17 November

While we wait for the Italian structural engineer and his Irish boss to send us the specifications that will allow work to start again it is maybe time for a little reflection. Nothing remains in my flat that was there before apart from the front wall, the back wall, the ‘spine’ wall and the stairs. Except… In the brief months that I lived there I quite enjoyed the fairly clever, extremely chilly, ensuite shower room that sat partly in what had been a corridor and partly under the stairs outside that lead to the raised ground floor entrance. It had a wet room (gone) and basin (set to one side for future use) various cupboards and mirrors and bits of glass (some gone, some kept) and a loo.

Now raised on a regal plywood pedestal I shall call this last Ozymandias. It is plumbed out but not in, meaning that the builders have to keep a bucket of water by its side that they re-fill from the garden tap outside to which the hose is usually fixed for when I water leaves. It also means that when I go downstairs I ‘ahem’ somewhat to give whomever it might be some warning because Ozymandias is open to all.

And by the way, I have a new favourite word. It’s noggins  - recent addition to my stock of builder terminology. I like it because I didn’t know it before, unlike padstones, and RSJs (rolled steel joists) and Acrow props, all of which are fairly self-explanatory. But noggins give no clue to their purpose and they sound cute. They are cute. Floor joists are the wooden beams that in my house run from front to back, evenly spaced (sort of) and given added bracing (in theory) by wooden Xs fixed between them. These are the noggins, of which there are rather fewer in my flat than solidity would require. This will of course be remedied by the Poles – when they get back.

When the last bit was uncovered yesterday I looked up and saw something interesting. The entrance hall to the building as a whole (raised ground floor front door) slopes badly from the wall to the house next door down towards the body of our building. Rubbish floors, maybe? No. What we saw was a good strong beam supporting that hall area - nay, a double strong beam, not rotten or worm-eaten - just wonky, skew whiff, at an angle...you choose. Perhaps the original builders weren't looking, I suggest. Yes, says boss builder. Or perhaps they were drunk.

16 November

Oh, woops. Maybe because of all the banging and hammering, or maybe not and it’s just one of those things, but the front door to the flat I am living in – the one that is not mine – has become almost impossible to open, from the inside or the outside. If you’re outside it you have lean with all your weight to get the key to turn. If you’re inside you have to hold onto the latch and lean back with all your weight (or mine, at least) to open it. Emergency call put in to builders, who are otherwise not here because we are still waiting on the structural engineer to provide his specifications.

So this morning, Bartek (he of the injured elbow because of football) and Sebastian (he of the few words) have shown up and are making a spectacular noise downstairs. I go to investigate and find them doing unspeakable things to the wrong door…the one to my real flat, which opens and closes without demur. I explain and then, after an hour and half of repositioning hinges, locks, planing the top of the door and all manner of other operations, the door to the top flat opens somewhat better than it did. Let’s see what happens later in the day now that they have all gone again.

Later: another structural engineer has arrived: young (by my standards), a bearded, dark-haired Italian in a black jacket with elegant toggles, black trousers, black suede shoes – arguably not the best gear for traipsing around the dust pit that is my flat. He has taken lots of photos and we have discussed every corner and elevation, and he is a good deal more nervous than I am about the absence of a solid floor on the upper level and the unevenness of everything else at the lower one. But I have hopes that he will make his recommendations swiftly so that the Poles can r

15^th November

There is a spooky silence. Silence in this building is spooky because it has become so unexpected. The entire house seems to have drawn an inward waiting breath. Wait on, I fear.

Yesterday was a day of phone calls, emails, exchanges of suggestions – though the Irish structural engineer didn’t make suggestions: he was intransigent. Either the spine wall stays at it is or you have the frame. Don’t talk to me till you have all decided. It was only when the Scottish architect looked again at the drawings the drainage people had sent that he saw the line of the drains dips enough for the steel frame to sit above it. All this was sent to the engineer. Now we wait for his drawings because until they come through there is nothing left here for the builders to do. Not a Pole in sight, although one arrived wistfully, or obediently more like, first thing only to be called off by the boss. This one, the one who arrived is called Sebastian. He is shaven-headed, tall, as entirely covered in tattoos as I can see (mind you the boss has a fair few),  and says almost nothing in any language to anyone. But he’s genial, and once he gets going he doesn’t stop. He puts the Duracell bunny to shame.

14 November

I’m pivoting in the centre of a triangle. At the point of each angle scowls a professional. The builder (Polish) knows what he would like to build to replace the teetering affair that likes to call itself the spine wall. The architect (Scot) doesn’t want to be drawn into discussions about structure: he does the pretty drawings but structure isn’t his province. The structural engineer (Irish) insists a spine wall is a spine wall that holds up the house (even if the builder and I can see no convincing evidence that this particular one does).

The steel frame that the structural engineer said would be the only alternative to the spine wall had seemed an option, until the builder pointed out that the drain that runs below ground (of course) from back to front isn’t all that deep down so the weight of the steel frame would be too much. If we have to resort to the frame the lowest part of it would therefore have to sit BELOW the drain which means digging down a long, long way. Impossible cost.

So I have been sending emollient emails throwing myself on the mercy of their greater expertise – anyone has more than I do, while trying to make the point that I would like to go along with the architect’s drawings AND do something to make the building stronger. Come on, guys, be inventive. You can do it. You know you can…and so on. As I write this, there is radio silence. But that is the only silence there is.

Outside young Rafal, wearing the ear-defenders I bought him when I saw him pounding through concrete with a Kanga hammer with no more protection than an agonised expression on his friendly face, is hammering down through the concrete outside the back of the house to create an external manhole for all that pipework to drain into. It’s effectively the last thing the builders can do until the professionals bristling on their respective corners come to an agreement. The Oslo Accords were surely easier.

12 November

Darn! I write, politely. I had emailed the Irish structural engineer to ask him what size of RSJ we would need to replace the partition that goes across the centre of the building – because the idea of doing it came up when he was not there. He has replied. Not possible, not so simple, nothing so doable or cheap. Because this is a ‘spine’ wall, holding up the house in the middle (you could have fooled me) just as the front and back walls hold it up, a single RSJ of whatever size will not be good enough. It would have to be a steel frame, and that will be well over my rapidly shrinking budget. It’s a shame, because I really did like that structural engineer who talks about books and exhibitions  - and now steel frames.

My next step is a grave error and I warn anyone doing up their house to avoid this: I went online to look up spine walls, and how best to replace them (let no one think I didn’t trust the structural engineer’s verdict). This is equivalent to consulting a medical dictionary. I can feel the building becoming hypochondriac as I read.

Lots of construction websites inform me that in Victorian houses the spine wall is made of brick, crucial for bearing the weight of all those floors above, which is why taking them out entails the above-mentioned steel frame. But, I wail to myself, the only brick I have seen in the spine wall we wanted to move was the undulating row of post-war after-the-event flettons, three bricks high. Why is this building still upright?

The hypochondria kicks in. Yes, the house has stood for over 150 years but there is an end point for us all, isn’t there, and houses are no different. I can hear the structural engineer’s pleasant voice, as when we drew his attention to the lack of joists holding up the walls that divide the building front to back, such as the hall wall. Oh well, he said in his jocular way. It’s been like that this long, so it can go on a bit longer, can’t it? Yes, but that was before we discovered the woodworm.