Work on our Diner has begun!

[Plainy Janie]

Dave and I saw the New Year in, with moans and groans, but not in ecstacy unfortunately, more like in agony!   

We were last night reduced to sleeping on the base of our bed, because the mattress had been whisked off it quickly during the day, raced downstairs and thrown onto the dining room floor, before a massive lump of concrete from an old chimney breast fell and possibly damage the wooden floor boards.  For those of you who don't know, we were flooded in August 2006, and the underlay and carpet had been rolled up and thrown outside.  We've had bare floorboards ever since.  Our new mattress arrives next Monday!   

[tazet]

oh my god. Not a good way to start the new year. At least you are both ok. I have an inflatable mattress you can use if you want until your new one arrives.

[VALLEYSBOY]

did the concrete just fall? or was u and dave planning it?

[Manky Monkey]

Good job your Dad's a builder Janie. Give us a shout if you need a hand -oh, & Happy New Year by the way!

[Plainy Janie]

The original fireplace and chimney breast had been taken down before we moved in.  On resurfacing our dining room ceiling yesterday, we peeled back some of the old plasterwork to find this offending piece of concrete. It looks like it has been wedged between two wooden joists.  Dad couldn't see what was keeping it up there, and he didn't fancy chipping away at it from underneath.

[Plainy Janie]

so we went upstairs, moved our furniture out the way, peeled back the carpet and underlay to find the concrete had a metal pole through it, and it was all just balancing on the wooden joists we had seen from downstairs!  Dad was speechless, he couldn't believe anyone would do such a stupid thing.  In his 45 years as a builder he'd never seen anything like it.

[Dave_postie]

any chance of demonstration on the finer points of sleeping on a blow up............bed taz,

[tazet]

  no but Marcus and PD can as they used them on the clearence weekend. 

[Firery Fred]

I once priced a job of removing a chimney breast to be told that a neighbour had had it done for half my quote so I went and looked at what she had had done.It looked fine downstairs so I checked upstairs to find the rest of it still there and was told there was no work done to keep it up,it was litterally just hanging there.I couldn't get out of there quick enough

[tazet]

Had these sent to me by my step dad Ross. I thought of you when I saw them Janie 

[tazet]

.

[tazet]

.

[Plainy Janie]

oh my god!!!!!!!!    Those pictures are just unbelieveable.  Its got to be computer wizardry, surely!

At least we know the guys who are coming to plaster our dining room.  Dave grew up with them, and one of them was a postie in Fleet for a short time.

[Manky Monkey]

I was a plaster's mate before I joined the Post Office. That's a plaster's labourer, not just someone he went to the pub with. When nailing up plasterboard, he called me Lightning -cos I never hit the same place twice.

[VALLEYSBOY]

pmsl