The greenhouse is finished - behold the raised bed (with dying plants) and the shoddy table made from bits of wood. And nails.

As you can see, the crap has already begun to pile up in the hall….

Unfortunately the varnish hadn’t dried before a cat ran across it. Belle is now preserved like a fly in amber under a layer of varnish by the kitchen door - it feeles quite nice underfoot; furry varnish.

The fireplace fiasco is now behind me, my scars are healing so, spurred on by my success with the fireplace, I have decided to expose and sand the floorboards.

Nothing is simple, however, and to be honest I am now worried that the new baby will arrive and have to sleep between a stepladder and a Black & Decker workbench.

The boards, once revealed, proved to be knackered - many not nailed down, some rotten and a few not even the right size. That’s fine, I thought. I’ll just go to B&Q and buy some new ones. This is when I discovered that nowhere sells new floorboards of the type that old houses have - ie planks of wood.

It was then that I remembered the architectural salvage yard I pass everyday on my way to work.

Ah, the Salvage Family…
It turns out that the salvage yard is a family. The first thing you notice when you meet Pa Salvage is the smell. No that’s not fair - the first thing you notice is his unfeasibly large head, then you notice the smell.
Ma Salvage was in the office; weirdly she had the same strange head shape - huge noggin and a bulbous forehead.
Manning (sic) the phones was little Daughter Salvage - what a catch! She too had the now familiar head shape. Imagine a dwarf who has grown to normal height but kept the same out of proportion limbs and head.

It is a big salvage yard, but the gene pool of a parking space. I bet birthdays are confusing in the salvage family.

A hillbilly	A Bearded Lady

Anyway - they didn’t have the floorboards I needed. Pa Salvage sent me to his brother’s yard in Peckham (same SE London Hillbilly feel, same smell, different location) and after some tense negotiations I got horribly overcharged for five nail encrusted floorboards, probably nicked from my upstairs neighbour.

Overall I feel a bit disappointed that I never met the Bearded Lady or the Snake Man but at least I found that incest is alive and well (ignoring genetic abnormalities) and thriving in South East London.

Here are the two ways you can restore an antique cast iron fireplace.

Method 1:

1 - Appraise the fireplace. Take a good hard look. Image how much better it will look without those 3 layers of black gloss paint on. (remember this stage – we will be going back to it later on)

2 – Purchase a small bottle of Nitromors and a wire brush. Read the label – it says “Will eat through up to 15 layers of paint”. Wow 15 layers! Shame they don’t do an even smaller bottle.

3 – Carefully apply the Nitromors as directed. Pay scant heed to the warning about ventilation and taking a break every few minutes to minimize your contact to the fumes.

4 – Go and lie down in an effort to get rid of the fume related headache.

5 – Inspect the bubbling paint, apply more nitromors.

6 – Whilst excitedly anticipating the shiny metal beneath, use a wire brush to remove the Nitromors/paint goo.

7 – Apply Nitromors to the freshly revealed white gloss paint.

8 - Repeat steps 3 to 7 several times buying an ever larger bottle of Nitromors each time.

Second Weekend.

9 – Go and buy wire brush attachments for your electric drill.

10 – Start wearing down layer 12^* with the different shaped wire brush attachments.
^{*this is the special paint applied in 1967, developed by NASA to be resistant to all paint strippers, especially Nitromors}

11 – Borrow a drill from your neighbour to replace the burnt out one you were using earlier.

12 – Return the neighbour’s now burnt out drill.

Third Weekend

13 – Buy an angle grinder with a wire brush attachment.

14 – Stare in amazement at how quickly the remaining paint comes off.

15 – Buoyed by the success of the angle grinder, apply Nitromors to the bits it was unable to grind.

16 – Without waiting for the Nitromors to dry, use the angle grinder to attack the bits you missed.

17 – Without taking off your underwear, quickly get under the cold shower to wash the now burning Nitromors off you neck, sprayed there by the angle grinder.

Forth Weekend

18 – Re-Appraise the fireplace – it looked better before you started didn’t it.

19 – Paint the fireplace black with a heavy-duty gloss paint.

Method 2:

1 - Remove fireplace
2 - Take fireplace to a fireplace restorer
3 - Collect fireplace
4 - Re-fit fireplace, stand back, admire.

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NEXT WEEK: Living with chemical burns