Hey friends,

It's been a bit chilly lately! A good time to do some demolition work and for some reason I've decided to take on two projects at the same the time. So far it's what I'd call exploratory work - getting to a stage where I can actually make a plan so not a lot of detail to wade through this week. Let's start with the fireplace.

👋 Goodbye Hideous Fireplace

The last time we talked wood burning stoves was here. I put it off for a couple of reasons: 1) I wanted to re-work the ground floor floor-plan before committing and 2) the wood I chopped hadn't had enough time to season. Both of those are ticked off so this project is scheduled for the end of summer but I may as well get prepared early in case there are snags along the way.

Using my SDS drill on chisel mode, it made light work of the removing the stone facade. It's usually low down on the list of tools for a DIYer but for this function alone, it's great - like a mini breaker.

It was about 10 minutes of chiseling and 2 hours of clearing up but this is where I'm up to.

I thought it would be obvious which area has been infilled when the gas fire was installed but it's not. I also can't see a lintel but that could be behind the plaster higher up. So the next job is to tentatively remove a few bricks and see how big the opening is. If you remember, I'm also hoping to open up the brick on the right side of the chimney to hopefully find another disused fireplace that I can use to store wood.

It's already made the room feel bigger and frankly doesn't look much worse than it did before. More on this next week.

🚀 Landing Begins

Upstairs, I've made a start on the much bigger project of sorting out the landing. There's seldom a DIY project where I know every step in advance but this one feels more puzzle-like. It'll become clearer to me once I can see the structure properly - or that's the hope anyway.

I started in the loft by removing the rest of the loft-boards and the ghastly green insulation.

Down a level I decided it would make sense to do as much in the area closed off from the rest of the house (except for the gap) as possible before moving on to rest of the landing.

It's much the same work as I've written about before: removing tile, lath and plaster etc. so I won't repeat myself this time.

The problems that I'm up against are detailed in this previous newsletter. Essentially I have two beams holding up the joists which are in turn held up by a brick wall I want to remove. I think I have a solution to the timber beam (the shorter line in red below) which is to put in a new loft hatch in this area. The longer steel beam which supports the water tank is more troubling.

I don't know why I used a rocket emoji for this one, I can tell it's going to be a long, drawn out project.

👋

Sitting out enjoying a summer evening I seemed to attract the attention of a wasp. No surprise there, they are the thugs of the insect world after all. I moved away and watched where it went - straight into my air brick! Along with all its sistren.

So I immediately ordered some wasp powder and sprayed it all over the vent (I'm not sure of the equivalent of sprayed with a powder - puffed?)

Next morning - no activity. And no remorse. I'm sure I'll find the nest at some point in my renovations.

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We took a trip to Bourton-On-The-Water last weekend. A beautiful village in the Cotswolds, an area I wouldn't mind living in. Though probably not in a honeypot like this where everyone is looking for that perfect quaint english village selfie. We did enjoy Birdland Park though which was a quick walk down river. Let me know if you have any recommendations for areas, walks, things to do.

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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P.p.s. You can find all previous newsletters here.