The Five Pillars of Stupidity

Lawrence of Arabia would not appreciate the title of this post. Well, hard luck, T. E. 

Now, just in case you had not noticed, our country house in Daveri has five wooden pillars or columns on the terrace, next to the kitchen. These pillars support the wooden balcony above and that, in turn, supports part of the roof. In other words, if there is a problem with these pillars, then the knock-on effects for the rest of the house are going to be pretty blooming awful.

Well, in case you had not guessed, there really are some serious problems with these pillars. Allan, the previous owner of the house, had built concrete “boxes” around the bottom of each pillar. Vincent warned us about them when we first arrived in Daveri, but things seemed to be okay. Les, a former builder, said that there wasn’t a problem. He recommended linseed oil for preserving the wood and so I duly bought some and applied it to the columns, but of course I could not apply it to the bottom part of them because they were covered in concrete.

Yesterday we had Mark and his guys sorting out the roofs on the outbuildings. They did a great job. Quite casually, I asked Mark to have a look at the pillars. He removed part of one of the concrete boxes that Allan had made. It was bad. The bottom of each wooden pillar seems to be partly or completely rotten. Instead of protecting the pillars, the concrete boxes probably made the problem worse. Now we must have supported scaffolding installed, so that all five pillars can be removed and replaced with new ones. This is going to be a difficult and risky job, as we do not want half of our house to fall down.