Huge chunks of rusted steel lift off the joist.

The good news (such as it is) is that the engineer is happy this is not structural, but we have to solve teh leak.

We decide to remove all the old ceiling so as to better inspect to the roof from underneath.

The rust has eaten away about half the thickness of the top of the joist.

This is clearly a leak that has been going on for decades without fixing.

Lifting a section of the rotten floor under the leak shows that the RSJ is clearly rusting quite badly.

Time to call our local structural engineer again, as this steel joist holds up the top floor of the tower.

Removing a section of ceiling shows that the roof (which sits just above that wooden board) has celarly been leaking for some time.

The thin veins of rot are hidden in the plaster, and seem to have covered the whole wall.

The news is not great. The end wall is infested with wet rot after years of damp problems.

We find a specialist in St Just who will come out and inspect

...and Timmy (the sparky) tries to understand the spaghetti of old wiring.

Whilst Young Dave (bathroom king) and Jason (chippy) take a coffee break, Big Dave carries on investigating the mould spores we found in the wall.

This is not good news.

The rest of the bathroom has now been cleared out, allowing us to sort out the electrics before installing the new wetroom.

Having cleared out what will be the kitchen, we brought the old ceiling down, as it was in very poor shape.

It took about an hour to bring down, and another 2-3 to clear the unholy mess!

We traced the cables behind the bathroom wall - good job that water and electricity mix so well!

Having fixed the structural problem, we get back to the planned work. Here we are starting to trace all the electrical circuits that run under the top floor.

Timmy, our electrician, used to occasionally swear loudly, which didn't give me confidence in the quality of the original wiring. This will all have to be fixed.

The new lintels are supported on concrete and engineering brick. The old pipes from the header tank are no longer needed, as we are moving to mains pressure hot water.

The failed concrete lintel has now been replaced by a series of 9x3 wooden beams

A brief hiatus

We took a brief hiatus from updating the blog. Our internet seems to be relying on carrier pigeon, with the telephone line doing a "one day on, one week off" routine for about 6-7 weeks.

It now seems to be better (although we are going to replace it), so here is the catch up.