Bit busy with the house renovation

Have been too busy with work and the house (was there Wednseday and Thursday) to find time to write a post!

Finally our eldest son (14yrs old) is helping me. One of his younger brothers had punched him between the legs about a month ago which resulted in a very tender swollen testicle (OUCH!!!). So he wasn’t able to move for two weeks and Wednesday was the first day he felt able to help. At last some help and company, getting tired of listening to sixties radio DJs

The wife wanted to have a look at the house and so we all went on Wednesday (first time she’s seen it since we bought it). The wife and the two younger kids tried to strip woodchip wallpaper from one of the rooms, but didn’t do so well.

The woodchip image to the right is around 5 hours stripping work by one adult!! Just wouldn’t come off with the scrapers we had. What is it with woodchip wallpaper, it’s the most ugly wallcovering ever invented, yet every place that’s more than 5yrs old I’ve lived in seems to be covered in it!!

Little update to this post: We’ve bought some better tools for stripping wallpaper, read about it under How to strip woodchip wallpaper.

I absolutely hate the stuff, I suppose it reminds me of being poor living in council proprties in my teens/early twenties. Give me a nice smooth wall any day over any textured wallpaper.

So they struggled with the woodchip (though did manage to drench a room in water) while we ripped out the second to the top floors pumbing. Basically the same as what I did alone to the top floor, removed three wash basins and associated plumbing. Cameron or Cam for short (our eldest son) is a natural at demolition, I suppose not that much of a surprise since he’s a teenager now :-))

Something went wrong on Wednesday, after we’d added two more push fit plastic end caps for the hot and cold water pipes to the second to the top floor and turned the water back on, one popped off!! It was very fortunate that Cam was there this time, as the first time I went to the basement, turned the water on a little and returned to the top floor (4 storey high building) to check for leaks. Had I been alone on Wednesday I’d have done the same thing and by the time I’d climbed the stairs to check, found the push fit thingy had popped off, ran back downstairs to turn the water off etc… we’d have had another ruined ceiling (we have some ceilings to remove/replace already)!!!!

Fortunately I had the presence of mind to put my thumb over the hole while Cameron ran back downstairs to turn the mains off. I was really quick so barely any water leaked out, probbaly a cup of water at most. We did loose the push fit thing under the floor though, must have shot several feet away!! 

So Thrusday we went to B&Q and bought copper end pipes and soldering equipment and fitted those instead.

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