Day Three

A bit of a mixed day today... It was the first working day since we received the keys and so it was the first opportunity we had to get some trade people in.

The first visit of the day was a builder/ roofer/ damp specialist/ plasterer (at 8:30 in the morning!!). We took him around the house, showing him our worry points: the damp, the fireplace, some more damp... Once he'd seen inside he got his ladders from the van, leant them against the wall and nice-as-you-like scaled them and climbed onto the flat roof. He spent a couple of minute poking around and then shouted down to see if I wanted to go up. I had to decline on the grounds that I didn't want to make my wife worry... A few minutes later and he was back on the ground with several photos of some problem areas... The good news was that the roof as a whole wasn't too bad, the bad news was that there was a patch with some water underneath. Also the chimney had barely any mortar left and would need re-pointing (this was potentially the cause of the damp at the base of the chimney and in the roof. There were a few tiles which had slipped out of place but he rather kindly put them back for us! Lastly he commented that the join to the neighbours roof was rather odd in the fact that there was simply some lead flashing rather than the typical valley. A series of rather scary quotes later and he was on his way.

We did a quick skip-trip and then spent the rest of the morning carrying on with paper stripping in separate rooms this time. I was tackling the roof and have to say it really is back breaking work...

After lunch we had the second trade visit of the day, an electrician. As he is a friend we value and trust his judgement. The downside of it all is that it's potentially going to be easier to completely rewire the whole house! Another scary quote...

We had a reasonably early finish for the day but had a lovely surprise just before we left. Some of our neighbours came to introduce themselves brandishing a bottle of wine! We would have been more than content that some people had come to say hello, but free wine gains instant favour!

So at the end of the day we're slightly nervous of costs but are sure that we've got somewhere we can be happy for many years to come!