Demolition !

I've made a start on demolishing the old grange in front of the house. It was in a bad state structurally with the roof beams rotten and worm-eaten, the roof tiles all cracked and broken, and now I've started on the walls, I can see there is little strength in them other than the inertia of a lot of old stone walls half a metre thick standing there for a couple of hundred years - No effective mortar in them and a 4-inch wide crack right through from floor to roof in one corner.

I'm trying to do the job slowly and safely (!) and I want to re-use the lovely old stone elsewhere on the property. We had to ask for permission as we're only a couple of hundred metres from an historic monument but it came through in record time.

Here's what it looks like after a day's work. Nice how much its opening up the view from the front of the house. The old wall junction at the right-hand end is still full height and then there was the roof itself (which I had our builder take off for me).

Another hot sunny morning

Procrastinating when I should be painting the last set of shutters from the front of the house - here it is this morning (spot the missing shutters). Temperature currently 32 deg C (90 deg F).