28^th December

Scary stuff. Bartek, Sebastian, Karol and Rafal have installed the steel frame and they're taking down the chimney breasts. But because they can't yet position the steels to hold up the chimney breasts above, we're back to the Acrow props and boards. Where the chimney breasts are being taken down are sooty black holes. I have no idea what happens next.

Poor guys, though. There was a giant concrete lintel over the one on the raised ground floor - and the weight of it! They haven't complained, though maybe because they couldn't find the words - in English and/or repeatable.

Meanwhile I have been at the British Library. The Builder weekly journal of 1860 carries news of tenders, auctions, ads for things like special offers on mahogany flooring (lots of those), polished granite (for tombs not worktops), terracotta drains, and pictures of rather complex water closets.

Yet it is mostly articles, many of them not only long but verbose. The Victorians in the trade were prepared to read....and read...and read. And clearly, they expected their on-the-ground builders to do the same. So that the pattern books I mentioned a while ago were also hefty affairs with pages of detail. Next picture is the front page warning readers of the upcoming content they must master.

Inside I read about the bracing expected in partition walls, none of which I have seen in my flat. But to be fair (why does one have to fair?) the author was talking about First Rate Houses. His complaints that builders weren't up to standard only applied to being lax on the job for First Rate Houses. I couldn't find any demands made for houses lower down the ranking.