I am so ashamed of myself 16.02.13
Well we have bought the new joists and other bits and pieces for the walls. We had intended to make a start on pulling down the walls today but unfortunately whilst we were checking yesterday we found more rot than we had originally thought.
John has decided he is going to replace the rotten joist on the first floor as we will need the acro (the big metal pole that is currently holding the joist in place) and the bit I try not to think about, the floor above the joist, i.e. our bedroom!!!!!!!!
The rotten piece comes out and John replaces this, to ensure that it is truly secure John triangulates the bolts,(as you can imagine these are johns words not mine, to normal people these means the bolts go up and down, up and down and up and down) these bolts have to be big enough to go through the old joist and the new attached joist long and John used more than necessary to make sure it was truly secure, the top tip is to always put enough in and then add a couple more.
The hole in the wall and all the surrounding area are fully treated with specialist rot and word worm treatment, as even though all the rot has been removed it is better safe than sorry, this is not an area where corners can be cut.
The next job is the beam over the window in the living room, I am so gutted that this has to be removed as we are planning to keep the stone work exposed and the wood across the windows, John tells me not to worry and we won’t know the difference once he is finished, I know johns good but is he that good????
He puts the acro up, just in case, because the ceiling joist is supported by this beam. Once we start to remove it we realise that it wasn’t supporting anything because the wooden beam is so rotten it is just dust (3 rubble sacks worth of dust, I know this because I had to bag it and take it to the tip!!!!!).
Here is a video of the beam coming out and a bit of the dust, John apologises for his one swear word in the clip.
Once the beam is removed John removes the stone work around it. He then sets to work on the replacement beam, he uses the chainsaw to remove the engineered corners and make the beam look old, so in answer to my question, yes he is that good, once the beam is stained it will look just like the old one, minus the wood worm and the disintegrated wood.
Next he has to replace the stone work, and treat all the surrounding areas, wood worm there is no escape for you, we will find you and we will exterminate, exterminate, exterminate, oops sorry I slipped into dalek mode for a moment then! Even Dr Who, couldn’t manage this job!
All finished and it looks amazing, and we no longer have any part of the house held up by acro’s, well at least for today, tomorrow will be a different story!
I also have a terrible confession today, forgive me father for I have sinned! I did it, I finally turned into a real expat, it will only happen once, I will never do it again, I promise. I made a roast chicken dinner and went to the shop and bought, wait for it, this is the really dreadful part, some stuffing from the Brit aisle, there I said it out loud, I am so ashamed of myself! I have never bought from the Brit aisle, and laugh at it most times I go into the shop, and just to make matters worse, it wasn’t even Paxo, it was a Happy Shopper version! I would never buy this in England and certainly not for six times the normal price!
But it was nice
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