All the pamments have now been scrubbed and we've laid out the fireplace. OH scrubbed the soot off the back wall yesterday and while all his hard work is much appreciated, we both agreed today that the wall on its own looks too tatty. So masonry paint it is.
The other obstacle -- which we should perhaps have taken into account when we blithely went and bought recycled pamments instead of new tiles -- is that most of the pamments are stained with white mortar. So we have to buy an extra canister of hydrochloric acid to get rid of the mortar. Off we go to the local DIY shed.
Back home, OH starts to paint the masonry a sandstone colour -- very fetching -- and I finish scrubbing the pamments. Then the hydrochloric acid canister comes out. OH gives me instructions in the safe use of this acid and then proceeds to splash it all over the patio where it promptly starts eating into the slabs.
Cleaning bricks with brick acid is a meditative activity: you dip your brush in the acid and run it over the mortar-encrusted surface, which blooms white immediately from the carbon dioxide released during the chemical reaction. It takes us both the whole afternoon to clean the mortar and concrete off the pamments and to then wash the acid off the bricks.
P peers over the garden fence to see what the noise is about. He is very complimentary about our efforts but tells me to stop accidentally brushing acid waterspray onto my bare legs ("Brick acid rash -- you don't want that; it stings."). Then he asks for a fistful of bay leaves for his cooking and lends us his double-sided, toothed plaster hammer in return.
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