Owning an old wooden house is an adventure.

Things move, things warp, you find strange things have been done by previous owners, etc, etc…

This winter past, our roof began to leak. It had done so before, and we’d had it repaired, but this time was quite dramatic, the rain came straight through, eroded a hole in the plaster and deposited a couple of litres of dirty rainwater in the bucket I’d placed under the leak.

Fortunately it missed the electric cables and didn’t damage anything else.

The roof, like the roof on most old wooden houses, is made of corrugated iron, and with the expansion and contraction of the metal work, bolts slacken and move, and sooner or later something opens up and you have a problem.

So, we’ve had the roof repaired and the builders are now repairing the damaged plaster in the ceiling.

When they pulled down the old plasterboard they found the remains of the original 1880’s painted plank ceiling still in place

Not totally surprising. When we had the main bathroom renovated in 2018 we found that the original ceiling was still mostly in place, but had been so badly chopped about it couldn’t be restored, so we left it where it was and put a replica plank ceiling made of modern softwood timber over it to give it the colonial look.

This time, as the builders only need to replace part of the hall ceiling, I’m afraid it’s going to be modern plaster board.

Still it’s good to know it’s there…