November & December 2002

The country had one of the wettest early winter periods for many years and Cornwall received its fair share of rain.  Localised flooding occurred in many places and for those who very sadly suffered, the period will not be forgotten for a long time.  We of course were thwarted from much external work but we managed to complete the painting in between the rain showers.

Whilst it doesn't seem like much was achieved, on the rear and west side of the house, we replaced all the barge boards and soffits, installed vents and aerials and painted the whole with water repellents and finishing coats; leaving only the rendering and pebble-dashing of the rear west side to complete .  The leaks in the roof over the rear bedroom, that had never been attended to, were repaired by partially replacing the felt and tiles at the V-section of the roof and covering over the old lead in the gully between with fibre-glass.  This being the only way of achieving a permanent fix without an otherwise extremely expensive roof replacement programme.

The ceiling in the Dining Room is removed ready for plasterboarding.  This ceiling had been previously replaced with plasterboard but a leaking water pipe above, left for too long, had ruined the section by the fireplace and worse, the ingress of dampness through the front wall had resulted in mould growing over most of the rest. 

So, due to the inclement weather, we concentrated on the Front Bedroom and the En Suite. The en suite is where the boarded-up cupboard door used to be.  We began to strip the ceiling in this bedroom (an awful task as it had been painted and papered over) but half way across we found the centre section had come away from the rafters and in time would collapse.  So we secured the rafters, added new additional rafters and added a ceiling immediately below the old one.

Our builder, at the time, forgot he had not fixed the hinges on the door to the en suite. So when he walked away from it it fell over and broke one of the panes of glass. I had carefully brought this door from London. The glass we have discovered is irreplaceable so we will have to replace it with a decorative panel instead.  The builder apologised but didn't offer any recompense!  What can one do!

But a luxury is that we also completed the study!