After a hard few days we had a bit of a slow start today — stayed in bed until gone nine (!) fiddling with this very journal, called the electricity board, and generally had a loaf.
But there was still plenty to do around Raveloe House, though, we rearranged the dining room to receive the new dining table we picked up from the auctioneer yesterday and moved it into place. Of course, it is solid oak and was quite an effort moving between the two of us when we lifted it between four people yesterday.
I also moved the cat flap — essential apparently as my office is to become a temporary bedroom for guests over Christmas and we don’t want cats climbing over people’s faces — which involved a little bit of bodging and woodwork.
That all done, we went to Milby and had a relatively short afternoon knocking the place down. We were joined again by Mr B from down the road who brought along his sledgehammer and helped me in finishing clearing out the terrible hall wall.
There was a really wonderful moment when I finally got the first peek at the panelling on the side of the staircase, boxed in during the flat conversion works in the 1980s and still painted a faint custard-yellow. The Philistines who converted the place screwed and nailed the new wall directly into the lovely panelling and there will be quite some repair work to be done before it is really good again.
Not least of that work is reinstating the rear part of it, crudely sawn off in the past to widen the corridor a little. I was cursing out when I saw what had been done. Thankfully the same staircase survives in both neighbouring houses, so we’ll have something to copy at least.
Meanwhile, Mr H was making extremely short work of the wall between the sitting and dining rooms. Not unusually for a house of its size and vintage, the two rooms were originally connected by double doors.
While the hole for those doors is still there — just filled with stud and plasterboard — sadly both the doors and the architrave for them is long gone. We’ll have fun replacing them in due course.
Amusingly inside the hollow wall, Henryk found some writing from the previous owner Mr M, which gave a date for the past works as November 1983. Also present was some screwed up newspaper from 1993 when some miscreant punched a hole in the same wall that needed filling with newspaper balls and poly filler.
Attempts at tidying up the rubble were defeated by a desire to get back to Raveloe house and rest our aching arms. Italian and then bed. Long day tomorrow, we’ve got the sweep coming…
The Young Revivalists 