Getting Plastered in the old winery

The electrics are just as bad downstairs as they were upstairs. Large surface mounted sockets and large grey trunking all over the walls. This has all got to go.

this room had for many years been where the wine was stored, but none of that was left behind!

We work out where the new wires will be and this decides where we will be having the walls.

The electrics come though a specific point in the main front room.

This room will be changed into 3 rooms and a bathroom (yes we are going with that idea again) the wires come down in one place, so this is where we will have the wall, so that all the electrics can be hidden. This will make life a lot easier.

John removes a lot of the old electrics and decides it’s time to plaster the room. Again we had toyed with the idea of dry lining but we live in an old house, I really don´t want it looking like a new box. This is still something that physically hurts John, as a time served plasterer he always wants walls to be perfectly smooth, we have had the same argument in every house we have renovated, though they do not last as long now, John just has a little tear in his eye and a pain in his heart as he accepts they look better rough plastered so that you can see the undulations and quirkiness of the walls and the history of the building.

The concrete walls that were part of the wine cellar are removed and the room is plastered with lime and the reveals are made up.

Life would be so much more simple if we had square windows, but we don’t, we have arches and as plastering is Johns biggest skill, he is able to repair the arches with no problem. (I can say that as I wasn’t near him to hear him curse)

Wow the difference is amazing (by the way he is not superman, this took a few days to do, so don´t feel down hearted if you are doing the same) but now you can see why we were so cold during winter, there is no glass in these windows just rotten wooden shutters, and the doors that had been made to measure, obviously were not measured very well as you can see outside in many different places

Top tips

• Don’t get daunted by big jobs, break them down into bitesize chunks
• Don’t try to make an old house into a new pin