Fire removal

Spent a merry few hours removing the coal-fire. Blimey, it's heavy.

Not the easiest of tasks as the water connections for the back boiler need to be disconnected before it's removed, which is tricky when they're at the back of the cavity.

It came out eventually though, amist a sea of vermiculite, with both me and my brother swinging on it. A handy wheel-board then made moving it around a bit easier.

I'm not particularly impressed with whoever installed it. To make the fireplace opening big enough to accomodate it, a few bricks were removed from one side - these bricks happen to be supporting the lintel over the fireplace. Thus the lintel is supported on the right hand side by wishful thinking. Given it's not falled down yet, I'm guessing it's not working too hard, however I think I'll stuff a few bricks under it, just to be sure.

The eventual plan for this area is to install an open fireplace. S has a cast iron item that she quite likes, thouhgh it needs repairing before it'll actually work (it's currently repaired with some painted wood - not a good plan for a working fireplace).

Given we've managed to extract the old fire intact, I'll stick it on ebay, saves me humping it to the skip, and might get a few notes for it.

You can also see on the right of the chimney breast where I ran into the capping for the socket below. So much for capping be a vertical drop from services - no idea what they were thinking when they built this place, other than the fact they probably knock off early on a friday.