Saturday

Quite possibly the best day in recent history. Matt let me sleep in till 1:30pm in the afternoon! It was amazing. I have needed that for so long. Got woken up for lunch and seems that Matt has spent the morning removing two halves of the joists that were rotten. Not a quick or easy job with just a hand saw.

After lunch it was time to head to Luchon to get a new cutty saw thing to speed things along. While we were there we dropped into Lidl and, by some amazing stroke of luck, they had the rotovator in stock that we’d looked for in multiple shops the other week. To say I was chuffed to bits would be an understatement. It is all coming up Chaney today! So buoyed by the rotovator I even encouraged Matt to buy himself a present, I have no idea what we are going to need it for or when but I am sure it will come in handy at some point…

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Back at the house and since I had such a good rest this morning I have decided to dedicate the rest of the day to helping Matt rather than playing with my new toy. Mostly this consisted of holding things, passing him things, plugging and unplugging things, and of course taking photos. With such a big hole it’s given me lots of different angles to play with.

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Joist 3 came out much quicker with the new reciprocating saw. Next job was the lintel. Quite easy to get through the first bit which was clearly rotten as. The second half was somewhat harder and I could literally see smoke coming off the saw. I’m not sure it is meant to do that.

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With part of the lintel removed it’s time to put the new one in.

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While Matt is busy with that, I have made a start on one of the jobs he clearly doesn’t want to do. Clearing the other end of the kitchen ready to start taking the floor up. It’s not quite finished but I’m going to need Matt’s help to move the last bits.

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Time for rugby. Best get changed first, I’m not sure that my current top is appropriate. What a match. Considering we were essentially playing France’s B team they gave us one hell of a run for our money. They’re going to be a real force to reckon with at the next World Cup.

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Rugby over and it’s time for dinner. The one sad piece of news today was the death of Murray Walker, the name alone brings back a whole host of memories of my childhood watching motor racing (many while waiting for my dad to take me to the station to go out with my friends). Nobody has ever had quite his skill of messing up a race for a driver as Murray did, announcing they’d won and then reliably watching a catastrophic failure inches from the finish line. He’d had a good innings at 97 but still a great man.

Matt is already in jammies but since I’ve had such a good day I take on another job that he has been putting off. Clearing up the basement. It might not look like much, however it was a mix of tile, brick and cement so had to be sorted by hand as it was cleared. A little over an hour and it was finally done.

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My back aches now so I’m off to join Matt on the sofa, watch some TV and update the blog. Night all.

[13 Mar 2021]

Sunday

Another great start day. Woke up about 11:30 and then got to watch an episode of Doctors before I went to help Matt. He didn’t even come to check on me. I timed it perfectly though as he was just about ready for my help. He’s made the holes at either end so time to measure up and get the beam cut.

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We’re going to need to have a bit of a tidy up to be able to manoeuvre the beams around, thankfully the rather large hole does mean that we won’t have to try to get it down the stairs. The basement hasn’t been this tidy in quite some time!

With the central beam in place it’s ready to be bolted to the old one. Unfortunately they only had 3 bolts in stock so will have to go back to the store tomorrow to get some more.

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Quick walk around the garden before we get back to work. While the ‘cherry’ tree is dropping all it’s leaves another tree is just starting to blossom – I hope it doesn’t get ruined by the impending negative temperatures, snow and sleet. Not sure what the red/yellow one is that looks like it should bloom in the next week.

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Back to work and the next job is the joists. The first one didn’t go quite to plan and required some extra padding, Since the old beams are a bit warped each one is going to have to be moulded slightly differently so that it gets maximum contact on the beams.

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From some bits of newspaper embedded in the concrete it looks as though the previous floor was laid sometime in July 1970. With that in mind, I left a little note for the next time the flooring is taken up, hopefully not for another 50+ years.

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3 main joists in and time for a break and a glass of wine.

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Added a couple of extra joist hangers to support some of the old joists before finally adding the extra bit across the old hearth.

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With all the woodwork done for the day it’s time to get to work on taking up Matt’s new pair of work trousers. I ran out of energy once they were pinned though so that’s going to have to wait for another day when I can be bothered to go and get the machine up from the basement.

Rang mum to wish her Happy Mothers Day before settling down for dinner. Time to relax and get some of those posts finished from last week before bed as I’m a full week behind now.

[14 March 2021]