Exhibition Weeds!

Well, it has been a few months since we finished the main restoration on the kiosk.

In that time we have had three good exhibitions, and as can be seen from the attached photos, the way nature works in an exhibition in itself. Just over three months since we finished, and the weeds, as well as the regeneration of the tree / bush stump have begun to take over the kiosk. The green actually contrasts well against the red, however it would send out the wrong message if we didn't tidy it up once in a while.

Good feedback on what we are doing with the kiosk, plus people from other villages from around the country stumbling across this blog and making contact, generally asking for advice.

We've suffered no vandal attacks, which really is great news, and flies in the face of what people suspected would happen.

We still need to sort out the railings, but we have some scheduled Expo downtime for the last two weeks of January so we'll aim to put them back in place then. We intend on removing the back board, as we suspect the quarter the kiosk was manufactured may be stamped there.

So, the photo to the right shows the current status of the kiosk tonight since the weeding.

Brookwood Expo Now Open

The rain stayed away long enough for the Brookwood Expo to be officially declared open. Having done all the hard work with Woking Borough Council when the kiosk was in the process of being adopted, Cllr Glynis Preshaw was given the honour of cutting the ribbon that marks the end of the restoration and the beginning of The Brookwood Expo, probably the worlds smallest permanent exhibition hall.

A great many people turned out for the event, with VIPs Tony and Victoria from Unicorn Kiosks making the trip up to witness the opening and check out the quality of the job Alan and I have done. I'm pleased to report that the thumbs up were given.

The media were present too, with Beth from the Woking News & Mail, Jon and the Radio Wey mascot from Radio Wey taking photographs and interviewing people.

Then it was over to Brookwood Social Club for a few beers to celebrate.

Update: The dedicated website supporting the Brookwood K6 has been ceased.

Restoration Complete!

WOW, the gold leaf crowns make all the difference. Walking down from the station today, it was good to see other commuters double take as they walked past.

Last night Alan and I fitted the leather door restraining straps and cleaned up more of the glass. The leather straps look excellent and justify the hard work put in to clean them up. It's unfortunate that they along with the brass hinges won't be easily viewable as the door will be locked, but they can be seen very well through the windows.

I also took a call from a chap called David in East Devon who had read the blog and was looking for information about adopting and restoring the kiosk in their village. This is exactly why I started blogging the restoration and will be happy to speak with anyone wanting help.

Today, as well as Roy from Allsigns gilding the crowns, we have swept the area, and more importantly, started to dress the area surrounding the kiosk. One of our major concerns was the exposed cables at the back of the kiosk. We found these when we removed the dirt that had built up over the years. One was the telephone line (now disconnected), but the other was the electricity cable which is very important. We were worried that some goon might choose to cut it, so we wanted to devise a solution to cover it up. We decided to drop some boards down in front of the rails, and then fill the remaining space with gravel. This works really well, and the boards should stop the build up of dirt.

Although the pictures here are good, they don't really do it justice, so please pop along and have a look at the kiosk in the flesh. Alan and I are extremely proud of our achievement, but the real test will be on Sunday when Tony from Unicorn Kiosks gives us his view of our efforts.

On Sunday at two o'clock in the afternoon, the kiosk is officially unveiled, and so begins 'The Brookwood Expo', the kiosk's new lease of life. The opening exhibition will be about the kiosk restoration. Everyone is welcome to attend.

So, the kiosk restoration is now complete and we move on to preservation mode. We still have to finish off the railings which will happen over the summer period. This blog will continue as we keep the kiosk in tip top condition.

Thank you to everyone who has been involved in this community based project. We have raised virtually all the funds from within the village, and have managed to spend almost two thirds of the budget back in the village. This is an achievement in itself. Over the weekend, I'll put the final poster in the kiosk which will name all those people, organisations and businesses which have helped us along the way. Thank you.

Fully glazed

The kiosk early this morning. The sun is shining on to the left side, you can see the glare in the photo. Also, my reflection can be made out in the glass (that didn't happen with the perspex that BT fitted in recent years).

The pane which Allsigns made up for us is now in the kiosk and jolly good it looks too.

We have fitted the new door handle which finishes it off nicely.

Tonight, the door closer having been painted has been refitted back in the kiosk. The glass in the door side has been cleaned up and looks much better. We will attack the other two sides tomorrow night and we'll also fit the two leather door straps. This will conclude our restoration work on the kiosk. I'm also hopeful that Allsigns will gild the crowns tomorrow, although I'm assured it will definitely be done this week. Either way, we'll still be on time, and on budget, which is good news.

