Loose Ends

It's been a mixed bag recently, with three jobs making significant progress after years of procrastination.

In a spirit of tidying up I decided to mix some more of my local sand & lime putty mix for pointing; then I thought I would do some pointing myself, and my daughter visited and did some more!  So the stone wall which I built last year is almost fully pointed at last (right).

Thus encouraged, I then went back to pointing the side wall of the house which I did a couple of years ago (plus a bit last year) under the new window which I fitted.  Beside that window is the downpipe which had a large hole about 9 feet up; the water gushing through this caused severe damage to the wall as it had been happening over a long period of time.  I only realised how bad it was when clearing the gaps out before filling - in one place I could get my flat hand into the hole, and then curl my fingers up in the void.  There were also some bits where some idiot had smeared a thin coat of cement over the wall, which can only hold moisture in, rather than stop it getting in!  I've now re-pointed a good deal of the worst bits on this wall, mindful of the general rule to not re-point unless absolutely necessary; this is good advice, not just for the integrity of the house but also because it really is a tedious job.  I'm quite pleased with the result!

Having done that pointing, I could now attach the shoe on the bottom of the downpipe.  When we took the ground level down in 2011, I had been left with an annoying gap of about 4 inches at the bottom.  I really didn't want to spend £65 on a new 6 ft length, just for that, and I found a shoe which was longer than usual, but it was still a bit high above the drain.  To bring it down I have used a spare elbow with a collar, and cut the bent bit off, so now there are two collars at the bottom (photo left), and it is a perfect fit (although the groundworkers always seem to attach the gully too close to the wall...).

Then I was urged by 'Er Indoors to do the last bit of skirting board in the lounge; it's one of those bits with a right angle that fits beside the chimney breast, and the old one was rotten; when I had a go a while back, it all went wrong because I didn't cut good 45 degree mitres and so the result was awful.  That was pretty discouraging, spending a couple of hours and achieving absolutely nothing, so I left it.

Anyway, today I had another go and not only cut the two pieces successfully but also fitted the result in place AND painted it (photo right).  Once again, I'm pleased that I can choose a job for the day and do it completely without having to go and buy anything at all.

The third job was the drilling of the hole for the vent in the kitchen (left).  This was not done when the kitchen was fitted (errr... two years ago!) as they intended to chain drill a rectangular hole through 18 inches of stone! I was not impressed as I am sure that this would have caused immense damage to the remaining wall.  Today Pete (who did the brickwork on the extension in late 2011) came and drilled it with his 110mm cutter on an SDS drill, which took him about an hour and a half. It's one of those jobs that perhaps I could do myself but really I am quite happy to pay someone who knows what he's doing.

Now that the hole is done I can purchase the necessary bits to duct the extractor over the hob outside instead of re-circulating it - perhaps I will have done that by Christmas?