The Fireplace

Our house is a typical Victoria terraced property. Built at modest cost in the 1890’s for local railway workers, compared to many modern builds, our house has a reassuring feeling of solidity: Nice solid brickwork and proper plaster. Much of this aura of solidity is of course just an illusion, as we are slowly discovering to our cost.

Friday should have seen Paul the Plasterer patching up the blown plaster in our living room (as per the schedule of works for HIP #4), and then skimming the whole joint on the Saturday. Unfortunately - as is always the case with building work - things are never as simple as they first appear. Paul called me up at work to inform me that there were more patches of blown “bad” plaster than “good”, and he was recommending that the whole lot should be stripped off. He wasn’t taking us for a ride. The bad news was firstly the cost – a doubling of his fee from £300 to £600 – and secondly the fact that he didn’t have sufficient materials or manpower to do the job until a week on Monday.

That’s another week of living in a mess and another week closer to my exam. It also means that our new stairway carpet (being laid on Thursday) will be in severe danger of getting trashed by plaster-encrusted workmen’s boots.

The only good news resulting from this delay is the fact that we now have time to deal with the fireplace. And by “deal with” I mean using a 1 kg lump hammer to pulverise it to dust. The previous occupants – supreme idiots that they were – decided to build a thoroughly nasty brick and tile hearth and decorative shelves around the existing fireplace. We don’t know what possessed them to construct such a tasteless monstrosity in such a small room. The room is 12 foot by 11 foot and the fireplace was taking up at least 10 to 15 percent of the available space.

Not anymore though: the brick hearth and shelves are now taking up the space of 12 rubble bags and are ready to join Stashers Pistachio Pants in the Great Skip in the Sky.

Vicster is extremely happy with the result. We have suddenly expanded our living space and the room, once finished, is going to look so much better than it did. As a big bonus, the removal of the shelves has uncovered a little patch of damp that can now be sorted and prevented from coming back to haunt us and our new plaster.

A very shiny silver lining.


A Random Shout-Out

One of the benefits of writing under a stupid pseud like Nobby Dobscrub is that nobody else in the entire world shares the name, so tracking what you’ve said, or what other people have said about you, is relatively easy.

Last week I typed “Dobscrub” into google expecting the usual magic newsgroup postings and articles to pop up in the results. I was slightly surprised to discover The Wonderful World Of at the top of the list (that means random visitors are linking to it – “Hello Random Visitor!”) and in the second slot, another blog entitled Star Lines.

What is cool about the Star Lines link is the fact that the blog’s author is a professional writer. Not only does this give me some much needed writing kudos [wink] but is my first piece of positive feedback from a stranger. Go check out her writing tricks for some solid advice with a smile.