Aberystwyth Street update

I have been working so hard, and the house looks like a shithole. It's quite disheartening. My mam and dad have been telling me that as soon as we start to put things back, it'll all go quickly. I'm just waiting to be out of the rubble! I am very happy with how big the living room is, now that I've totally opened the stairs up.


I kept all the original tiles from where the fireplaces were, and I'm going to use them as edging to the patio. They're free, and they belong to the house. Perfect recycling!



I decided to keep the fireplace in the spare bedroom/studio as I found out it's a proper old cast iron one. Under layers and layers of gloss paint that my mam has been scraping away at, this is what it looks like underneath. Beautiful.


In the rubble and mess underneath the stairs, I found the original suspended floor from about 1890-1900. Something caught my eye, so I leaned over and pulled out a lovely Victorian black glass hatpin! I gave it to my mam as she collects them. I felt like I was on Time Team.

View the whole project: before, during, and in 4 weeks (hopefully) after.

Derelict

Siân’s Road after dark is an eerie, echoing place. Trees overhang, old branches that sweep the road making a dark, green tunnel that ends in an ancient wall. Nobody walks up Siân’s Road at night, strange symbols were found painted on the cracked concrete. Right at the far end, if you venture past the wall, there is a rickety old barn that looks lost among the gorse bushes; even the yellow flowers can’t manage to bring cheer to the dirty building. Fallen down bricks. Ivy choking burnt floorboards and the charred a-frames of the roof. A dinosaur skeleton clothed in rags. Stars wink through the missing slates; dust, feathers and burnt wood falls slowly as dark snow through the rafters. Deeds done here have soaked into the bricks on the ground, been absorbed by the three remaining walls. If I was to stay here all night, how many ghosts would bleed out from between the cracks in the mortar? I imagine myself floating in a sea of pale faces and bodies, as transparent as the water they imitate. Their movement gusts fallen leaves up into the threadbare roof, scatters sleepy crows like buttons into the blanket sky. The air is cold, and my breath sends clouds of vapour up to mingle with the falling motes of the old building. I look up to the first and second floors, at what remains of the fire-blackened chimneys and mantelpieces; try to imagine the house as a place full of life and laughter.