our work

After another few weeks of impatient waiting, Allon (our plasterer) was free to help us. This was the day after and we watch eagerly as the plaster dries- you can see the shape of the new piece of plasterboard we put in to fill the hole.

dodgy workmen- who to trust

Two workmen came round to look at it and were unanimous in declaring that our house was so old that the bricks could now moonlight as sponges- they were so porous and... full of water. As the rain water runs down the side of the house, it was being sucked in, which was where our damp problem was coming from.

What to do about the issue, unfortunately was not so clear. One wanted to tear the wall apart, treat the damp and then plaster the wall again. The other wanted to fix the hole and put an air brick in and just put a dehumidifier in the room for a few weeks.

We decided to do it ourselves. We bought the dehumidifier on ebay and managed to persuade the church member who plastered our living room to come and do the spare room and teach us how to do it myself next time- we don't like being beholden to workmen.

the hole

We were actually hoping to get this room finished by the time we left for the Wells reunion in August, until we tried to cover the hole up (with more polyfilla/spackle) and it fell apart. We eventually knocked it through to figure out what was causing it (although we didn't want to know).

another discovery

We also discovered that some massive blemishes in the wall had been covered in polyfilla (spackle for our US readers). Most disturbing was the one in the bottom corner, which was damp and disintegrated to the touch.

What you get with a 114-year-old house

I don't know why we were surprised, but there were two layers of wallpaper.

More Decorating

We decided that we could no longer hide the section of wallpaper coming off of the wall (and the damp that was probably behind it), so we had to redecorate the spare room. It used to look like this...