The kiosk has been mentioned again in this week's News & Mail, publicising the completion on Sunday. Thank you to Beth for the plug. I hope to publish completed photos before the weekend.

Oops

Well, the sponsor a pane initiative is back on after some vandal (Alan) managed to crack one of the panes of glass. I'll contact Glassmaster tomorrow and order two more so we have one spare. As has been written on this blog frequently, the kiosk is not precision engineered and some areas are not perfect. In this case, the kiosk frame is slightly wavy, and when the brass pin was tapped in, the glazing frame pushed against the glass and cracked it.

We now have two sides of the kiosk fully glazed, and we have started on the door. As can be seen, the PUSH/PULL sign has been fitted (and we got it the right way round). This is a major milestone as it is one of the three key additions which will be added over the next few days.

How to Glaze a Kiosk

Seeing as we have gone to great lengths to re-glaze the kiosk in the most original way possible, and just in case anyone reading this blog is about to restore their own kiosk we thought we would give an overview of how we put the glass in. Originally, cast iron frames were used. It is still possible to get these, but they are around £16 each, and when you need 24 of them, it quickly mounts up. We're not trying to win awards here, so we decided steel frames would suffice.

In addition, we decided early on to fit laminated glass rather that toughened glass. The theory being that busting laminate glass isn't as much fun as toughened glass as toughened glass shatters, whereas laminate glass cracks. So we thought that perhaps vandals would be less likely to break the windows. Laminate glass presented us with an additional problem which is the brass pins used to hold the glass in wouldn't quite fit due to the extra thickness of the glass.

Our solution was to make our own glazing frames with the holes drilled in the correct position for our glass. The final difference between how the kiosks were originally glazed and the way we have done ours is our use of silicone as a sealant rather than putty.

The pictures here show a bead of silicone being applied to the kiosk frame edge. We then push the glass in place, and apply another line of silicone to provide a watertight seal. Then the glazing frame is put in place, and finally the brass pins are dropped through the holes, and lightly tapped in place. These pins go through the bottom of glazing frame, through the kiosk and then through the top of the next glazing frame below.

Once they've all been done, you end up with a complete side glazed, a bit like the picture here. The glass in the picture here still needs a decent clean, there are remnants of masking tape which we'll remove during the week. We have started glazing the third side and by the time we finished had fitted three panes. We will easily finish this by next Sunday.

Tonight we have been invited to an inteview about the kiosk on Radio Wey which will be really cool.

P.S. Update @ 21:26 - The interview tonight on Radio Wey was really interesting, DJ Jon was very good and made sure we were at ease. We covered lots about the kiosk and the community aspect of it. He even dug out Blondie's Hanging on the Telephone to launch the interview. Luckily a recording of the interview will be made available to us and we'll publish it at some point.

First Panes of Glass Added

Great progress today, we started before seven this morning, with Alan finishing off the painting of the glazing frames. We then headed down to the kiosk. We painted the ceiling first which now looks absolutely fantastic. I think it will look really good when dark, as the light will reflect nicely off the ceiling and the white posters. The inside is now painted as the kiosks were originally designed.

We then moved on to painting the rest of the kiosk. The kiosk has now had two complete coats. It takes on an extraordinary sheen when the Sun glistens on it.

As we were painting, an elderly resident hurrying past, stopped for a chat, and she told us she remembered calling her boyfriends from the kiosk when she was a teenager. She came to the village in 1938, and remembers the kiosk being there then. This means this would have been one of the early K6 kiosks to be installed in the country as the K6 was made to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V in 1935. A fascinating addition to the history of our kiosk.

During the course of the afternoon, we started glazing the west side. We glazed the missing four small panes, and glazed four of the large panes. A couple of the glazing frames have required a slight bit of filing where the brass pins drop in. We'll document the process of fitting the glass in the next blog entry.

All in all, an extremely satisfying day in the office. I think we'll ask for a pay rise!

Glazing Frames and posters

Today, Mrs Beynon from Brookwood School delivered a wonderful set of posters made by the young people in the school which are reproduced here. These posters are situated at the bottom of the black back board. Having the school involved in the kiosk is really good news, and we really appreciate the efforts by the teachers to assist with this project.

