Apparently if you are going to take a wall down or dig up a concrete floor (we are doing both) you need a tarpaulin. Ideally the bigger the better, but most importantly one without any holes in it. Dust is sneaky, the slightest opportunity, it will be in and before you can grab a duster it will have settled everywhere. The tarpaulin doesn’t stop this entirely but it keeps the mess manageable.

Our tarp is big and green and takes 2 of us to secure it to the ceiling and wall between the kitchen and the sitting room. Catering scaled the ladder, while I passed up strips of gaffer tape and offered advice (my particular strong suit) about where to stick it. Catering, as ever, remained patient, wobbling alarmingly at the top of the fully extended ladder while his wife suggested repeatedly he’d possibly missed a bit and then to give clear direction as to where.

Once the tarp was satisfactorily attached (it only took three, possibly four, attempts) the acrow props and scaffold moved in. It’s quite important, before you take a wall down, to make sure the bits you want to keep are held up.

So the props went up and the wall duly came down to be replaced by two oak trusses. These arrived without fanfare one afternoon and lay quietly on the garage floor (well the neighbour’s garage floor as our garage was full of kitchen stuff – thank you Jonathan & Gay) until the time came for them to be lifted into place and assembled. Suddenly a pile of wood became a thing of beauty.

There was one small technical hitch. The original idea was to have 2 open oak frames, but when we took the bricks away for the second truss, it transpired that the roof levels weren’t compatible and so we quickly blocked up the gap before the roof sagged. It was either that or rebuild one side of the house and the budget didn’t stretch that far, besides who needs more that one oak truss to look at over their up of tea.