4.11.2022 A hall by any other name..

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 Friday 4th 49F/9C. A very windy day is promised. Up at 5am. My back is aching as usual.

 I lit the stove before 7pm last night and burnt two split logs. Indoor temperatures rose by three degrees F. The soapstone cladding was still "red hot" at bedtime. [11pm.] Upstairs is still 63F this morning. It had dropped to 60ºF in the late afternoon. Too chilly for watching TV.

 It is now almost 6.00am. I'll give the hall tiles another polish with a damp sponge. The low "bridge" between the lounge and the bathroom was a good idea to keep me from walking on the tiles before everything set solid. It was only a short but broad board. Resting on scrap pieces of wood on each threshold. 

 It only needed to be tall enough to clear the tiles. I was able to work from it at times and lift it to work on grouting the tiles underneath. Working from the kitchen, lounge, bathroom and entrance doors gave me full coverage of the hall floor. 

 I quite like the subtle effect of the grey grouting. The brightness the tiles bring to the hall is all to the good. For sharing "borrowed light" from each, open doorway. I still need to mix a little more grout. To seal the edges against the walls and kitchen threshold. I did some of it yesterday but ran out of grouting cement. Do I really need skirting boards if the edges are clean and flat? I am not sure.  

 The main entrance door is still a major roundtoit. My home made door. Made from thick floorboards. Has worked for years but is dark and ugly beyond belief. It may be traditional but that means it expands and contracts with the season. I could just cover the inside with grooved, exterior plywood. Put some board insulation in the open spaces. 

 The plywood would stabilise the boards. Though it would probably need another layer of plywood on the outside. To stop the door from warping. By which time I should probably be making a whole new, insulated door from a plywood sandwich. The entrance door size is fixed by the old timber-work surrounding the door frame. So I can't easily adapt an off-the-shelf door. 

7.00 I have removed the bridge and given the tiles another wipe over. Then cleared away all the newspapers protecting the other floors. It is still dark and the forecast is for early rain. Which should hopefully be over for my morning walk.

The walls will need to be cleaned up and repainted in places. Where I have splodged tile cement too generously. Photographs show up things like this which no longer register to my glance. I have mentioned this before. After years of exposure to an unchanging environment. My eyes have stopped seeing the ugly bits. Like that dark, entrance door. Which dominates the images of a simple tile floor.

 Photos exaggerate these details enough for them to become [very] noticeable again. Anybody house hunting would be wise to take lots of photos during viewings of potential new homes. I did this for decades when we hoped to find a better hovel. One's memory is very short lived for details of interiors. Even layouts become confusing after a brief few hours.

 7.45. Heavily overcast and windy. I can finally prepare for my walk.

 9.00 50F/10C. Morning coffee is over. My walk was much the same as usual. Dodging the crash test dummies to the lanes and back under a leaden sky. Sheltered by the roadside trees and hedges until I reached the exposed halfway point. Hood up and press on into the buffeting wind. Not particularly cold today. Comfortable in my winter, walking jacket.    

 Plans for today? None at present. No pressure to go shopping. I might as well finish off the grouting in the hall. While I think about discovering my next project. I really ought to move the firewood into the greenhouse. That means tidying the greenhouse. Which has remained in stasis for some months now. Outside air humidity is often up around 95% at this time of year. My carefully chosen and tested firewood is getting damper by the day!

 10.30  It has just started to rain.  I have cleared a space for the firewood to be stacked in the greenhouse. Which meant discarding a couple of dozen antique architraves and skirting boards. Bought in haste from flea markets, slowly ignored and eventually hidden from view. 

 Cleaning the thick, rough paint off the complex profiles would have taken weeks. Probably leaving them hideously rough and ugly. Requiring loads more paint to hide the resulting mess. So no "antique" architraves or skirtings were ever installed. Now the fancy architrave/skirting profiles are available from many builder's merchants. As I have just done in my "remodelling" spree.

10.40 I was just going to start moving the firewood when the rain poured down! The view from the windows has disappeared. As the rain lashes the car like a high pressure hose. The radar isn't showing much for our area. Just a local shower turned into a cloudburst as it passed over. 

 12.00 It took about fourteen, heavily laden wheelbarrows to move the firewood. From the back to the front of the house. Fortunately the greenhouse has double doors in each end. So the loaded wheelbarrows could be brought straight in and the doors closed behind me. The rain was light enough to ignore. Though my fleece jacket is damp.

14.00 The sun has come out and is shining on the firewood in the greenhouse. Present humidity levels lie between 16 & 18% measured with the Morsø humidity tester. The split beech logs were averaging 12-15% when bought. 

 As it has been stored under a roof overhang the rain could not reach the stack. So it can only be the autumn air's very high high humidity raising the wood's moisture content. Greenhouse storage should help to reduce the moisture content back to the earlier figures. We shall see.

 17.00 48F.  I lit the stove. 61F upstairs. 58F downstairs. [9C, 16C & 14C]

 20.30 46F/8C. Dinner was a chicken and mushroom omelette. Stop laughing! It tasted fine! I just had a new idea. For an improvement in cosmetic presentation: Cook the "meat" and eggs in two frying pans. Then lay the "meat" loosely on top of a pristine omelette. 

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