Watching paint dry
Well, I finally managed two days paid work this week, not counting turning up at the rapidly disintegrating Scary Hotel at 8.30 am on Wednesday to hear that a new company was in charge of the site, and I couldn't get onto the site until I'd had a safety induction, which had been at 8.15. I was rather grateful for this, since I'd been up so late the night before watching the election, and on four hour's sleep I really wouldn't have been safe with any sort of edged tools, so I just headed home and went back to bed, then pottered for the rest of the day.
Yesterday we finally got the safety induction, which mostly consisted of a bored Health and Safety bloke collecting forms and flipping through a huge folder, muttering "this is bollocks, so is this..., and this...", while chunks of ceiling tile fell from the roof of the improvised canteen roof, as it was demolished. Every time we visit that site, there are bigger holes and more bits missing; most of the upstairs has gone, as has the huge Art Deco bar (apart from some plastic-wrapped bits stored downstairs) and the dusty stained-glass dome only recently revealed when the seventies false ceiling was removed (also stored away). Anyway, I got half a day's site work and half a day in the office on Thursday and today. This morning, I spent ages sanding down paint in the entrance hall, under that frightening rose wallpaper, to reveal the original paint colour. The hall seems to have been repainted yearly since the 1930s, in a remarkable range of colours, and the result was so pretty I thought I'd share it.
Every single colour is nicer than that rose wallpaper; I rather like the gold.
While I'm at it, this is from the ceiling of the now-vanished main bar.
Pretty, aren't they?
This weekend I think I'll be mostly domestic, with perhaps a little research thrown in (a visit to a former restaurant, now a bar, that might have a similar design to the one we are looking at now). Next week, I should have at least two day's work, and there is the promise of more and another interesting job on the horizon perhaps.
Yesterday we finally got the safety induction, which mostly consisted of a bored Health and Safety bloke collecting forms and flipping through a huge folder, muttering "this is bollocks, so is this..., and this...", while chunks of ceiling tile fell from the roof of the improvised canteen roof, as it was demolished. Every time we visit that site, there are bigger holes and more bits missing; most of the upstairs has gone, as has the huge Art Deco bar (apart from some plastic-wrapped bits stored downstairs) and the dusty stained-glass dome only recently revealed when the seventies false ceiling was removed (also stored away). Anyway, I got half a day's site work and half a day in the office on Thursday and today. This morning, I spent ages sanding down paint in the entrance hall, under that frightening rose wallpaper, to reveal the original paint colour. The hall seems to have been repainted yearly since the 1930s, in a remarkable range of colours, and the result was so pretty I thought I'd share it.
Every single colour is nicer than that rose wallpaper; I rather like the gold.
While I'm at it, this is from the ceiling of the now-vanished main bar.
Pretty, aren't they?
This weekend I think I'll be mostly domestic, with perhaps a little research thrown in (a visit to a former restaurant, now a bar, that might have a similar design to the one we are looking at now). Next week, I should have at least two day's work, and there is the promise of more and another interesting job on the horizon perhaps.