I don’t know how we got so lucky to have so many friends and family come lend a hand, but it’s certainly much appreciated. This weekend was the turn of my old school friends Sarah and Michael, who travelled over specially from Sheffield to work in appalling conditions for no pay. Lucky them.

The weekend started unusually early (given that we live a 45min drive away), with a 8am delivery of slates from Manchester. After several disappointing local purchases, we got a recommendation for a place that was a little more pricey, but guaranteed good quality reclaimed slates. With 400 delivered it should hopefully be the last slates we need to buy.

Keen to keep her feet on the ground (who can blame her), Sarah got started in the house, removing the plaster from beside the main stairs. Most of this was super crumbly, making it a relatively quick job. Michael helped to reach the higher sections, and also cleared out the rubble to the skip.

Next Sarah set to repointing the bathroom wall, which had been left till last as it’s a small and fiddly space (sorry Sarah). As a room that had probably suffered from damp, the mortar was particularly poor here, meaning it was good to see it finally refreshed.

While Sarah worked hard inside the house, the rest of us returned to the roof. I spent much of my time on the awkward last few rows on the front of the house, which required lots of back and forth cutting slates to size and then nailing or gluing them in place. Chris spent much of the first day trying to get the flashing around the chimney sorted, a frustrating job, while Michael continued adding more slates to the middle of the roof. By the next day we were all working to get more slates on the back roof.

By the end of the day only a small gap remained, but we will probably need to borrow the cat ladder once more to get this final edge safely finished. With possibly only 150 slates left to put on, we’re getting very close to a waterproof house.

With roof space getting tight, I migrated back to the front of the house, to remove the loose render on the chimney stack. The bricks underneath weren’t as crumbly as we expected, so we can probably just repoint and leave the bricks exposed, which should prevent the damp from building up.

Despite a large number of fiddly and slow jobs, we seemed to get a lot done this weekend, which is the magic of having extra pairs of helping hands. When closing the large terrace doors I noticed some old writing on the wood. It looks to me like the pair of scribblings say ‘wise Dave’, and ‘wiser Jon’. I guess it might be time to replace the names, but there might have to be a contest to decide who gets the be the wiser of the houses new wise guys…

A big thank you to Sarah and Michael for their hard work and enthusiasm.