Buoyed by the success of the chimney cleaning Dad and I couldn’t help but get inquisitive and want to see what was behind the 70′s wood cladding. After all I’m 34 and I was a kid the last time this style was in.

We’d initially decided to wait until the morning to do any more but one thing lead to another and we just started having a look.

Dad with his trusty lump hammer as a crow bar started to “gently” peel off the start of the wood. We could see behind it what looked like a white plastered wall and with any luck we’d have a nice smooth wall behind. However this wasn’t to be.

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On removing the wood cladding we were faced with a wall of uneven and some what damp plaster. Since the plaster was wet when we removed the wood and battening had small chunks of plaster were falling away to reveal what looked like a very nice natural wall. At this point we really could have gone on all night pulling off the wood and picking out the plaster but I knew if we finished all of this on the first night then Dawn would kill the pair of us. So around 11, getting a bit tired and somewhat cold it was time to come back in the morning with Dawn as a re-enforcement.

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Now there was 3 of us to tackle the wood and the walls and while we took it in turns to chip away at the plaster it was Dawn who really went to town while Dad and I continued to remove and cut up the wood. Being mid March it was cold, really cold and this wood made for fantastic firewood unfortunately it burned a bit to well and as fast as we could pull it off, cut it up and burn it, it was time to start the whole process again. While we were doing this Dawn made great strides on the wall and given the first stop for tea she’d completed the first wall to as you see the wall below. This REALLY got everyone excited and motivated to continue.

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Dawn the really got stuck in and as you can see from the below pictures and got the 2nd wall done in the kitchen.

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At the end of all this we realised we’d got our first surprise with the house. We’d hoped we’d have walls like this hidden away but expected it to be hard to get back to or hard to find. The fact the house was giving itself up so easy to work on was a total joy.

At present we’ve left and will leave the walls bare while the renovation happens however the plan is to point them in a natural lime mix to keep with the colour and seal them leaving these two walls on show. For now we’ve stopped peeling back the walls as we had another wall to pull down and the roof on the out building to tackle. Since we were only here for a few short days we had a lot to do and we couldn’t stop and admire all our handy work, but this wa a really great job to get us motivated for the rest of the house.

Date of Job : April 11/12 2008 (will add to build diary shortly)