.....and drunkenness and chimneys

If you're contemplating pulling down your old chimney I recommend thinking again.....

I was over at my buddies the other day, we were chewing the fat and drinking beer as usual and I'd asked if I could borrow his F type crimp tool for television antenna connections.

I'd finally got around to getting a new aerial for my bedroom television but the cable connection at the antenna end was, as they all are now, F type.

So it was raining and climbing on the roof seemed like a story with bad news written all over it, so after crimping the connector on I bailed on the dodgey roof installation and instead, opted for the safer more comfortable, lets get on the piss option.

Given the task we'd just performed talk eventually turned to roofs in general and especially the dangers and pitfalls of tile roofs, which of course mine is. It was while we were running through this style of roofs many downsides that I remembered the day my friend John and I decided that we were man enough to demolish the chimney on another of my houses which I had owned some years before.

I think John Dennis has appeared in this blog on other occasions (of corned beef and genetic stupidity if I recall correctly, there may be others....) Anyway I've said it before and I'll say it again, John was/is a top bloke, a good fella, a wonderful old stick and all round hard case and character. That aside he has also been a bloody good mate to me at different times through my often troubled and tumultuous life.

John is a builder by trade and a drinker by profession so when you have just recently bought an old 1940's villa there can be no better man to have around than John especially when the significant other has remodeling plans in mind and John considers beer to be more than adequate currency.

So John and I had been busy re-lining the lounge walls with new Gibraltar board, (some would call it drywall) as the old matched lining and skrim was a little disconcerting during storms when the wind would blow and the wallpaper would flap away from the walls like some sort of bizarre indoor spinnaker.

We had spent the first half of the day gluing and screwing the new sheets of gib to the now exposed noggings and had decided to take a break for some lunch and a much deserved beer or two...... or three or four.... So as we sat in the kitchen admiring our handiwork and slowly getting a little bleary, my now ex partner pointed out how useless and ugly the fireplace was......

To be honest we had never used it but the job of doing anything with it seemed somewhat insurmountable to a lowly electrician such as myself and so it had not been considered into the remodeling scheme of things....

until now.....

"Well" said John with a twinkle in his eye and decidedly slurred lilt to his speech. "It's pretty bloody easy to bowl a chimney bro...."

Really, I hadn't even considered the chimney, my concern was the hearth and the odd little space that it occupied.... Truthfully I would have just walled the bastard mess off and fuck the chimney!

So we would have lost a small part of the lounge but really I couldn't have cared less, less space, less to heat I thought... and the chimney..... it's out of sight from the lounge, just leave it where it is....

Ahhhhh but alas, the game was on. A seed of an idea had burrowed in and taken root and the undeniable attraction to smash some shit up was irresistible to a couple of well sauced kiwi blokes such that we were.

So armed with a six pack and a sledge hammer each we clambered our way up on to the roof with much guffawing and joviality and took a masterful look at the job at hand.

My missus at this junction was looking all hell of a pleased as unknown to me she had wanted to see the end of the godawful fire place an mantel since we had taken ownership of the house.

The afternoon was getting on a little by now as John and I had stopped working on the walls at just after midday and our boozey lunch had gone on for a good two or three hours so with out a moments ado we got stuck in to it and cracked on.

Now John explained to me that the art of bringing down a brick chimney was to minimize the amount of walking one did across the tile roof as those old terracotta tiles tended to get a bit fragile as time went on. So what we would do was to knock down the bricks at the very top of the chimney and allow them to fall neatly down the inside of the chimney thus eliminating all danger to the delicate roof tiles.

"Alright" I said, "lets knock this bitch over".

Well that chimney may have been old but it was not in the least bit frail and despite how it looked from the ground, it was tall. Despite our inebriation we did not hit out at it like a pair of Canadian hockey players but had applied gentle taps at the top, but to no avail. After several minutes of ineffectiveness I threw caution to the wind, wound up and fired off a half decent swing at the bastard. To my chagrin I managed to miss my target for the most part and skimmed the hammer off the side of the damn thing, unbalanced myself on the sloping roof and ended up dropping the head of the hammer to the roof. Immediately the roof tiles, which totally unlike the chimney bricks appeared to be made out of old cake frosting flew immediately into a thousand shards and vanished into a gaping hole in the roof.......

