Mind the gap

Some work will soon begin on my house and with any luck I will remember to record it with before and after images.

The brickwork at the front is quite badly damaged, I believe because of a combination of rising damp plus a previous owner painting it with non-breathable paint. This has resulted in water getting into the bricks and having no way of getting back out again. Then when there is a frost the water turns to ice, expands and shatters the brick from within.

So I am going to have a damp-proof course injected into the bricks to prevent any further rising damp, and I'm going to have the damage at the front repaired.

There will be scaffolding up the front of the house and so we took out the section of front garden wall that touches the house to give the contractors more space to work in.

To be perfectly honest, I loathe this wall, so later on we will remove the rest of it and replace it with something more appealing, but I'm leaving most of it up for now just to define my boundary.

Next door's pebble border began to spill onto my tiles so we replaced the wall with some strips of broken concrete just to make sure they know we are being considerate.

It must be said that the wall was incredibly sturdy and I couldn't do it any damage at all with the sledgehammer. Thankfully D has more power in his swing than I do.