The final poster from our advertisers has now gone in the kiosk. Glassmaster have supplied the glass, and can now be considered as the premier supplier of glass for telephone boxes in the district!

Over the past couple of days, Alan has continued directly painting the kiosk. The dome and the crowns have now received the second and final coat of paint. This gives the paint five days to harden ready for Allsigns to complete the gilding next week. The inside frames on each side have had a single coat of paint and won't have another one as these will be covered by the glass and the glazing frames.

 Finally, the outside frames of the west side have had the second coat.

Tomorrow, both Alan and I have the day off and we will focus on sorting out the kiosk. In preparation for that, most of the glazing frames have been prepared with red oxide. The pictures here show the small glazing frames sitting on a pallet drying after a coat of red oxide, and small and large glazing frames hanging on a washing line drying after a coat of red paint.

We expect to glaze the west side completely, if we're lucky that will stop people chucking their litter in the kiosk as they walk past after getting off the train.

Outside - First Coat Complete

Not the best picture in the world, but Alan has completed the first coat of the entire outside and rather good it looks too.

This morning, as I walked to the station, the sun was shining on the third side and it just looked brilliant. I think once the second coat is complete it will look absolutely stunning.

I still can't get over just how red it is compared with the tired other kiosks that still occasionally remain.

Is that red or RED?

Yesterday, I started at half seven in the morning as I knew the weather was going to be poor and it was essential that the red oxide was completed if we were to start painting the kiosk in the final red.

The rain started about nine o'clock and I had completed the ceiling (as the photo shows), and was forced to leave the remaining areas inside the kiosk.

I also picked up all the glass from Glassmaster.

Today, and a lot of activity, starting this morning with completing the red oxide inside. The weather then turned and I abandoned in the hope that we would be able to continue this afternoon. Around half two, we were able to start applying the first coat of paint. As it makes sense to work from the top down, we initially painted the white ceiling. The rest of the inside was left as we need to give the white and the red oxide time to go off.

We then moved on to the outside and the picture here shows Alan applying the very first brush stroke of red 539 paint. This was an extremely satisfying moment which we celebrated with a pint from the Club. Our intention was to paint the roof and the top of the kiosk where the crowns are. This is to ensure that we get time to apply the second coat and it has time to harden ready for Roy from Allsigns to do the gold leaf.

Alan had the exciting job of applying the paint while I used up almost an entire roll of masking tape, taping up the windows all round. This took over an hour and I then picked up a paint brush and we carried on painting the third side and the door.

By the time we finished at half six tonight, we had completed the dome and four crowns, the door inside and out, and the outside of the third side. It is difficult to explain just how satisfying today was. Over four months of very hard work and it has finally begun to take shape. It was also quite amazing just how many people stopped and spoke with us today. I'm grateful to the local resident for a nice cup of tea when I was quite cold this morning.

Finally, I hope we are not blamed for the minor car accident which took place outside the club, I think the driver was probably looking at the 'phone box when he hit the guy in front.

Red Oxide Outside and In

Been way too busy recently, but over the course of the week, Alan and I managed to complete scraping the inside. What you can see in the attached photo is a little bit of the original undercoat and the first ever coat of paint. We're not taking it right back, as we don't need to, although prior to red oxiding it, we will go over it with a final dose of paint stripper and a wire brush to get the last of the loose stuff off.

Today the bulk of the kiosk was painted with red oxide. The whole of the outside has been done, and all the inside frames where the glass will be fitted. What remains we hope to do over the weekend if the weather allows us. Our plan is to do the first coat of red and white on Monday, so ideally we need a break over the weekend to finish red oxiding. The second coat we are planning to apply Thursday evening, or maybe Friday to give us some flexibility regarding weather.

The glass is now ready and I shall pick that up tomorrow. We reckon we will fit the panes next weekend.

Sunday Progress

Anzac Day today and a good afternoon in Woking with the Scouts celebrating St. Georges Day which meant we didn't get quite as far as originally planned. We are now slightly behind according to our plan, but I'm sure we'll pull it round in time. We scraped off almost the remainder of the paint on the inside early this morning, so I hope we didn't disturb anyone. There is a small amount left which will probably take a couple of hours or so to complete. We also had a tidy up and removed the litter which had built up inside.

The small panes of glass which remain in the kiosk were cleaned up properly today, and with few exceptions look brilliant. This is a relief as the new panes will be crystal clear and we didn't want obvious differences between new and old.

