Renovating a derelict property - Walls come tumbling down 17.02.13

Renovating a derelict property - Walls come tumbling down 17.02.13

Time to start removing the walls from the first floor, first things first and we have to try to empty the rooms, we have been using these as storage.

So all the paint goes into the back bedroom, this means once again a room that was almost finished has turned back into part of the building site.

The first wall takes approx 2 minutes to come down, we were left wondering how the hell it had ever managed to stay up, but it really is best not to dwell on these types of thoughts or I may panic and want to move out.

The acro goes back up and I go back to the tip, twice! I am starting to get quite friendly with the guy who works there, and he now helps me to unload the car when he’s not busy, toady he was quite busy and I had to make a stupid mistake, emptying the rubble bag into the skip I didn’t hold on to it very well and the bag went in with the last bits.

They are very strict with the recycling here and you are not allowed to put things into the wrong skip, and a hessian bag in with rubble is definitely wrong, so he comes over with his fishing rod and gets it out for me.

I made up for it though as I had memorised how to say this is the last wall in French, and I knew this sentence until I spoke to him, when 2 of the words came out the wrong way, but he understood. I think this is one of the reasons he is so helpful, on my first visit I hardly knew a word of French and now I am having little bits of conversations with him, he can see I’m making the effort, this will always help if you move to another country with a different language, if you try and people can see you trying they will generally make allowances and be a lot more helpful.

I also strip the hall wall of the remaining horrendous brick wall paper, once the paper is off, we realise that there is a type of tar on the wall, this takes hours of scraping and still does not fully come off, I also find out it is not a good idea to move the step ladder whilst there is a bucket of water perched on the top.

IT WILL FALL OFF AND GO ALL OVER THE FLOOR!!!!!!!!!!!

We have to try to stop the water from going out of the front door as there are all the bits of paper and tar in it, I hate stripping walls, and to make matters worse it doesn’t even look that much better!