Nose to the grindstone

Or rather, nose to grinding the stone. For three evenings last week, I used an angle grinder to "carefully" shave a few centimetres off the top of the vaulted cellar which lies under the kitchen. Basically, the dome of the top, poking up into the kitchen, meant that we didn't have enough space to lay a proper screed and underfloor heating. We've managed to win several cm in places, and it's fairly even now, with enough room for insulation too. But extremely dirty and painstaking work. These photos are after considerable cleanup.

Cuts in each stone visible.

Nice and even. Well, mostly.

The ceiling got a bit of prep work too, with the old clay plaster being removed and edges ready to receive reinforcement mesh, if needed.

Some months ago

Today

The bedroom ceiling got similar treatment, not to mention the other dirty, painstaking work of removing layers of paint from the main beam (just like I did in the living room) using an angle grinder with a braided wire brush attachment

We did some tests with sand and trass cement mixes to choose new mortar for the pointing of the limestone wall in the living room, so ready to go with that soon.

And meanwhile, the back was being further transformed with the final pipework and drainage complete, and the start of the ground source heatpump being laid, the 65mm PE pipes that will lead to the collector area. I'll return to this area in a later post, as it's looking great now.

Pipes laid to the heat pump collector area

And finally, today we got connected to the sewage system. The former connection ran from the back of the house, but as the waste pipes are inside, the connection was brought out to the front. The local council were not too pleased, as the builders hadn't spoken to them about it (as they should have, according to the contract), and permission is needed before connecting into a mainline sewer. As luck would have it, totally by chance they uncovered an old, disused street drain that was already connected, so by removing the the old concrete shaft, revealing a 200mm PVC pipe in good condition, they simply reused this as a connection, and the officials were happier. Rather embarrassing, as we're next door to the town hall!

Back-filling.