Getting down to the dirty work.

It's good to swing the hammer around again.

And believe me, it needs a lot of hammering.

I wrote about getting a few days of work yesterday and just as i had hoped. The phone rang yesterday evening and the man that i had met in the pub on Xmas eve rang me to do some work.

Now normally when i make drunken promises in the pub i don't have to follow through on them but this man took me at my word and got my number. I was happy to do it and get out of the house for a while.

This picture above doesn't give the full scale of the pub but i'll take a few more tomorrow.

Now bear in mind that i have no construction history or practise at all but it's hard to get workers at the moment. All the polish are gone, all the good ones have trades and all the ones not working are the ones that don't work. People are begging for staff at the moment so he had to take what he could get.

The pub is very, very rural. Like really rural.

It was build in 1890 and hasn't been used in twenty years for business. It also had a shop as part of the building when it was open last but that is going too. I though that i would just be moving a little furniture out to the skip but this place needs a full demolition job down to the walls themselves.

The building is massive with a shop, pub, lounge, kitchen, 6 rooms, stores and sheds out the back. All in a terrible state of repair.

This could take weeks just to clear the building and many months to make it useable.

It should be great fun. I started off the day breaking old furniture and clearing out all of the old timber.

Then I had to strip a wall of all of it's tiles. That took a while with a hammer and chisel. We moved all of the old appliances outside and found a few secret corners of the building like a staircase in behind the walls and a safe at the top of it. Nothing in it unfortunately.

Then the best part of the day.

They actually let me knock a full partition wall. It was some fun. Sledgehammer and crowbar at it for a couple of hours. The last time that i put a hole through the wall of a pub they called the police and gave me a life time ban from the place. This time they are paying me for it.

We did a few more small bits for the evening but nothing major.

I'm back there again tomorrow and will show you all the scope of the job ahead of us.

Lots more photos and updates as i get my hands dirty for a few more days at least. It feels good after sitting on front of the computer for the past few weeks.