The build work is moving at a snail’s pace due to various factors, including the rising price of materials and a lack of tradespeople. Our builder said they had lost many of their team which was making progressing any of the builds, including ours, difficult. They have managed to get someone in to further the demolition work.
Kitchen
The kitchen diner area is in a permanent state of disarray however one change was that the windows have been removed from the original kitchen wall and 1960s extension. They were sitting outside down the side of the house, a few had been removed intact whereas others had not come out without a fight and this was evident with the broken glass all over the floor.
Second reception room
The ceiling of the second reception room had been damaged due to the heavy rain over summer and the fact that the scaffolding had failed in certain areas, which wasn’t helped by the length of time it had been required to be there due to the slow progress.
The ceiling had to come down, it was original lath and plaster but had suffered so much water damage that it needed to be replastered. It came down fairly quickly given the lath is very small pieces and it made a right mess on the floor, imagine whatever had dropped between the floorboards of the bedroom above collecting there for 100 years.
Third bedroom
The ceiling also had to come down in the third bedroom as it was a patchwork of different plasterwork and numerous repairs over the years. It also had no insulation across the ceiling since the original build and was the only upstairs room which has 2 exterior walls with only a single layer of brick, hence was freezing during the previous winter.
Due to moving the bathroom upstairs, the internal wall also had to come down so the back section of the house was open. It was pretty strange standing at the back of the house looking towards the front and seeing the old toilet exposed in the original closet, and the lack of a wall separating the room from the corridor.
So now the house is more in pieces than ever and still not watertight. There are less internal walls and several additional ceilings than expected have been taken down (the first and second bedrooms and the second reception room).