Day 8: Steels, Stripping and relics from the past

The steels arrived this afternoon. There were a few complications, starting with the driver refusing to use the crane to lift them to the roof because I had only paid for delivery and not crane use. Despite having asked for it, it wasn't on the paperwork so I had to go to the cashpoint so that they could be craned up. They are seriously heavy - no other way to get them up there, but with some heavy lifting from Ivan and Nick on the scaffold, they were soon in the loft space.

The expensive crane (and Dimitri!) in action

Ivan and Nick never stop working

The site looks very different to my last visit, for a start the upstairs bathroom is no longer there. The guys stripped out the bath, basin and loo, then stripped the walls of the lath and plaster, before removing the walls completely. All of the rotten plaster in my bedroom has been removed back to bare brick and the plaster has been taken off the lath in the hall. We really will be starting again from scratch but the new walls will be perfectly solid and straight.

No bathroom and very little plaster left. A blank canvas

The first floor passage minus plaster

Wide open

Whilst stripping the plaster in the passageway the guys have been finding old paperwork, letters and invoices, all dated in the 1890s. I didn't have a lot of time to look through them but it will be interesting to have a look at them in more detail.

Ivan finds another letter behind the lath

This one's dated 1897