I have confirmed with Tony at Unicorn exactly how the inside paint should be done. The white paint should come down to the top of the bar, immediately below the TELEPHONE sign. Apparently, the white was often painted below as it was subsequently covered with red to make a good join line. Makes perfect sense.

A major milestone was reached during the week when Alan finished making up the large glazing frames. These now need priming prior to being fitted next weekend.

There is an outside chance that the refurbishment of the railings will be complete in time for them to be reinstalled ready for 16 May.

I have also confirmed with Roy at Allsigns that the gilding of the crowns will take place when convenient for Allsigns, week commencing 10 May. This means we have to have the final red coat of paint on several days before that to give the paint time to go off. We are a little short of funds to complete this, so if you would like to gift some money for the gold leaf, please get in contact with me.

Assuming the weather is with us this coming week, we should be in good shape with an almost completed kiosk by Monday evening next weekend.

Outside scraping complete!

First bit of news is that we finally finished scraping the outside. Although it looks from the picture that there is still a lot of paint at the bottom, it is clear enough for us to red oxide it. The third side is complete, and the dome has now been finished. We completed this during the week when we popped down a couple of evenings for an hour or so.

We have taken stock of where we are, and with the expertise of Tony at Unicorn have worked out a plan from here. We had decided there just wasn't the time to complete the inside ahead of May 16. With the good weather we've been having, and the weather forecast over the next few days, we have decided to try and scrape the majority of the paint from the inside. We're not going to remove the back board, as it just isn't necessary to repaint that side.

Today we started on the inside of the dome, which wasn't particularly pleasant as it was very warm up there, and there were shed loads of cobwebs.

The picture here raises an interesting question which I need to have with Unicorn. You can see a great deal of the top coat has been removed in this picture (it just falls off), and underneath is an original white coat which does scrape off fairly easily, but is also good enough to form a base. As I've blogged before, the kiosk has been painted incorrectly over the years, and we intend on rectifying that. However, how I've been told it should be done, and how the kiosk was originally painted are slightly different. Kiosks that I've seen restored have the white paint come down to the bottom of the TELEPHONE sign, above the bar that runs round the kiosk which has been painted red. It is clear from this picture, that there is original white paint on the bar and immediately underneath it. Where the bar is at right angles with the vertical side, it goes back to red paint. I'm going to gather more detailed pictures as we go along here, as I want the kiosk to be as original as possible.

So, the current plan is to scrape the inside during the week and red oxide next weekend.

Unicorn Kiosk Restorations and insurance

Today I collected the new door handle from Unicorn Kiosk Restorations. I was extremely surprised and grateful when Unicorn donated the door handle to us in recognition of our restoration efforts. I said in one of the early posts that our kiosk will be brilliantly finished due to the advice and assistance from Tony at Unicorn, and I only hope he is impressed with the job we have done as amateurs.

Great news from Cllr Glynis, the kiosk has been added in its own right to the general Woking Borough Council insurance policy. The kiosk is only insured against total loss, i.e. theft or accidental damage. It is not insured for minor damage like broken panes of glass. I don't know the cost, but my understanding is that the  kiosk has probably been explicitly insured for no additional cost to the Council Tax payer. I will endeavour to find out so that if there has been a cost, then it is factored into our figures for future budgeting purposes.

More Brookwood based businesses have come to me offering sponsorship in return for advertising spots in the kiosk. We'll see what can be arranged on this.

More paint was scraped off last night, and we will finish scraping the paint from the outside this week.

The Dome

Work has finally started on the dome! As suspected, the paint falls off, there are about four layers, and once the top coat has been scratched off, the rest scrape off with a little elbow grease.

The two pictures here show the dome when we started, and the dome after Alan and I had spent about half an hour on it. Another half an hour and that will be done.

Scraping wise, we are almost there. I know I've been saying this for two weeks now, but really, we are. There is a little paint left on the fourth side, right at the bottom and to the right. It is so difficult, ideally we could do with the services of a contortionist to finish that off, along with the third side which also has a small amount of paint at the bottom.

I think we are planning to do an hour or so tomorrow evening which will hopefully see the external scraping complete.

Getting there...

As can be seen from the two pictures, we are almost there with the scraping. A bit on the back to go which I could have finished this morning if I wasn't so knackered and covered in specks of paint. Interestingly, at the very bottom of the kiosk where the dirt has been piled up for donkey's years, there is virtually no paint left. It will be a case of a thick covering of Nitromors, leave it for half an hour and then wire brush it off, which is good news as the knees can't take prolonged periods bending down.

