Bit the bullet

As I mentioned in my previous post, my original intention today was to crack on and smash the old kitchen sink out so I could then continue installing the remaining new base units. However, I’d been thinking more and more about moving the gas cylinders outside and not leaving them under the sink where they had been up to now. The additional storage space would be very useful, but I was more worried about what might happen in the long term if I was going to be forever lifting heavy and dirty gas cylinders in and out of my nice new oak-door base unit. Eventually there would be some kind of accident causing damage to either the carcass of the unit itself or one of its doors, and that’s what finally persuaded me that I should move the cylinders to the other side of the wall. That and the fact that having them outside in the open air would also be much safer.

But moving them presented a whole new set of problems. Making a hole through the wall for starters, which would then need to be made good once the new gas pipe was in, before I could continue fitting the base units. And if I didn’t do it now, it would be very difficult, if not impossible to do a decent job later, once the base units were all in, let alone the worktops too, so I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead with the job today 😐

I had to go down to Les Briconautes in Montignac anyway to buy a pack of two 14mm soldered elbows so while I was there, I thought I’d see if there was a length of steel rod in the rack that I could use as a long cold chisel to bang a hole through my wall. As luck would have it, there was a choice between 10mm mild steel and 10mm stainless, so I went for the former as it was about half the cost of the stainless at only 3.90€ for a metre length. I knew that getting through the wall was going to be a long, tough job, not just because of the thickness of the wall but also because the temperature reached a high today of 30 degrees Celsius!

I roughly estimated where I wanted the pipe to be on the wall inside, found a gap between some big stones in the wall outside that roughly corresponded, shoved the tip of the rod in and began belting it with my club hammer. Pretty soon I was streaming with sweat in the heat of the day. I had to keep banging the rod in and then withdrawing it to stop it sticking inside the wall so progress was pretty slow. However, I got to what I estimate must have been 10cms from the inner surface of the wall before I hit something so hard that I ground to a complete halt. I reasoned that I must have hit a really large stone more or less slap bang on and I wondered if there was any chance that if I attacked the wall from the other side, I’d find it and be able to break it with the hammer and chisel.

But unlike the Channel Tunnel where they can use laser guided instruments and exactly join up two ends of the tunnel by drilling from each end, for me it was a completely different story. The chance of my being able to transfer my ‘estimated’ measurements of distance and height from the outside to the inside and put an ‘X’ on the wall that corresponded with the point of the metal rod was pretty remote, to say the least. But I had no choice, so I went ahead and did it.

Once I’d made a hole in the plaster and rendering inside, I did indeed come across a very large stone. I tried breaking it with the hammer and chisel but to no avail, even after I’d drilled a few holes in it to help split it. I then noticed that I could see its lower right edge and decided to attack it in that area, with some success. A chunk of the stone came away and I then thought it might be a good idea to put a long masonry drill through at that point and see how far it could go. I’ve got a drill that’s 50cm long and it took very little to get it in right up to the drill chuck. So I then went outside, withdrew my now very curvy steel rod and continued bashing that through from the inside in the same place. I reckoned that if I just kept hammering, the chance was that with the mortar between the stones being softer on the outside, even if I hit a large one, I might be able to knock it right out and get the rod through.

But it wasn’t necessary. After several minutes of steady banging, the rod was indeed through! I could hardly believe it and went outside to see where it had emerged. Now this was the most amazing bit – bearing in mind that I’d attacked the wall a bit lower and to the right from the inside, compared to the original hole that I’d tried to make from the outside, I could hardly believe my eyes to see that, allowing for slight movements due to stones inside the wall, the tip of the rod was below and to the left of the original hole outside, exactly where it should have been! So my measurements when I’d tried to mimic the Channel Tunnel and join two holes banged from the outside and inside, had been spot on. Lucky or what!

Here are some pics showing each end of the rod after I’d punched through.

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As you can see from the measurements on the tape at each end of the rod, the wall of my house is 1 metre thick all but 25cm, so no wonder punching through it was hard work. And in case you think I was cheating, here’s the rod itself.

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It’s all I’ve done today, but I’ve done it and that’s the main thing. Before I can continue with the plumbing for the sink and installing the base units, I’ll have to put a 12mm copper tube through the wall tomorrow and make good around it, adding an extra couple of days to the job. But the end result will be much better and I know that it’ll be worth it 😉