Every now and then you do something that makes you stop and think, ‘wow I have grown up a bit!’, I got that whilst cleaning the kitchen, again…
Once I got the bulk of the breaking out done, I switched to clearing out the rubble, very mature. In my youth I would have just worked on top of it, stumbling and cursing as I went.
No, it’s not perfectly clean, but the floor is free from rubble, I even vacuumed! Well, the main are where I am working.
Here you can see there was already a cornice, which made me sure the fireplace was added later. I still don’t know why.
I took this photo after cleaning up a bit and vacuuming, but I had already started knocking some loose plaster off of the wall. Heat from a fire is usually enough to weaken cement quite a bit, it seems it did affect the plaster on the walls, some of it crumbled off like sand. I continued hitting the wall with a hammer to take off the worst bits.
Comparing this image, with the one below, you might see there are chunks of plaster missing in the lower image. In many places a few well placed taps with the hammer were enough to have the plaster fall to the floor. You can see how fine it broke up when breaking off the wall.
Additionally I used a wire brush on the whole portion of the wall where the fireplace was, that removed quite a bit of loose and weak cement too.
Before doing any more work, I stopped again and cleaned up that mess. I must be getting old! It is much less of a chore when your work are is clean though.
I was so keen to get some plaster over this big hole that I forgot to take photos of the process where I made a board to fit inside. That way the plaster will stick to the board and not just be swallowed up by the large hole. This saves cement and time.
Here you can see a bit of the board. I was adding cement in stages so that it would not be too heavy and fall off.
I did take a photo of another hole where I did something similar, It’s much smaller so I simply broke up some smaller pieces and arranged them to stop the cement falling in.
This hole does not go through the wall, so I skipped trying to block it. Probably just because I got lazy here…
There is still much to do, I am not a builder so I figure things out as I go, sometimes it means taking 2 steps back and re-doing stuff, but I am learning as I go and improving.
I could have paid someone and it would probably be done already, but where’s the fun in that?