I actually checked the weather forecast last night and it said possible light rain showers in the morning. Lordy, massive understatement. Poor Tom and George got utterly drenched and the front garden turned into a slippy quagmire. Properly grim.
Jo and Charlie are here to finish up the plastering and clean the house down.
Cat is off to Bristol, but at 7.30am she was cleaning the grout from the bathroom tiles.
The first time we have seen the old oak window in full (shared between the landing and Zanna’s bedroom), with the interior glass window that Glynn built. We have just fitted the middle metal opener and removed the plastic covering and it looks amazing! Another very special window.
Tom and George having a tea break while sheltering in the garage.
George’s pile of mud is vast. The plan was to fill the skip up with this, but there is so much of it we are ordering a ‘grab’ lorry instead to reach over the hedge and pick it all up with a grab arm.
Dan is building a small cupboard in the attic to house the motor for the extractor fan from the bathroom. Either that or he is asleep.
Jeesus! The rain is filling up the trench.
Oh my god George!
This is the study window at the front where the ground level outside was over a meter higher than the floor level inside! It is no surprise we had a damp issue in the study. Once the ground level is lowered and the French drain added, this room will dry out and we shouldn’t have any further issues when it rains.
The rain is pooling in the trench on top of the clay.
Our house has no foundations, it is built on to a stone footing laid on clay. Unfortunately at some point, possibly in the 1930’s or 40’s, the bottoms of the walls were rendered in cement, of course… We thought we had seen the last of the bloody cement! This all needs to be removed and the wall pointed in lime and repaired where necessary.
And then it got muddier.
George looks like he has been rolling in it.
Jo has almost finished cleaning down the house with the help of Henry Hoover.
The boxed in extractor fan motor and pipe, with sound insulated walls to deaden any noise from the motor. This will be inside the cupboard under the eaves so it doesn’t have to look pretty.
Charlie has been finishing the last bits of lime plaster around the house. We are going to miss Charlie and his team! They have been with us every day for 6 weeks, 7.30am – 5pm (we will not miss the early starts) and have worked extra hard to make our house look amazing. We are hugely grateful to them all.
Tom digging the trenches for the drains on the left (next to the house) and footings for the retaining wall on the right.
George adding lumps of clay to the massive pile of top soil. Our garden has almost completely disappeared under this.
Dan is working on adding slithers of elm floor board under the toilet to level it. Not an easy task at all.
Tom and George have shifted literally tonnes of mud today, in truly awful conditions. Let’s hope tomorrow is drier…
This is giving me flashbacks to the less-good days of archaeology!