Boulders (Part II)

Yes, we were supposed to carry on with the stair hole on Thursday, but the weather turned quite cold, too cold for mortar and so we had to leave it until today.  It was also too cold to paint door frames, oil the inside of the door, plaster, etc, etc.  So instead we hung the front door (just have to be careful with wheelbarrows!) and put the kitchen door together.  It does seem strange to have a door to close at the end of the day.  Some friends came round this afternoon and knocked on it (at least the first people weren't Jehovah's Witnesses!).

Anyway, today we got on with the other side of the hole.  Bob went off to the shops for milk and a paper and then went to

borrow something from a neighbour, so I thought I'd make a start.  Half way through bashing away at the wall and pulling out big rocks I suddenly thought 'blimey, I would never, never have dared to do this sort of thing on my own before'.  By the time Bob got back, I'd broken though and could wave from the other side of the wall and we then got on with it together.   There were some quite big stones above our hole which we really wanted to stay in place and most of them did.  One was a bit loose though and would have been a pain if it fell out.  Luckily the wall strap (a metal strap we'd put in ages ago to hold the plate the rafters sit on in place) was in just the right place to screw into it.  So while I held the rock up and stopped it moving, Bob drilled a hole in it, put in a wall plug and then screwed the strap on, bent the strap underneath and, hey presto, the stone stayed where it was.  This also has the advantage of building the strap into the wall for extra strength.

Bob then built up under his side with bricks and we put the two lintels in, mortarred (?? think I've queried this spelling before and it still doesn't look right) them in and temporarily propped the stones above up with other stones.  Phew, no mishaps and we will now leave that all to set before we start bashing away at the stones below.

I need to ring Mum now and tell her she can come back from Swaffam.  Aparently, while they were building their bungalow, if anything scarey or dangerous was being done she would have to go into town because she couldn't look and she told me these lintels were one of those sort of jobs and she would've had to take herself off to Swaffam until it was safe!

The snowdrops are out!