Builders in the House 2 - ...And they all lived together in a little crooked house..

The builders were planning to have a day off on Saturday, but what they uncovered on Friday (see above) gave them some unexpected extra work to do. They told us that the house looked as if had originally been built by someone used to laying roads rather than building houses - safe enough, but a bit strange!

This morning the carpenter arrived to put down a frame for the new floor in what was the classroom. He discovered that because of the aforementioned road laying techniques used, there would be something like a two-centimetre difference in the level of the floor from one side of the house to the other. (He had a really cool laser thing like something out of Mission Impossible, except this one showed exactly what the problem with the floor was) Perhaps the road layer had built a camber into the floor... The carpenter said that he could compensate for the difference in level, but it would always be a little odd. I had visions of our new desks (on castors) rolling down the hill!

We decided to let him do the job properly and he promptly pulled up the remaining floor that used to be the hallway and cloakroom, and set about raising the whole thing by the two centimetres which will allow him to complete the floor so that it isn't on a slope.

More rocks holding up the floor.

This is the base for the new floor after the level had been raised. This morning there wasn't a two-centimetre gap between the big wooden beam that is the step up to the room and the black ceramic tiles under it.

And this is where we are tonight. I think the "under" floor will be finished tomorrow, and then hopefully things will really start to take shape.







And the title of today's blog? When we were told about the problems we had because of the way the house was originally built, I was reminded of a very old nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Google it if you are interested in finding out how old it is. I should point out that despite my advancing years, it was already very old when I first heard it as a child!