Lady Chatterley’s Liver

Yes, I’ve finished another room! And it’s the important corner room that is the centre of the West Wing. It’s only taken... wait for it... three months, thanks to the amount of damage in the room, and the state of the walls, that resembled tissue paper on a wet day. I’ve only got it done by burning the midnight oil at both ends.

This has of course produced a fair amount of chatter from the ladies, and the obligatory trip for curtains. Well, at least the Edwardian brushed silver curtain poles (which of course have to be specially ordered; as I’ve discovered in Australia, if you don’t like the white plastic version you get an odd look and people ask for a lot more cash) as opposed to the curtains. I’ll wait for Aldi to have their once a year curtain sale for those, and get some decent German quality.

So I can move onto the next room – the ‘new’ dining room - I’ve moved all the dining room furniture into this room, including making a monumental effort to move the drinks cabinet four feet to the left, which I’m pleased to report has been successful. Talking of which, it is a Saturday night...

Through the cooking glass

Sash window - as good as new

Let’s talk windows. Not any old windows – oh no, we’re talking about classic Victorian sash windows. The kind found throughout the length of Britain, but oddly rare in Australia, where few survive. Which might explain why people don’t seem to know how to look after them – they are a masterpiece of carpentry, and where the glazed panels are opened by sliding vertically in separate grooves in the side jambs, with cast iron counter-weights concealed within the window frame. They were created in 1670 by the English scientist and inventor, Robert Hooke, to avoid the problem of casement windows blocking narrow alleyways, and are so common back in the home country as to not be worthy of another look. Most people know how to repair a sash window.
Except in Australia, where they are so rare as to be individually listed. Alas, due to their rarity, it’s hard to get the bits to put them back into working orders, and sure enough, the ones I’ve got had the sash cord broken, the top sash nailed firmly shut, and so much rattle in the catch that the vibration of passing lorries had broken one of the panes. Mind you for some of the windows at the back the builders just gave up, raising restoration to new depths, and put springs in instead of the sash cords, so I should be grateful the weights are still there at all.

Before - with frame removed

I tried popping down to Bunnings for some sash cord – standard DIY supplies I thought – and the guys there tried to sell me washing line instead. I eventually ran some to earth in a renovation centre.

But I need those windows working – particularly the top sash. It’s designed to let hot air out of the top, and cool air in at the bottom. After a week where it’s topped 40 degrees every day, and not dropped below 27 at night, ventilation is essential. I’m slowly cooking. After a week, huddling, looking through the glass, if it gets any hotter I’ll have to let her indoors back in.

So – here’s the quick guide to getting your sashes back in sliding order, or How to Repair Sash Windows, and polish these puppies up.

Sanding down 150 years of muddy paint

Rip off the window frame exposing the sash weight boxes. Take off the sash edging strip, which allows you to slide the window out. Reattach sash cord to weight at one end, and window at the other, looping over the pulley. Oil pulley (you can’t do this when it’s been reassembled). Reassembly is a reversal of removal. Remove sashes. Sand window. Fill holes where some pillock has put little hooks on the windows for net curtains (why?) paint. Put catch back on. Enjoy. Do it right, and you’ll be sure you don't build yourselves a bag of worms.

Now repeat for all the windows in the house. As much fun as shooting monkeys in a barrel.

Tomorrow when the Wall Began

I’m at the stage of nailing the walls back together, now that they are full of this lovely absorbent sound insulation. This, however, is easier said than done.

As I’ve found from putting the planks back, they have to be in exactly the right place so that the joints match up – otherwise the wonky lines draw your eye in, and the cracks look terrible. There’s no easy way to do this, other than jiggling the blasted things up and down. I’ve tried nailing them in place as soon as it looks right, but inevitably one end slips. Consequently  I adopted the technique of leaving the nail head an inch or so proud of the woodwork. As anyone who has tried to extract six inch nails from stout timber will appreciate, this is a wise precaution.

There’s one problem however – the walls look like an out of work hedgehog. After a couple of painful contacts, I’ve learnt to go around the wood with more caution. However, this evening, the inevitable happened. I bumped into the West Wall, them was a rumbling sound, and the entire lot came tumbling down like a snowball coming down the mountain with a full head of steam.

So, for the second time in a week, I’ve nearly brought my life to a premature end. For my next trick I’ll set myself on fire.

The Fatal Chore – or the Riddle of the Sanders – Part 2

Australia – it’s a country where you rarely escape with your life. From the convict days of old, to just taking a pleasant stroll. If the snakes don’t get you, the spiders will. And so will the sanders.

Now I’m not talking about a rare type of marsupial found in WA: I mean the device used to get paint of wall. And ceiling. And everywhere else the talented individuals who painted this house back in the 90s decided to spray it. My trusty belt sander is now as battered as if it had gone through a war.
Tonight it was also very nearly the end of me – and would have been, were it not for a clever chap down a gold mine in South Africa.

He invented the RCD, or residual-current device, which disconnects a circuit whenever it detects that the electric current is not balanced between the energized conductor and the return neutral conductor, within the safe current-time envelope for ventricular fibrillation. In other words, if you touch a wire, it turns off the juice before it kills you. 

They’re not exactly common in Australia – or the UK come to that – and it took me ages to track one down. In fact I bought three – you know, in case two broke. However, I’m glad I did – for the umpteenth day I was perched on the top of an aluminium ladder, with the daily chore – or should that be the daily grind – of sanding down planks, when there was a spark & the lights died. But I didn’t.

