Damp, dusty day

Today started out rather damper than it had been yesterday - which, despite the weather clearing up towards late morning, set the tone for the whole of the rest of the day. With the rain coming down heavily at breakfast time, the decision was made for today to be another indoor-work day.

 

So, to start with, while Stuart went shopping to Frateschi's for plastering supplies, and I headed to the office, Zach and Holly cooked up a Tuscan bean soup for our lunch.

 

With the soup simmering on the hob and Stuart back from his shopping trip, Zach and Holly were tasked with chiselling out all of the old mortar from the little wall at the top of the stairs. This proved to be one DIRTY, dusty job.

 

Zach and Holly continued chiselling until lunch time, after which Zach was given a quick lesson in plastering before being assigned the task of plastering the wall in the downstairs bathroom (from which he had removed the tiles yesterday), while Holly was given a bucket of fresh mortar and started on the job of re-pointing the wall at the top of the stairs.

 

Stuart, meanwhile, took advantage of the drier weather and constructed our first cold frame using the pieces of wood we bought from Obi on Sunday, along with the old windows that had been removed from our house (replaced) last week. The result is pretty impressive - Reggie certainly seems impressed!

 

Zach's first plastering job.

Holly becomes a master at repointing.

After Zach and Holly clocked off for the day, Stuart finished the plastering, then finished the repointing and then started the mammoth clean up.

I have to confess that I did not enjoy today. I have never liked the disarray that DIY jobs cause within the home - the noise, the mess, the dust, the dirt. And these particular jobs caused noise, mess, dust and dirt in SPADES. I hasten to add that the tasks needed doing and that the guys did a fantastic job of them, and we are in a much, much better place thanks to their efforts. I'm just glad it's over! (Did I mention that the stir crazy Reggie and Winry spent the day tearing around the house after each other - just to add to the noise and disarray?!)

By the time I clocked off from the office, Stuart was still busy repointing. I made a token effort to start the clear up, but with thick layers of mortar dust covering every single surface in the house (including people and dogs) and the vacuum cleaner being uncooperative, deciding to be blocked, I gave in and headed off for my Italian session in town, looking forward to spending an hour or so in Rita's clean, dust-free apartment.

Just part of the aftermath.

By the time I got home, Stuart was in the final throes of the clean-up operation - he'd mopped the floors (both upstairs by the re-pointed wall and downstairs by the re-plastered bathroom) three times with three different changes of water, but both were still covered in smears of pesky plaster dirt. He looked wrecked, so I decided to pitch in and finish cleaning up the kitchen. Not only was the kitchen covered in a layer of dust but it also had an additional layer of grit over everything, as each time the guys had hit the chisel in the wall upstairs, a handful of sand and grit had fallen from the ceiling onto the work surfaces in the kitchen. (Nice.) I think it will still take a few more goings over of the kitchen and the floors before we are even back to a 'normal' level of dirt... but at least the worst of it has been cleaned up thanks to Stuart's superhuman efforts.

So, after two days of us all being cooped up in the house we are hopeful of some dry, sunny weather tomorrow - the sort of weather that is perfect for getting back outside and back to those terraces!