Delegation

Once again, Siobhan's off (this time in Somaliland - which isn't even a proper country). In her absence I have incarcerated my parents at the Nunhead labour camp.

This is them at the slum on Friday, when I wasn't there to supervise. My absence may explain why they are looking quite jolly and having a break. Dad's 'dust mask on head' look brings to mind the tiny party hat of Mr. Jolly from "Psychoville".

Anyway, Dad thought our readers would be interested (as a break from the usual wallpaper monotony) to see some of the 300+ unexplained nails found projecting from the floorboards. I am told he removed more than 49 from the WC alone.

In the picture below, Dad is pointing to an area which he considers might be used to conceal a "priest hole", to be used for sheltering recusant priests from pursuivants, should this be required. I accept that this could conceivably 'add value', but I think the chances of there being both (i) a new 'rising of the North'; and (ii) of my converting to papistry, are both slim.

The photograph above is a view through the crack in the floor into the 'priest hole' area. Thanks, once again, to John 'Nicholas Owen' Blackett for this one.

To round off the pictures for Friday here's a picture of Dad looking a bit 'Lecter'.

Overall, I get the impression that too much fun was had by all on Friday. Fortunately, come the weekend, I was there to supervise....

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I also have an extensive pictorial record of the rest of the weekend's activities at the slum (mainly ..... wallpaper stripping). These feature an unsolved mystery object found hidden in the attic, the discovery of a massive area of wallpaper I hadn't realised was there, a demolition derby in the creepy kitchenette and, as a special treat, a picture of my pants.

Unfortunately, most of the photographs documenting this, er, excitement are in a 'portrait' aspect and, despite lengthy efforts, the editing software on this rubbishy website will only let me upload them as landscape. I will try and find a fix for this, and write another installment tomorrow.

Assuming I have recovered the will to live.

R

A Mexican Discovery

I really wish I could tell you that we did something more interesting today than stripping wallpaper.  But we didn't.  We did have a nice lunch in our soon-to-be-local pub, but that's as exciting as it got. And we listened to a lot of Radio 4.


This is me back in that awful, lime coloured, asbestos filled bathroom - and looking happy about it for some reason.  The asbestos must be getting to me.

More worrying in Rob's opinion is that my clothing choices have started to be influenced by the scheme in the flat:

He knows nothing.  Colour blocking is so in.  And if I didn't wear bright footwear, I might be lost in the mountains of wallpaper that is gathering everywhere and threatening to drown us:

I've finished the toilet now (that last wall is painted).

I have also tackled the stairway, which it turns out was originally wallpapered by the Aztecs.

How weird is that?!  We are non-plussed as to the actual consistency of this stuff.  In parts it's been plastered over, and the rest of it is three layers of wallpaper, some of it woodchip, and several layers of paint.  Rob thinks one of the layers was flocked, hence this odd pattern.  


That, or we actually have bought a house that is built on an ancient Indian burial ground.


More worrying, we are not convinced that we are even down to the wall yet - the stuff that has come off is really stiff, feels-like-slabs-of-plywood stuff:

But the wall that is left doesn't look, well, like a wall?

This has resulted in us doing a lot of standing around, looking at the wall, tapping the wall, scratching the wall, scraping the wall, smell- oh no, not that yet.  In a possibly-asbestos-induced moment of madness, Rob was going to eat a part of the wall.  It's ok, I stopped him.  

So, moving back down to the lower ground floor, I've removed all the paper I can reach.  And accidentally some of the wall with it.  Ooops...

It totally just fell off, honest!  So we appear to have a house that is being held up by wallpaper.  Hard-ass, super-strength, extra-thick wallpaper admittedly, but still.

Where the house is not being held together by wallpaper, the previous owners seem to have dispensed with conventional ideas of building construction in urban areas all together, and instead gone for a Welsh dry stone wall effect instead.  Which I appreciate, but perhaps not around our front door.  On the INSIDE.

I have also uncovered some more scary cracks, allowing me to post some 'pointy finger' photos, which I'm deciding I'm a fan of: 

That last one is actually to demonstrate what I first thought was an odd strip of black wallpaper (not so odd, you might think in this house-that-interior-design-forgot, I hear you say - but think again about the favoured colour schemes so far!).  But no, it's a lovely big patch of mould.  If you can say anything positive about a damp patch, I would say that it means the wallpaper comes off more easily.

So, we are nearly, but not quite, there.  We now spend a lot of our time talking about how much there is to do, and reassuring ourselves that it's not that much.  But then we remember the ceiling in that room.  And the patch of wall in that room.  And the bit in that corner.  I think that's the reason for Rob's pondering gaze in this photo:

And his very weary one here.