Unbelievably, the sanding belt had cut through the mains cord, exposing the wire, but leaving a very healthy (to the sander, not to me) current flowing. The cable then rubbed up against the ladder, the live side came into contact with the metal lever, and a decent 240 volts flowed up my leg.

It sent goose bumps up my spine.

The Sound of One Hand Slapping

Now this wouldn’t matter if the house was tucked away in some rural idyll. Somewhere where you can hear the tweety birds rustling outside the window. Alas here, the tweety birds would get trampled underfoot but the 40 ton lorries which they didn’t hear because their ears were bleeding thanks to the incessant din of infernal combustion engines roaring past every five seconds.

If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut right out from under your feet.

In my search for a solution – and a decent night’s sleep – I’ve discovered this stuff. Acoustic insulation. It’s much thicker than normal insulation, with a dense woven mat to keep the noise down.

Sound insulation is very good for radio stations, but not something that is generally considered useful in a domestic house of mid-1800 construction. Which, quite frankly, shows a remarkable lack of foresight. Hence, they didn’t put it in to start with, and as I mentioned last week, pulling the planks off the wall is a huge pain, due to the way they all lock together.

I’ve spent days trying to find a way to get the insulation into the wall, while the thunder rumbles overhead: a noise that is drowned out by the sound of the rain, and the road as it thunders beyond the old well. I did think of wandering around in a thunderstorm with a spiked copper helmet, muttering that Thor is a pillock, and could he keep the noise down, but I realised that might make the neighbours talk about the mildly eccentric Englishman next door.
Part of the problem is that the insulation is thick, spongy, and sticks on the planks as you shove it down. I’ve tried putting some wood in the dark hole (which isn’t a euphemism) as a pusher, but that doesn’t do anything as the insulation is just too spongy. And whenever I put one hand up the wall, to slap the insulation into place, the killer spiders attack. No, really they do.
And now, I’ve come up with a solution. It involves peeling the individual planks off with a chisel, sliding two pieces of cardboard into the hole (otherwise the insulation sticks on the planks) then shoving the insulation up the gap, using a broom handle to push, and a bendy piece of wire to pull, through a drill hole I can then fill in.

Cold Chisel in Chewed Magna

I have pets in the house. No, the giant bird eating spider hasn’t come back. Nor indeed have I seen Lizzie – our Blue Tongue lizard – in weeks. Seeing the amount of rain, the poor blighter has probably downed.
Instead termites are becoming the terror, as I slowly find more wood that they have chewed on.

They seem to love the blue gum that the interior weatherboards are made out of, but are careful, pernickety eaters. They nibble through the interior of the boards, leaving the outside paint pretty much untouched. I had no idea they were there until I leaned on the wall and it just folded under me. The outside weatherboards have fared better, with only intermittent nibbling. Meanwhile the frame of the building, made out of good solid Tasmanian Oak, remains untouched. At least all the tin over my head isn’t going to collapse (Note to Ed: check this).

Alas all the new pine weatherboards that were put in just 20 years ago areas hollow as a demented chocolate santa, and are only fit for firewood.

That still leaves me with the problem of how to remove the weatherboards though, because they are carefully made with a tongue and grove so that the one above slots into the space of the one below, making a very strong structure that alas, means it’s impossible to remove a board without chopping it into little bits. Which, trust me, is very tempting. The termites have done that for the ones I want to scrap, but how do I replace them?

The answer, like with hedgehogs, is very carefully.

Once again, going back to the main theme of the blog – at least it was, many moons ago – of how to do something, I’ve worked out a technique. To lever out the boards I’ve found that running a cold chisel up its tongue will help it split neatly when I get it out, and then using that chisel on one side and a huge metre long crowbar on the other to lever it out means I can get at about half the boards without them turning into matchwood.

Then, to put  in a new, replacement  weatherboard in the gaping hole, the technique involves removing about half the height of the inner wall of the groove side, and sloping it at 45 degrees. Then, taking the tongue and doing the same with that, angling it at 45 degrees. Push the top one in place, lift it up, and it makes a reassuring click, and slots into place, without any visible sign that I’ve moved it.

At least, that is the theory, but I’ve now developed a look of horror at all the walls that need work. Some of them at least are not touched by termites – all they need is a bit of insulation. For those, I’m tempted to just slap some paint around and be done with it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm swimming uphill against the grain.

In the hair tonight

Or, how to get TV reception in Australia, part 2.
I now have my “remote and rural” antenna. This huge 12 feet long bendy monster can, apparently, pick up the slightest whisper in the air and turn it into clear precise picture. What it isn’t, however, is complete.

Thankfully it was very cheap, and comes in pleasant shades of blue and orange. Cheap, because it came out of the back of a skip, and was recycled on the notice board at work. I was delighted, until I tried to get it into the car.
As always, you can lead a gift horse to water but you can't look him in the mouth.
 After about half an hour of swearing, I bent the arms in, and poked the nose through the drivers window, running over the top of my hair. I then preceded to get some very interesting looks from drivers as I went up the M2, giving everyone the impression that I was just driving in the same general direction as half a ton of aluminium, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with me.
After a fair amount of amateur blacksmithery, hammering the various arms straight again, it works a charm, and can even pick up this quaint VHF stuff, despite the coming down like gangbusters.
It will however lurk out of sight in case it scares the horses, and causes passing aircraft to be diverted. I know the sight of such a vast aerial array scares me.
Still, I can now receive the ABC, and in the ensuing celebration, the beer flowed like wine.