And it stoned me

So, ladies and gents in the peanut gallery, I give you the house in all its dressed-for-work,  scaffolded glory.  I think of it as a sort of architectural version of the good old workman’s fluro.  You’ll see that the neighbour in green is also being reclaimed, as is the one at the end.  In fact the whole terrace is shortly (or lengthily), to be restored to its former splendour.

We’re now into our second week of work and already into costly variations to the project (cue flinging up of hands and rumpled sleep).  But let’s not mention that, nor indeed any of the hounds currently baying at the gate for money.  Let’s instead concentrate of some of the (thus far) lovely secrets the house has been revealing to us.  Such as, for instance a whole swathe of sandstone flags on the basement floor. It is, I tell you, fully sick.

The dining room, for instance, has gone from concrete, comme ca,

to this rather damp and grubby flagged wondrousness:

 Can’t you just hear all those stones exhale?  I can.  Sadly for us though, a small cache of broken bottles was also discovered in the dining room floor.  Almost certainly no more significant than people chucking their empties down the drain a hundred years ago, but the Laws That Be dictate that work must now stop and an archeologist be called in, somewhat expensively and time consumingly.

But wait, there’s more!  The back hall has rendered up its own flags, so we go from this seventies beauteous brownness

to this

Even the laundry wanted to join in and has gone from this

to this

There’s even more but technology, pottery-fatigue and general laziness dictate that it will have to wait for later.  Ron!