My week away from the house has been one of mixed emotions — both the joy of visiting family and Christmas, and the constant agony of owning a house you’re not in, and worrying it has either burnt down, collapsed, or been flooded by bad pipes. Yes, I’ve had a lot of bad nights sleep, and that is very unusual.
To my great delight, however, today was a big working party with Mr & Mrs H, Mr & Mrs R, and Mrs Revivalist and I all attacking various jobs.
Given it has been very mild for December of late, one of the first things we did upon arrival was throw open as many windows as we could to air the place — it really does smell very bad in a lot of the rooms. We also, perhaps counter-intuitively, lit the fire — which burnt magnificently and produced an enormous amount of heat — to help dry the place out.
Mrs Revivalist is now as round as a ball and not capable of much serious work, so kept the fire topped up, took photographs, made tea, and read her book. I was very glad to have her there even if she wasn’t swinging a hammer.
Also in the sitting room was her father, Mr H., whose back is out once again. On light duties, he spent absolutely the whole day either directing other people’s efforts, answering my questions, and (mainly) pulling massive old nails out of the studwork timbers we’d pulled out. The good long ones we’ll recycle into new walls, and the shattered and short ones cut and split for the fireplace.
Further back in the house Mrs R, my sister-in-law put some of her boundless excess energy to goo use and got to work with the sledgehammer. A fine job she did too, taking down the 1983 breeze block wall blocking off the under-stairs cupboard very quickly.
That done, she moved onto taking the hall-facing walls of the utility room down, which are to be reconfigured slightly. The door is to be moved a few inches over so we can get a work surface and machines down one side, and a curve will be introduced to the corner to give more space, and some style, to the corridor.
Upstairs, Mrs H and Mr R worked together emptying out the spooky secret cupboard (contents: hundreds of old duvets, pillows, curtains, and an old travelling trunk stuffed with wool blankets) and lifting the extremely smelly upstairs carpets. All of the carpets and almost all of the cupboard contents went to the tip in a number of runs.
Having done a few of these Mr R clearly became jealous of his wife’s fun with the sledgehammer and demanded he be allowed to break something, so we put him onto the old hearth in the utility room — once likely the kitchen range.
This produced in quick succession joy followed by despair — his first crowbar hole gave glimpse of rich red tiles, which were soon revealed to belong to a very handsome late Arts & Crafts style fireplace set into the original Victorian arch. Wonderful. Sadly the more it was uncovered, the clearer it was previous owners had smashed it about quite badly and it isn’t saveable as it is now.
I hope to carefully remove the tiles that can be saved and re-create it, in smaller form, elsewhere in the house. Possibly in the dining room or bac bedroom upstairs, depending on what we find when we swing the crowbar into those respective fireplaces later.
While all this was going on I was plodding along preparing the ground for the arrival of Mr G in the new year, my step-father, who is handy with a trowel and will brick up the openings that need bricking up and open others that need that too.
To that end, I unhung the sitting room and dining room and utility room doors and prised out the architraves and door linings, before doing most of the demolition on the dining room vestibule, or as much as was permitted by the presence of live wires. They will be gone soon (as will our electric light) and so too will the wall studs the flex wends through.
All done and the house warmer than it has been in quite some time, we packed up and headed into Milby proper, taking refreshment at a couple of historic Inns.
Driving back to Raveloe, we talked about how many man-hours we could possibly put into the house before baby Revivalist arrives. We’re very dependent on friends and family giving their help — the money is needed for the raw materials and paying emergency professionals when they are needed.
No real disasters yet. Let us see how it goes…
The Young Revivalists 