This is quite scary:
This breezeblock pillar was encased in a layer of bricks both cutting the room in half, and providing a sense of (somewhat overestimated) solidity, It made a 6m square room pretty useless with the fire frying your eyebrows, Wii tournaments ending when someone nearly lost an eye, and a vast expanse of space behind that was never used.
This is scarier still:
The old RSJ was acutally a bit rusty. That’s not what you want to see when it’s supporting two floors, the first of which is our bedroom. The plan was to remove the pillar completely, and install a monster steel spanning the entire room.
Which involves this scary place:
Yes now the house is held up with a couple of big pipes and a lump of wood. At this point, I backed out of the room and went in search of the insurance details. The act of a sane man, when confronted by a slight alignment issue:
After much grunting, moving of hoists, technically advanced building techniques involving bits of slate, and a very, very large hammer, scary moved on to dusty.
Calm descended, and the ceiling didn’t. It was a little fraught for a while, so the fact that we cannot close three of the doors upstairs, and a few walls have authentic looking “adding character” cracks, it’s better than the first floor being amalgamated with the ground floor.
It did allow that horrible paint to display its’ full mustard gas effect. It really is even worse when you are in there. But once we’ve painted the ceiling and the joists, changed the lights, swapped the curtains and ripped out the skirting boards, it’s the first thing on our list.
Because after that, comes the heating laid under a new floor. Thankfully that is a) some months away and b) slightly less worrying now I have this beer.
Blinking glad you went first…we’re having this done soon, just in time for open plan living to be soooooo yesterday.
That’s the way Dave! Welcome to the ride of the insanity curve 🙂
How was the move? Found the kids yet?
How was the move?
Suddenly I have been reawakened to what my upper body and back was made for. Its neglect began to show after I’d lifted box number 3 into the van. I’m totally and utterly shagged, I will never do a DIY move again ever. On the upside, having realised that it is almost safe to play outside now the kids have become feral. Even a PS3 can’t tempt them back in, we just leave food by the door each evening.
Had much the same done turning this
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/cmQbcc19llWRZLpOp_39Hw?feat=directlink
into this
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/jJY-EJQloaNOOvqQxwMQzA?feat=directlink
the upstairs “sank” 1/4 an inch so I had to plane the bedroom door and we have a funky crack that has happily stopped growing 🙂 I have every confidence in the elasticity of victorian brick houses…
Looking good there Al. Ive had an idea about coming over with the pompino for a pub crawl sometime. Cant be doing with mud.
See your problem there Mark. You have somehow included that Brompton into the design. All probably went wrong from there. Been out this morning again. Hills getting easier, mud getting a bit deeper. Roll on Spring. I’m (mainly) off the beer matey, so pub crawls a bit dull at the moment!
Dave – like the sound of that. I’ve locked the kids outside to see if it can work for us. Bit of rain’ll save them a bath later 🙂
was looking at a new place over the weekend – and it needed a staircase move, bathroom gut, kitchen redecor, and a covent garden flowershow team to come in and deal with the brables, ivy and trees that was the gungle that was attached to the rear of the house.
oh and noticably yet again it would involve me climbing onto the roof to deal with another bloomin tv arial – which at 3 stories high was a bit much for me to contemplate.
needless to say i don’t think it’ll be a go-er. Still it was dissapointing, as the garage was huuuuuge,, i could have fitted many more bikes in (than i currently have in a pokey shed)! Oh and the downstairs was already open plan..
And there was me thinking my current unpainted staircase and bathroom ceiling flakeyness woes were serious.
Oh hang, no, I’m just very very lazy…
Unpainted staircase? Luxury. Try one that sort of sags in the middle, in a kind of about to pitch you headlong through a window kind of way. Now THAT’s a staircase 😉
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