"Ooooopppppssss". "Ah well not too bad, only took out two tiles, it'll be okay bro heh heh"

"Best we be careful brother I've only got about four spare tiles...."

At least now we know how hard we need to hit this thing to break it apart.

Actually little did either of us know but my blow had actually fractured most of the mortar at the uppermost portion of the stack and when John rounded off the next blow with enough force to crack the neighbors chimney 100 yards off we were most surprised when the top 2 feet of bricks on his side collapsed inwards in a lump comprised of probably eight or nine bricks still semi locked together with ancient mortar. Unfortunately so big was the chunk that before it fell completely down the inside of the chimney it crashed hard against the inside of the chimney on my side.

This resulted in a downpour of loose bricks which crashed around my feet and shattered several more roof tiles on my side........

Oooooops.

This time we couldn't help but laugh, Jesus, why was it that everything we touched always seemed to go pear shaped and smell so strongly of lemons!!!

We should have given it away when we saw the missus leaving.

We didn't.

It wasn't getting any earlier and so with promises that we would be more careful we continued bravely onwards. Truthfully, now that the first bricks had gone it started to come apart a lot easier and we had knocked nearly half the height of the stupid thing down before I thought about what would be happening down in the lounge room........

Ooooooops.....

It was time to get more beer anyway so we fell down the ladder and made our unsteady way towards the kitchen fridge. It was as we were walking past the lounge windows that we noticed the fog inside.... WTF!

So the bricks had been coming down the chimney all right. Down the chimney and across the hearth to build a reasonably decent pile on the floor.... the beautiful polished Tawa floor... ... . . not so bad, a few deep scratches here and there but nothing that wouldn't buff out we laughed....

But the dust.....

The dust was spectacular! There was dust on every surface, the kids photos, the sofas, the cushions, the light fittings I tell you, there was dust on the fucking toilet seat three rooms away and what wasn't already covered in a layer of dust would be for another three years later when the rest of it fell out of the air!

The note on the door, left by the fleeing other half was simple and to the point, "You two idiots are fucking useless".

So it took us a while to stop laughing but we gathered up the remaining two six packs in the fridge, rolled a spliff and headed back up the ladder to the roof.

Being that the fire place was now mostly blocked with bricks and mortar we wisely decided that it would be best at this junction to stop putting more down the chute and instead we would simply throw them over the side of the roof to the ground below.

Ah, ha. Sounds simple right?

Wrong.

My first throw was good.

My second was a little short and that took care of a decent section of the gutter in that area, the damn plastic was as flimsy as the cursed roof tiles. Ah well nothing for it but to laugh really.

My next throw came up even shorter and smashed through another half a dozen roof tiles....

Oooooops.

By now the two of us have given up all pretence of care and are rolling around in stitches, the damage is colossal!

This is an unprecedented failure on an epic scale.

The missus is gunna skin me.

Ah fuck it were screwed now might as well just get it done.

Ooooops

John has fallen down holding a huge chunk of bricks and half his torso has vanished through the goddamn roof.

Okay so this isn't working out so well. So we stop to finish the second half of the joint, lick our wounds and reassess the situation.

"Dude this plan needs a contingency...." I suggest,

"Your right bro" says the always effervescent John.....


"I've got it" he says. "It's simple man, we'll form a line....".

Suffice to say, this was not the deliverance we had hoped for and in fact added only further to the calamity of the whole debacle as we both managed to drop many more clusters of bricks and only the fact that roof tiles were fast becoming quite the scarcity on this particular corner of my roof, did the damage remain in a state no worse than tragic.
Unfortunately however the ceiling in several spots over my daughters bed did not escape so lightly and several clusters of bricks also managed to find their way into the hallway and the master bedroom via the ceiling....


It was just getting dark when the other half turned up....

John thought it best to make himself scarce... no man likes to see his mate being thrashed by a woman, I had to agree so we left via the front door as she came in the back.

All I know is that tile roofs can suck and if you have a chimney that you don't want and a tile roof... pay someone to get rid of it, at least they'll be insured and they can take the heat from the dragons breath if they make a hash of it......