The roof still needs doing, but I'll need to get a higher set of ladders to reach the top, however what I can see looks to be very flaky, and probably only one coat, so I expect it to be complete fairly quickly.

Most of the third side has been completely stripped.

I think we are on to red oxide the whole of the outside on Sunday.

We have accepted that we are not going to complete the inside by the middle of May, although we intend on getting as far as we can, and certainly by May 16 it will look good inside. It is just unlikely that at this stage we will remove all the paint from the interior. The interior paint has been removed from around the windows which means the finish will be good and the kiosk well protected, but to take the black back board off and scrape the paint off just isn't necessary at the moment.

Ordered the door handle from Unicorn and I'll nip down and pick that up on Wednesday next week.

I'm thinking that I might be able to get the Labour Party to sponsor the kiosk. If we agree to paint it red, they might give us some cash...

A corner turned

Excellent progress today, it feels like we have turned a corner and are on the home straight. The railings were our number one priority as they really get in the way when trying to scrape the paint off the fourth side. The picture to the right shows Alan using his acetylene torch to cut through the bolts. Unfortunately we ran out of gas, and needed to hack saw the remainder off.

Once these were sawn through, we went to remove the railings and discovered what we think is the electricity cable naked in the dirt running through the railings rather than under them. This is GPO/BT bodging in the extreme and to me highly dangerous. Luckily my brother is an electrician, so he will advise us on how best to protect and route this in the safest way possible. The picture here shows the problem. We eventually removed the railings by hammering out the top bar and then feeding the railings around the cable. In the same picture you can see how the uprights have rusted through and snapped off.

Once the railings were out, we bolted in two bars that Alan had made up which will provide sufficient stability to ensure the posts are still in place when we finish refurbishing the railings later on in the summer.

As can be seen from the picture, we have dug out a load more dirt, and the back is sufficiently exposed now to make scraping the remaining paint off the fourth side easier. We scraped a fair amount off that side and the remainder I expect to complete with a couple of hours work. When digging out the dirt we found part of an original large cast iron glazing frame.

Another turning point today was removing the unit from within the kiosk that the 'phone and money box would have been bolted to. This had also proved to be difficult as one of the bolts was seized solid. The picture here shows Alan drilling the bolt out. This is quite a heavy bit of kit, and will be kept but will not be bolted back on the board.

The only other thing we did today was to scrape a fair bit of paint off the third side. The crown is almost fully exposed, and I expect to finish that this coming week.

Finally, with the wall unit out, I rearranged the posters in the kiosk. The two spaces are for the poster from Glassmaster, and the centre poster will consist of the names of all the donors to the project.

As I said at the start of this post, we feel like we are on the home straight, all the structual stuff is completed, which means we can finish scraping the paint this coming week (including the domed roof). So next weekend, we intend on preparing the whole kiosk for a complete priming with red oxide which we'll do either next weekend if we get time, or will be done the following weekend. The weekend April 24/25 we will paint the kiosk with the correct red 539 paint if the weather allows us. With the glass arriving on the 30 April, we will fit the glass that bank holiday weekend.

Progress Report

Surprise, Surprise, it's going to rain over this long weekend. Aware of this, it doesn't look like much is going to happen directly on the kiosk, although I have done an hour scraping paint from the third side this morning, and it looks like Sunday morning might be okay for some work. We'll see. There is plenty to do behind the scenes getting glazing frames prepared etc. The photo above shows the current state of the third side. I have scraped a fair bit more down the lower half, but can't get a decent photo. To get to the crown, it looks like we'll have to wedge a ladder down the side and then climb in and stay there. Alternatively, if someone around eight foot lives in the village who could help, that would be cool. We still need to scrape the paint off the roof. A brief look at that shows that the paint is quite flaky so I suspect that won't take too long.

This past week, I've been working primarily on the back of the kiosk. This is easy and at the same time slow going. We're about half way down now, and the technique we're using is to chip away at the paint using the pointy end of the scraper, and then scraping the paint away, it works very well. I'm beginning to wonder if we have actually made the job harder than necessary by using paint stripper. We really need to remove those railings though, as I keep stabbing myself on the pointy bits.

I ordered the glass yesterday from Glassmaster. Delivery is planned for 30 April 2010, and we plan to fit it that long weekend.

