After much painting and filling and painting and sanding and painting most of the walls in the house are now of a standard that I can comfortably live with and not be constantly annoyed at every time I walk past them. The fire places require a little more work....... or I could just buy a surround for them which would do but I would know what the hidden gremlins were and that just would not do! We'll see how I feel in the next couple of weeks.
Well I ordered a 6 Yard skip for the week with the plan of filling it up with the pile of junk which has accumulated in the garden and also the wall which seperated the kitchen from the dining room.
I also borrowed a Stihl saw from a friend of my dads which proved invaluable if a little unweildy to the uninitiated ie me! I recommend having someone who has a bit of muscle on them do it as it is tiring workand I definatley recommend buying a decent dust mask and not just the paper sort.
The wall in the kitchen was supporting a roofing beam which still needed to be supported after the wall had been taken out. To make sure it did not collapse I bolted 2, 3" x 7" beams into the roof support. These spanned accross the 2 adjacent joists and I then screwed 4 long screws through the beams and into the roof support so if it were to fall the screws would slow it down if not stop it. It's much safer than I can make it sound. That done it was time to take the wall below out. 
After marking out 3 lines on the wall where to cut and making sure I left enough wall to support the steel beam that needed to go in I set about with the Stihl and made my first insision nearest to the outside wall. The saw would only cut half way through the wall so it was necessary to mark up on the other side too and attempt to match the cuts on both sides a bit like the channel tunnel. My dad could do it but I kept cutting off track and so i have to tidy up the wall with mortar and plaster! he he! It was necessary
to vacate the house whilst cutting due to dust and once a cut was complete the building was ventilated for 20 minutes or so before continuing. This was more for visibility than anything else. The dust was just so thick! My next job was then to knock out the first section of wall making sure I left in enough to support the timbers above. Then I took 2 Pit props which were also loaned (permanently) and supported the joists that were now holding the roof supports on both sides of the wall, this later proved to be a little over the top and I ended up removing one prop in order to get the joist in..... a little more forward planning would not have gone a miss here. Still never mind every thing else went to plan. Once the props were in place I made a final cut with the stihl on the inner wall end and Lisa knocked out the remaining section of wall and all the bricks were thrown in the skip.
My steel beam had arrived the day before (7" x 4") and it took 4 strong guys to lift it into place. a little adjustment to a roof beam was required to give the necessary clearance over the pad stone but once this was done the beam slid in like............... well it fit really nicely anyway!
All that's left for me to do is fix the plaster board and skim it! then I need to paint it Damn Damn Damn! I'm fed up with painting.
