Starting the wall in Sandra's office

The brick fire wall originally served as a fire break between the hay barn (agricultural use only accordingly to the planning office) and the house itself. Because those were two separate 'uses', there had to be a fire wall between them. When we went to get planning permission, the main issue was convincing the planning office to convert the agricultural use into domestic use - i.e. meaning that the entire house would be domestic. When the planning office approved our plans the fire wall became redundant as a fire wall. It still separates the living room/kitchen/bathroom from the bedrooms. It is also made of brick - not the nicest brickwork ever (it wasn't ever intended to be seen or admired) - but worth pointing (like in the kitchen).

For Sandra's office (up in the gallery) it was hard to decide what to do with the back wall. Theoretically I could just have clad the whole thing with slabs and plastered it. Or I could have clad it in timber. That would have meant that we would lose the beams - which did have a bit of character. Pointing the wall and cleaning the bricks (like in the kitchen), however, wasn't really an option either, because when we were doing the roof, the top of that fire wall (the triangle/gable) had to be built up and flattened with mortar at the top, so the roofing felt could lie something and not eventually sag. Without knowing what we were going to do with that wall, and under time pressure, we built up the top of the wall without paying any attention to how flush we were with the gallery side. This mess means that exposing the brick won't work. I then decided to point the bricks and then whitewash the whole thing. This would mean still having the brick effect, and the white colour will hopefully look well behind the black beams.

The decision gave rise to more problems. Uli and Daniel weren't briefed on this when they did the wires. They had proceeded on the basis that the wall would be plastered or cladded - not exposed. Thus, they hadn't paid much attention to how they wires were buried in the wall. This meant that the first job (after scraping out the joints) was to hide the wired, deep in the joints. I also had to remove the sockets and distributor boxes, as they were too far out (again, they were placed for plastering, not for exposed brick).

Right now, I have the bottom bit of the wall pointed and the wires are (hopefully) successfully buried and the sockets/boxes set. The pointing is relatively slow going compared to the kitchen. The old mortar was in worse condition that it was in the kitchen, meaning I have to take out more of it to get a good basis for the new mortar. It looks like being about three or four days work. Other than that, I also managed to get the last two sockets working in the kitchen. By taking up one of the OSB boards in the gallery, I found the connection that was causing the problem. I'm going to keep tipping away with the pointing - an hour or two a night - and see how far I get. I bought the same Hasit 982 pointing mortar for the job (five bags), but once I get through what I have, I'll mix my own cement. The 982 is great for pointing (it keeps the right consistency for a long time) but too expensive at €11 a bag, especially when everything will be whitewashed anyway.