Chim Chiminey Chim Chiminey Chim Chim Cheroo!

So we are sorting out the central heating in a week or so and the old gas fire heater needed removing. As previously suspected, the heating engineer came in to take it away but confirmed our suspicions that he would have condemed it had we asked to keep it. So we had to remove the horrible brickwork as we will be replastering the whole room and when we removed the brickwork, we found on old skool boiler system.

Apparently when these houses were initially built by the council back in the 1930's, the boiler system was built into the homes via the chimney. That cast iron monstrosity you see in the fireplace has 2 pipes coming out of it and into the walls. These pipes were used to send heat to the water tank that would have been upstairs and heat water for the house.

So as you can see, as it's built into the house, it cannot be removed without alot of effort. So we're bricking over it. I thought I'd get few pics of it before hand before it disappeared to someone knocks through our brickwork some time in the distant future.

The cat ran up the chimney while we were removing ruble. As you can see, when she came back down, she was not white but greyish. These pics were taken a week ago and I can tell you, she's STILL grey and not likely to lose the soot till spring. Friggin cat!