Meanwhile the other en-suite bathroom has become a builders refuge

But at least the new wet room is coming together well.

Finally, we are making progress in decorating the top floor, with carpet underlay down, it starts the feel like a room.

All these problems with the building have put us a few months behind. Grrr.

...and the South wall has been tanked and rebuilt, ready for plastering (once it dries)

Having fixed the roof leaks, the new ceiling has gone up. Looking North this time.

Whilst all the work is going on on the floor above, we are still making progress with the bathroom.

Pipes are being run for the new shower, whose drains will be sat below floor level.

The end wall being rebuilt, ready for the damp proofing to be applied

The ceiling above the newly found rot has also suffered terrible leaks at some stage, but it is all dry now, and we could not recreate them. Quite likely to be the same gutter problem.

Uh-oh.

More rot found in a different corner, behind a skirting board.

Fortunately, this was found to be old and dead. But just to be safe, the new skirting boards will be treating just in case.

The top floor of the tower looking very sorry for itself. The end wall has had to be cleaned back to the brick, before being sprayed for the root and woodworm, and then being retanked, and rebuilt.

The ceiling has all come down, allowing inspection of the roof leak.

After much trials with a hose on the roof, we narrowed it down to, of all stupid things, the gutters being blocked, allowing water to overflow under the lead and cascade down the walls.

Fortunately, this leak also explained three other patches of persistent damp in the castle.

All this expense just because gutters were not kept clear....

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.

Whilst all this is going on, we took the opportunity to remove the old bathroom and tiny utility room by the old front door, creating the space for the new kitchen.

We now officially live in a building site.

Years of limescale didn't help, as modelled by John the builder (Big Dave's brother)

And all this work was caused by this - a drain that had been allowed to fill up with silt and stones over many years. The rainwater from the roof just poured into the walls, rusting the steel bars, and destroying the concrete.

Regular cleaning of the drains would have save all this.

Ho hum.

The patchwork of repairs almost ready to be sanded and painted.

Don't worry, the lovely trail of rust under the (hideous) outside light will also be fixed.

Meanwhile, work on reshaping the parapets continues in the sun

The whole demolition exercise took a few days with a couple of these demolition chisels going, and made a complete mess of the stairs. (And this is after they had cleaned up a lot)

I don't think we'll be keeping the stair carpet.

The last bit of the concrete lintel being dug out. It is these reinforcing bars which have rusted and exploded the concrete, so we are sure to get them completely removed.

So, as we had caclulated, the lintel (at this point) is only holding up about an inch or two of concrete, under the gulleygoing around the tower roof. It is holding itself up with no assistance (for now).

Meanwhile, Big Dave (the boss-man builder) is filling some cracks outside, leaving his boys to do the dirty (and noisy) work

So the left hand side of the lintel has been taken out, and roof has stayed up - so far so good.

The offending (failing) lintel is propped up on Acro props. This is the point that we hope the lintel is not holding up the granite parapet wall, as there is no way a few bits of timber would hold up the that tonnage!

However we had our figures checked by a structural engineer, so now is the moment of truth, as we cut away part of the lintel, and see what it is holding up.

Raking out the cracks on the parapet wall. Large chunks of render come off in your hand, as the water and salt has got underneath them over the years.

I did my own little bit of painting too

Sample pots of Farrow & Ball, as we need to decide on colours fairly quickly. Fortunately, it's all white or magnolia inside (and the same outside).

Even the rusty beading around the bin store was treated

Finishing the rendering outside, ready for painting tomorrow

After doing a little bit of inside work to prepare for removing the lintel, the rest of the day was spent outside. We will wait until Monday before starting with the noisy demolition hammer.

Render removed to get access to RHS of lintel - the black stuff is old damp proofing

Ceiling removed to get clear access to lintel

The work area screened off

The work area. The plastic is taped top and bottom as well, to keep the dust down

Stairway sealed off with plastic and a dustsheet. Note the door screwed to the ceiling!

Internal wall removed at top of stairs

Internal walls around stairs removed

The skip has arrived