You know it’s not going to go well when you start stripping wallpaper and the wall starts moving.
That’s exactly what happened when we moved on to stripping back the middle room upstairs. Didn’t take long from peeling back the generic featured magnolia wallpaper to realising what was underneath wasn’t necessarily solid..
Tapping the wall confirmed this was correct and a hammer emerged (plus the two lads who thought they were missing out).
Turns out they had plaster boarded a fake wall in front of the chimney as a cheap way to hide the mess underneath. The chimney breast, which the surveyor had noted (for good reason) ‘appears to be supported’, turns out wasn’t. Not sure how many decades ago this chimney was taken out and badly blocked up but it was definitely time to clear it out.. with a washing up bowl and a scraper..
Soot and bits of the chimney had slowly congregated on the boarding which was sealing off the chimney. Once this was brushed out as much as possible, we removed the boarding to expose the remainder of the chimney breast behind.
Note: this is bad. The chimney should be supported properly, not just concreted together and covered up. Since we exposed it, we’ve heard small bits falling down the chimney and they land on the floor quite loudly, often at night. You can see the debris spread out over the floor. Looking forward to getting the builder in to fix this. We removed the other wooden bars but left the one that may be providing some level of support to holding the chimney there until we could get it fixed…