Dropped the Fulk Bros. advertising poster in the kiosk this morning. I took the photo a couple of days ago. The picture shows Tony pretending to be busy, while the other chap has just managed to scoot out of the way to save himself embarrassment.

That leaves one final poster to go in, and that is from Glassmaster. Yesterday I told Brian from Glassmaster that I need his artwork by the 30 April. Brian isn't very good with computers, and especially with this Interweb thingy which is why I can mention this, knowing he'll never read it!

Personal Service Marketing Cards

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with someone from Woking's brothel. Actually, I wasn't even aware Woking had a brothel, but apparently it is on Goldsworth Road somewhere. Anyway, the request was for some cards to be displayed in the kiosk.

Now, in London and other big cities, 'ladies of the night' leaving cards in telephone kiosks is quite common place, albeit illegal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tart_card

I did say that we were only allowing A4 sized posters in the kiosk, however when the amount of money on offer was mentioned, I decided to sound out Alan's opinion. We agreed that displaying small business sized cards down the right hand side of the advertising board would be possible as there is a limited amount of space there. The money offered would pay for the dedicated kiosk insurance which will cost around £250 per annum. This also means we don't have to add the kiosk to Woking Borough Council's general insurance policy which will save Council Tax payers forking out for preserving our red telephone box.

Morally, it doesn't sit too well, but the ultimate aim of this project is to preserve our heritage. It is well documented that telephone boxes have been used for this type of marketing over the years and still are in places. So we agreed to do a trial run. The attached picture shows half a dozen cards in the kiosk. I can't vouch for the quality of service provided as there isn't enough money in the budget, however if anyone samples these services and is able to report back it will help us decide whether to carry on with this initiative.

Litter & progress

If it is possible to have an exciting day when restoring a kiosk, today was that day! Our plan today was to remove the railings round the back, remove the remaining perspex panes in the East facing third side, and remove the unit on the back wall where the telephone and coin box would have been bolted to. As usual, we didn't actually complete much of that.

The bolts holding the unit on the wall were knackered, so we decided to drill out the bolts. The unit isn't going back in the kiosk, so we are not too concerned about damaging parts of it. However, despite putting my cordless drill on charge, the battery was dead, so the unit is still firmly stuck to the wall. We'll add that to the list for next weekend.

We then decided to remove the railings from behind the kiosk which protects the South facing fourth side. The amount of dirt that had accumulated by the side of the kiosk meant we were in for a fair amount of digging. It was during this digging that we discovered some interesting bits of litter.

We found an old Schweppes bottle, an old Golden Wonder Smokey Bacon flavour crisps bag which cost three pence, and amazingly a Tip Top frozen juice wrapper which cost 2d. This throws up two observations, clearly the environmentalist's argument about the hazards of plastic look pretty sound (the Tip Top wrapper must have been by the side of the kiosk since at least 1971), and the Council's waste management partner is failing the residents of Brookwood. I think I'll ask Cllr Glynis to request a Council Tax rebate on our behalf. The picture shows the wrappers after a quick clean up - these will be kept as part of the history of the kiosk.

Whilst digging out the dirt we discovered the posts were not as rusted through as we first thought. This led to another discussion about what to do and we decided to leave the posts where they are, remove the railings and put them back again some time in the future. This time, however, we are not going to leave the posts exposed thus providing an opportunity for vandals to snap them off, so we have left the railings there at the moment, and Alan will make up some bars to replace the railings as a short term measure until the railings are restored.

So, with two of our tasks having ground to a halt, we went back to the staple scraping of paint. Alan removed the perspex from the third side (there is no perspex left in the kiosk now), and worked on the putty, and I started stripping the paint from the crown on the fourth side. I was going to work on the third side, but the ivy on the wall was wet, and we forgot to bring any ladders. As can be seen in the above picture, there is what looks like a sewage ventilator made of concrete which can be stood on, so I could reach the top.

By the time we gave up for the day, we had almost finished the crown area of the fourth side, and almost removed all the putty from the third side. We are grateful to the resident who dropped by and gave us some money which will pay for the new door handle we need.

Finally, as we were clearing the usual litter that had been thrown in the kiosk, we discovered a small bag with six pence inside. Not a lot, but it's been added to the restoration fund, and we're certainly not going to discourage people throwing money in the kiosk!

This coming week should be quite productive, and our totally unrealistic plans are to finish removing all the remaining paint from the outside of the kiosk, and prime it over the long weekend if the weather holds.