#let's hope their shriveled corpses weren't some kind of important magical talisman

[elephantbitterhead]

This past week, we've torn down the two cavity walls in the living room, cleaned the space behind them & removed a bunch of old plumbing related to the long-gone coal stove, then insulated and reboarded them. Yesterday I plastered my biggest wall yet and it turned out quite well.

Today, my next adversary awaits on the other side of the room.

The completed wall is the one we really wanted to get done, because it contained the old pipes & it faces north so it was in greater need of insulation. Repair work here also enabled us to seal off the only route mice have to the kitchen. But I'm glad we decided to do the other wall because it was SO UNBELIEVABLY FILTHY inside. Not only did it contain builder's rubbish from when the window was put in (🤬), but there was like 2-3" of gross old dirt & other junk at the base of the wall -- I assume that blew/sifted down from the loft over the last 50-odd years. We sealed up the connection between the walls & the loft, so that won't be happening anymore.

This evening I will be sitting in our sunny garden toasting a cleaner, warmer, and quieter living room. Then after a short break, it's time to finally level the slab & put in the new floor! We bought the boards for it more than a year ago. We'd have got there sooner if it weren't for the inevitable old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly nature of repairs in this neglected old house -- when you want to fix a major/important thing, it invariably turns out that you pretty much need to rebuild the room from the ground up.