Minor Setback Today

It seems that I may have had a deja vue moment when I named yesterdays blog entry "Walls come tumbling down".

Today, while trying to lift out the lintel from above the window in the outside wall, it was dropped against the freshly built inner wall from yesterday and, yes, you've guessed it - wall came tumbling down. So, instead of spending today tearing down the outer wall and rebuilding it, the inner one had to be built again.

It is interesting that, after nearly 24 hours, the wall was still not particularly strong. It was built using the thin jointing method that I mentioned in my blog a few weeks ago. At that time I described one of the advantages as being the rate at which the joints dried out. That was true in the height of summer, but it seems to be a different story in the damp and cold of a Gloucestershire December. Part of the problem is that the wall was nearly 8 feet high and, above waste height, is not tied in to any of the existing structure. Until the outer skin is built and wall-tied into it, they are going to have to be very careful not to knock it again.