Good with heights!!

It never rains but what it pours! That might be an old saying and another one is everything comes in threes! So I was not a bit surprised when a couple of weeks back I noticed a patch of damp in one of the bedrooms near a chimney breast.
As it happened the builder was here doing some work on the porch and took a look in the loft (roof space) where he could detect some staining which suggested there might be some damage to the old chimney stack.
Of course without scaffolding he couldn't be sure and this costs an arm and a leg, but had to be done. I wasn't very happy when I heard them drilling into the side of the house to secure the scaffold (this had not happened the previous times when we had scaffold erected). However builder assured me it was standard practice, and it would be made good!- we shall see;  every time I have something done it results in another problem so forgive me for being a half empty person!

Once the scaffolding was in place the weather changed and became very cold and extremely windy-not the time to be perched on a roof re-pointing and securing chimney pots which were apparently very unstable and replacing a couple of broken tiles. I had thought all this had been done when we lost a lot of the tiles in gales back in the late 80's.

Today is bright and sunny (although still cold) and work is in progress....I can't get up there to check, and neither can Embee so I'll just trust the phone pictures the builder is taking to show me!

Oh and the third thing, yes there is something else, will be for another post sometime, I hope, in the not too distant future!

Chimney pot update

After seeing my post about the Victorian chimney pots John g over at publog sent me a photo of theirs- I wondered where my spare plants had gone!!

Anyway it got me wondering who else might have an ornimental chimney pot in their garden or any other unusual item to display flowers. So if you have, how about letting us know by posting about it!!

Victorian Chimney pots make attractive garden ornaments!!

When we moved into this house 21 years ago we had to have the roof re-felted and tiled and during this work some of the original chimney pots had to be removed. I gave the builder strict instructions that I wanted them down in one piece and to be fair they only broke one. I had visions of these lovely relics being thrown down and smashed to smithereens (I expect you can see from the picture which one was damaged). I have seen these selling for quite a lot of money in reclamation yards, however I noticed two that were sold on ebay for about £26 and that's a bargain. The history of chimney pots is quite interesting. I think you'll agree I put them to good use each year when they help add a bit of colour to our back yard.