Which means that I've really only got today to do those things I only want David to know about after I've done them (like moving tons of soil or digging out the patio or excavating my second sink)!
Things on my "to do" list include:
* Finish cleaning the fireplace
* Finish paint-stripping the second ceiling rose (well, while I've got the caustic soda/wallpaper paste & pressure-washer on the go it seems daft not to)
* Scrub some more of the floor in the grenier
* Wood worm treat the beams in the grenier, and the part of the floor in the corner so I can start putting the old doors there next time we come
I wish I'd known about mixing caustic soda with wallpaper paste to remove paint (also makes a good dent in tar!), then blasting off the gunk with a pressure washer before!
When I was cleaning the first ceiling rose (lovely, Victorian cast-iron) I spent many hours and many pounds applying Nitromors, scraping away the resultant yuk and rinsing.
Don't get me wrong, Nitromors is great stuff (and probably much better when used indoors), but the lessive de soudre (which we are fairly sure is liquid caustic soda) when mixed with enough wallpaper paste crystals to make a fairly gloopy solution is brilliant!
It can be as thick/runny as you like, and (unlike the Nitromors) doesn't start to dry very quickly.
I've left some over an hour and it was still a gel when I came to wash it off.
The pressure-washer is also fabulous!
Yesterday I stripped off as much paint from the second ceiling rose (not an exact pair to the other one, but like a king & queen pair - without the encircling arches, but otherwise identical) as had taken me many weekends on the first go.
Which is why the first one wasn't finished till yesterday - took about 40 minutes to get the last clinging remnants of paint off.
Mind you, there were at least 8 coats of paint (I know; I "excavated" down through the layers!) and maybe 11 (but I can't remember) on that one.
The more recent aquisition had no more than 3 or 4 layers - but the paint was much thicker. Looked/felt as though someone had plastered it first!
My other "Victorian clean up job" is the grain-loft floor: I've been scrubbing the walls (they look so much better, that it doesn't seem like a mad thing to do when you see "after"), and next to the newly clean stone, the floor looked positively horrid.
Given the amount or rain than we've had this week, an indoors job was really appealing - rather than wading about outside in the mud.
Or so I thought!
It took me 40 minutes (probably the length of my attention span) to scrub the ten boards to the left of one of the ties.
The water was so filthy I had to change it (I'd cleaned 2-3 square metres!), so I mopped the rest of the bit I was doing.
The scrubbed area was so much better, but so time consuming!
I expect it's the first time that floor has ever been scrubbed (it was never living accomodation, although that's what we plan for it).
Top tip: 150+ years worth of mud takes some cleaning!
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