That’s it, the end of my annual leave taken to work on the house. Given I was driving through Milby as the morning service was starting I decided to pop into Milby church, which I found most welcoming. I shall certainly return, although the young vicar seems to be taking some liberties — perhaps we shall have to work on him. The wide screen TVs are a particularly pathetic attempt to reach out to young people who need nothing less than more screens in their lives.
Onto the house via the pizza place for a cost effective brunch, I set myself to my very frustrating day’s task — lifting the quarry tiles from the utility room for wall foundations and to lay a damp proof course.
Frustrating for a number of reasons — the beautiful floor out here is one of the few surviving original features to have been pretty much totally unmolested and to take a hammer drill to it is extremely upsetting. Not least because I’m in no way convinced digging up a perfectly good floor so I can lay concrete and polystyrene underneath it — two of my least favourite materials anyway — is even necessary.
Worse, the tiles are stuck down with the most spectacularly hard cement and very few of the tiles are coming up undamaged. I can see a very significant expense at the reclamation yard to get more matching to fix my broken ones coming up.
At first I read lifting them very carefully to save them — but then I got miserable seeing how slow my progress was. Then I went faster but found I was breaking a lot of tiles which angered me even more.
Having cleared away a bit at least I got to work digging a trench for poured concrete foundations for the block wall that will go in this coming week. I did all I could by hand with the spade and mattock before being summoned home by Mrs Revivalist.
So all said, not a great day. I’m back at work proper tomorrow, baby is expected any day, and I’m feeling very behind with the house. Will we move in this spring? Or even this year. Doubt clouds my mind.
The Young Revivalists 