Friday was a quiet day on the site. The general builders turned up for half a day to clean up some stuff and put some supports in the living room for when the broken beam gets taken out.We did a little work. Should have started earlier in the day, but there you go.
On the second floor (or the first attic level), at the top of the stairs, we plan op opening it up a little to form a landing where maybe we'd have some room for an armchair and some bookshelves, as well as getting some light to spread from front (from the dormer) and the back (with a roof window). First thing to go has to be the wall in between.
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| Before. |
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| After |
Looks a bit grim now, but with the timbers cleaned up and oiled, I'm hoping for a lovely warm glow. The uprights seen in the photo above are a little loose, so could probably go. We'll see. I'm considering removing the material in between the timber construction on the wall to the right, but that's for another day.
Other small jobs that are a pain in the ass are things like separating Styrofoam backing from some of the plasterboard we removed. For waste disposal reasons, they cannot be mixed.
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| Removing this stuff is not fun. |
And finally, this creature was found on top of the scaffolding. At least Lutz found it there on Thursday. I reckon one of the scaffolding guys found it high up on the east gable, perhaps behind the cladding that previously covered the gable.It looks like a cat to me, but it could be a pine marten, as we have them around too. Definitely well mummified, whatever it is. Poor thing. I was wondering if it got trapped after climbing through a hole from inside to behind the cladding.
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| Mummy 1. |
We found another mummy in the barn today too! Definitely a cat, up in a store room we hadn't been into yet. Bloody cats...
It was the custom at one time to inter cats in buildings to ward off Witches (Hexen?) and also shoes, to bring good luck.
ReplyDeleteI first heard about this in the West Country, here is a recent article re this.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5200089/400-year-old-mummified-cat-found-in-walls-of-cottage.html
Hope the House re-build goes well.
Thanks for the comment, Sid. An archaeologist friend in London also mentioned something similar at the time.As it was found outside, when the scaffolding guys were taking off some corrugated sheets in the gable wall, I had assumed it had gotten trapped behind there. Still don't really know!
ReplyDeleteWe also found a dried our Hedgehog in the house. In a ceiling, above plasterboard! No idea how it could have gotten there, and not sure if they would have put it there when installing the plasterboard, possibly in the 80s.
But another find in the house, that on research may have been to do with luck, or warding, like with cat in the article you linked to, was a child's shoe. I found it under quite old flooring in the attic space. I sometimes wonder if we should have left it there! :)