Hole in the wall

At the risk of turning this into some kind of badly shot photo-blog, here’s another recent picture from the barn. I think this picture amply illustrates the thickness of the walls – it’s probably about four feet from the internal to the external surface.

From Barn Conversion 2011

The reason for making this mess was to get the cable from the TV aerial permanently into the barn and connected up. I’d previously had a temporary arrangement in place with the cable coming in through one of the velux windows. I moved the aerial itself up to the apex of the roof and reran the cable into the soon to be boxed in eaves, so getting it through the wall was the final piece of the puzzle. I’d tried drilling with a long masonry bit, but that wasn’t long enough – I’d tried bashing through the ‘not-quite-long-enough’ hole I’d drilled with a length of rebar and just got the rebar stuck, so this was my final attempt. I cut through the plasterboard and insulation, then with the help of a bolster removed the outer stonework and some of the rubble inside the wall and then drilled through from there. Even that didn’t get me all the way through, but I managed to bash through the final few inches of mortar with another piece of rebar. I came out about six inches away from where I was ‘aiming’ for so not a bad few hours work. The TV still gets a picture as well…