… that the fire wasn’t working properly last night. Just have a look at this little lot!
Yes, the chimney was totally blocked and the smoke had no possible way of reaching the outside, except via the door and the air vents of the stove.
I consequently dismantled all of the tubing and spent over an hour cleaning everything out. And it certainly needed it too. In places it was solidly blocked.
The upshot of this all is that the small fire that I had this evening was burnt up in half an hour and the temperature had risen from 14.2°C to … errr … 34°C, and all in half an hour too. The food tonight was cooked in seconds instead of the usual couple of hours.
All in all, it was a very worthwhile exercise, cleaning the chimney. And I’m glad that I did too, because during the night we had a severe frost, the first of the year and the temperature had dropped to minus 2°C outside (lucky that I had plenty of residual heat in here). That also meant that we had one of these Alpine winter days today – not a single cloud in the sky all day. The first day like this for ages and the batteries are now fully charged at last.
I spent the rest of the working day on the floor. Not horizontally of course, although I did have my moments. I recut some of the horizontals for the stairs on the lower part of the staircase so that they are flush with the uprights of the stud walls. And I am well-impressed with the Ryobi plus one percussion screwdriver. That drove the big long screws home in no time – much better that with the normal screwdriver.
For lunch, I made some hummus again. This time with olives and tomatoes, and a bit more water and oil so that it was a little more damp than before. And it did taste good too.
After that, I fitted the riser for the lowest stair on the staircase, and then fitted the second layer of flooring behind it. Finally, I fitted the two pieces of plasterboard that go there.
Tomorrow, I’ll fill the screwheads in the plasterboards that I fitted today, sand them off and then fit the treads for the stairs. Once they are done, I can varnish the flooring in there and then I’ll have a couple of shelves for storage.
