not always true for lath and plaster!  This is the wall structure we uncovered:

Those two X frames which you can see are both made from oak beams, 4 inches by 3 inches.  Each X is about 6 feet wide and 8 feet high.  At the top of the central stud, pointing downwards, is a metal bolt which has a square head about 1.5 inches across.  The laths are in really good condition and even the nails are still shiny, not rusted.

This is a major piece of structure and not just a simple stud wall, although at first its purpose puzzled me.  There is no corresponding wall in the kitchen beneath; on the right of the picture is a major internal structural wall, about 18 inches thick, largely of squared limestone, and on the left is the external wall which is about a foot thick, in limestone rubble.  After mulling this over whilst going to sleep, finally it dawned on me: this structure is holding the external wall in place!  [Edit: a more learned friend says that it "to provide lateral bracing and stop any movement in your load-bearing walls".  That's what I meant to say...]

We now move to the next phase of work; the first fix electrics is almost done and re-plastering starts this week.  My groundworker will be in soon to look at lowering the path and drain, the gas supply is being arranged and the plumber will be giving me his quote tomorrow.  We are applying for various permissions (still) which I am afraid might well turn out to be the critical path.  Perhaps we might be in by June?

Theft of Lead

When I first met the roofer, I asked what they did about security of scaffolding.  His reply was memorable: "You're from London, aren't you?  It's not like that round here!"  Sadly, I have been proved right, and last Thursday night some little d******d went up on our scaffolding and helped himself to one bit of lead at the base of the newly installed valley. 

Sadly, being the lowest piece, the damage caused was the maximum possible.  For his troubles, the perpetrator has got some lead worth about £8, but he has caused about £500 worth of damage/repair work.  Probably about 30 slates have been destroyed, but to do the repair properly, almost 200 slates will have to be removed which will cause a good few more to be damaged, at over £1 each for reclaimed slates (or £3.50 for new Welsh slates!). 

This morning I asked the scaffolder if he knew of anyone who does scaffolding alarm systems.  "No," he said, "we have never needed to use anyone for that!"

Taking Breath after the First Week

One of my aims in doing this project was to do it at my own speed.  There is no point, I reasoned, in having a tight timescale and creating stress for myself if I'm actually in no particular hurry to get the house finished.  I want to take the time and enjoy this, I thought in my innocence.  We've now owned the house for eight days, and I've never been busier!  Clearly it is not going as I expected.

The plan this week was to get the electrical supply protected on Monday, so that we could safely erect scaffolding on Tuesday and commence roof work on Wednesday.  Unknown to me the roofer knew the track record of the electricity supplier and so arranged the scaffolding for Wednesday instead - wise man!  Due to van failure, the electrical work did not happen on Monday and on Tuesday when I phoned it became clear that Monday's work had not been rescheduled...  After a few pleading phone calls, the emergency team came out late on Tuesday - dark and raining - and kindly did it.

While the scaffolding was going up on Wednesday, I had a call from a chimney sweep company who will check and sweep two of our chimneys so that I can light a fire or two to warm the house up.   The scaffolding finished early on Thursday, so the roofers started and by the end of Friday the former roof lay on the ground in the garden building site, with the naked rafters now covered with tarpaulin.  As work progressed I continued the removal of the ivy which was now possible using the scaffolding, although annoyingly there is still some ivy remaining just below the working platform twenty feet up.  Barry the carpenter ("chippy") visited on Friday and will be happy to do other work on the house.  He also surprised me by saying that he would come on Saturday and Sunday to do the soffits and fascia.  This caused me to have to turn up on Saturday to finish removal of the ivy in the region of the electrical supply bracket, as well as being able to tidy up when the old soffits and fascia were removed.

The chippy removed the fascia and soffit except where there was still ivy, where he left the soffit for me.  The power cables (ours and next door's) came away from the rotten fascia very easily but the real issue was where these cables disappeared into the ivy and emerged at the bracket two feet lower.  Gradually I removed the soffit and the dead ivy stems from both sides of the corner bracket and was down to the last three feet when there was a bang and a flash - the supply for next door had some bare cable!  That was enough for me - time to call the electricity supplier again - this time as an emergency.  (Anyone remember the Flanders and Swann song "The gasman cometh"?)

I forgot to mention that the roofing contractor's mate called Chris asked if I had a plasterer, as his brother in law was a plasterer called Phil who lived just along the road...  (Is there a slang term for a plasterer?)  So Phil came along on Saturday morning and seemed very keen and capable - another contractor found.  Then Phil asked if I had an electrician or a plumber, and to my surprise while I was waiting for the electricity lineman at 4.30pm, Neil the Sparky turned up to have a look - another contractor found.  Eventually the electricity lineman and his mate arrived; it turned out they were the ones who should have done the job on Monday!  They condemned the existing supply cables as dangerous (for both houses) and connected a temporary supply, leaving the way clear for the ivy removal, and departed at 6.45pm.

Thus it was that I have just spent nine hours working at the house on a Saturday.  This week has seen far more progress than I would have dared to expect even on a tight timescale, never mind my relaxed approach.  At this rate the roof will be done in a week and we are off to a flying start, with several contractors lined up, but I am shattered.