Another 'Restoration' programme

[Feltwell]

She looked like a bulldog chewing a wasp

Penners - I am quite shocked at you using such a vulgar expression. Don't you know that in polite society the correct expression is "a face like a Miller's horse licking sh*& off a thistle"? :wink:

I am of course joking and not referring in any way to the lady in question, as a) it would be highly offensive and b)I haven't seen the programme. Just my luck to miss the one really, by the sound of it, decent episode!!

 

[Sue Wilkinson]

Just my luck to miss the one really, by the sound of it, decent episode!!

I watched it this afternoon on BBC iPlayer.

Sue

 

[Penners]

the correct expression is "a face like a Miller's horse licking sh*& off a thistle"?

Oh, the joy of our colourful mother tongue! I shall remember that one, Feltwell (if only I knew what the asterisked word is).

 

[Feltwell]

(if only I knew what the asterisked word is).

Indeed. 'Scuse my French.

 

[robgil]

Beany is having a go at an old but very nice Victorian house tonight. Beautiful iron and lead light windows are getting a 20k refit because they are draughty :shock: , this should be interesting.
Oh , and she's preggers again. :lol:

 

[Feltwell]

Oh, the joy of our colourful mother tongue!

One just for you Penners - completely genuine, I've just spotted this on our local Freegle site. Who says that standards of written English are slipping?

hi anyone got a free piece suit in gd condion thay no longer need only moveing in 2 a flat and need one if anyone could help i can collect only if in woodside or around that

 

[jocelyn plummer]

I too enjoyed Culverton Manor, it was good to share in the owners' enthusiasm. Of course not too far away from here!
Glad Stanwick has escaped our expert eyes as it belongs to the Son of a friend of mine!!!!!

 

[Sue Wilkinson]

I too enjoyed Culverton Manor, it was good to share in the owners' enthusiasm. Of course not too far away from here!
Glad Stanwick has escaped our expert eyes as it belongs to the Son of a friend of mine!!!!!

Stanwick - was that the chap who kept on about juggling plates? That too was a nice house but I didn't like some of what they did to it. It was all a bit too "hooray Henry" for me.

Where do all these people get their money from!? It's shocking how much some of them seem to have made. Like the chap who spent over 10K on a pretty awful desk!

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Where do all these people get their money from!? It's shocking how much some of them seem to have made. Like the chap who spent over 10K on a pretty awful desk!

There was no "pretty" about it, it was just awful...

 

[Penners]

Who says that standards of written English are slipping?

I don't remember saying that they're slipping.

Plummeting off a cliff, perhaps....

 

[Penners]

Interesting that nobody seems to have any comments on the last programme in this series. The Welsh blokey and his woman who...er... "rescued" an important house in Pembroke.

I've put the above word in quotes, because I don't really know how to react to what he did. The house was - no other word for it - a ruin. He bought it with every penny he possessed and then spent whatever disposable cash he had on it. Consequently, all he managed to do with one wing of the building was:

* Install a roof
* Pour a concrete floor
* Fit a front door and several windows (made, I believe, out of the world's last few iroko trees) with very nice slate sills made out of an old water tank.
* Bung a four-poster bed and a chaise longue into the place for the benefit of CQ's final "revelation" scene.

The above may all sound rather cynical, but I do actually admire what the chap managed to achieve on a budget of just about zero (apart from the cost of the new door and windows). He managed to halt the decay of one part of the building, probably in the nick of time. But - short of winning the lottery - I'm afraid I couldn't see any way that he's ever going to restore the whole building to a genuinely conservable state, for posterity. He's given himself and his girlfriend a rough-and-ready place to live in a beautiful location, but I can't see the work on the building ever being completed.

I do hope I'm wrong.

 

[Moo]

I only caught the end of that programme, so can only really register the jolt I felt when Ms Quentin referred in passing to the concrete floor. In the light of his cash-flow problems, was there any reason why he didn't put in a suspended wooden floor?

 

[Penners]

I assume that the concrete option was cheaper. I also think that the chap wasn't really conservation-literate (however patronising that may sound). He just loved that particular house and location.

He did install a new first floor, using boards that he'd bought from a demolition (a school, as I recall).

 

[Moo]

He did install a new first floor, using boards that he'd bought from a demolition (a school, as I recall).

So he only took that (more expensive?) option because it would have been rather difficult to instal a concrete floor up there?

 

[Penners]

I drew that logical conclusion!

A concrete upstairs floor is not impossible, though: http://www.aircrete.co.uk/buildingwith/floors.asp

 

[jocelyn plummer]

I had a sneeking admiration for him, but the concrete floor was a bit of a shock! Still, good on him, it just goes to show that one can do without a lot of things and have a lovely (part finished) abode! It will be interesting to see what progress if any when Caroline does a re-visit one year on---

 

[tobydog]

The chap grew up locally and said that he clambered up the walls and throught the ivy as a young lad. It would have looked then as it did when he bought it because it's been a ruin (without a roof) for over 100 years. He clearly loves the house and probably doesn't care if he never completely finishes it so long as it's his and his partners home. There have been a couple of houses in this new series where people have thrown over seven figures at a house (as this one probably needs) but they are more likely to move than this chap (who can hardly rub two pennies together) ever would be.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

I thought it was, in many respects, the perfect project for some people - amazingly there seemed to be no drawn or photographic evidence of how it had been (even falling into ruin in the 1890s, I'd expect a picture of it in its heyday to have survived).
By some people, I mean those who buy an old house and try to turn it into a new one - here, for once, was a genuine opportunity to do that because only the outer walls survived. So it was a bit disappointing to see the excess of varnish, and the BandQ balusters guarding the "raised seating area", and the hints that it will end up as someone's attempt to do an "old" house restoration on the cheap (I admit, the front door wasn't cheap, but it looked it). But it's saved, and as long as it's not taken as the model for every subsequent restoration, that's fine.
Nice insight too into how we Welsh will take a petty grudge to extremes, and bankrupt ourselves rivalling the nobs across the river.
It also did a lot to show that you can camp out in a ruin while you decide what to do with it.
But little Miss Pwe-Waphaelite Histowian deserves an award for being the most annoying TV expert this year. Looks of vapouring mock-terror at what must in reality have been a very dreadful mining disaster do not a pleasant sight make.

 

[Jellyfire]

Although I'm not entirely sure it could be called a restoration, I must admit feeling a certain admiration.

Taking what can only be described as a ruin and making it into a liveable (well almost) home again. I'm sure the concrete floor is not the ideal solution, but then after being a ruin for the best part of a century obviously nobody else was going to be stopping it decaying further, so it's hard to criticise anything he did to make it functional again really.

I suppose you could even argue that by using old oak lintels that had washed up on the shore, floorboards from the demolished village hall and slate from an old water tank that it was a much more honest restoration and truly vernacular , compared to those of us who are buying European green oak and reclaimed quarry tiles from etc. for repairs?

Saying that though not sure I'd want to live in it though, not just yet anyway! 

 

[Penners]

But little Miss Pwe-Waphaelite Histowian deserves an award for being the most annoying TV expert this year.

Hear, hear to that! (Except that I withdraw my endorsement from the word "expert". How expert do you have to be to look up stuff in books?).