The chimney is finally gone. It took a few hours work this morning to clear the remaining bricks and then pry out the big limestone blocks that formed the base. They proved difficult to lever initially, as the base of each block was below the floor level. Once one came out, the rest eventually had the space to be pried out with the bar.
The base on the triangular side was formed of bricks and rubble. On the other side was a large slab of concrete on top of a metal plate. The plate made a useful hidey hole – lift it up and shovel in some of the abundant rubble that was everywhere. After cleaning the area up, we started building a wall in line with the existing one and filling in the gaps created by the stones we had needed to remove as part of the chimney.
While the wall was being built and some of the electrical wiring run, I attacked the weird paper mache wall treatment in the loungeroom. It came off quite easily with a paint scraper on one wall, as it was applied over some very smooth plaster. The next wall had some cracks that had been patched, with more paper mache applied over the patch that was much more difficult to scrape off (consequently some of it is still there). The plaster on the next wall wasn’t quite as smooth but with some coaxing, the paper mache parted with its host and piled up around me on the floor. I swept it all into a heap:
The walls look much cleaner:
The house was really starting to warm up by the time I scooped my paper mache into the bin before I vacuumed up the bulk of the dust and dirt. That way the floor was mostly clean for me to crawl around and prise out some more of the staples that had held down the carpet underlay. I removed about two dozen before we called it a day – unfortunately that wasn’t all of them. The floor looks much better without its carpet covering, though the floorboards won’t be able to be used as the final flooring. There is an odd raw board that sinks slightly (there had been a wall there originally and the board was used to cover the hole when it was removed) and a large section of concrete in the area that was not part of the room when the house was built:
We will finish cleaning up the lounge room tomorrow. Adios!
