A coat of grey was applied to the last of the window openings and the area of framing behind the rear wheelarch today.  After that I continued preparing to remove the entrance steps.  This has the added advantage of increasing access to the steel roof reinforcement that is awaiting repair, because of the amount of panelwork that has to be removed to get at the mounting for the steps.  I removed the valance that trims the left-hand side of the entrance and the cladding for the entrance pillar.   This has been sanded ready for priming and painting.   A time-consuming activity due to the use of tiny wood screws and pins to hold the panels in place, all of which have to be removed in order that the area in question can be reassembled.

The short-term plan now is to repair the steelwork over the entrance lobby and then remove the steps.  This will facilitate repairing the frame below floor level in this area.

Removal of some of the wood cappings in the lobby revealed the wiring for the lighting, which is convenient.

The last few days have been spent painting the repaired frame  woodwork battleship grey.  Today the rearmost nearside window aperture was dowelled and primed ready for top coat.

The replacement flitch plates I manufactured last week were fitted today.

   This is the first one.

The originals were completely corroded and causing bulges in the aluminium cladding.  One more remains to be fitted this side.

This month’s work so far has been the continuing repair of stripped screw holes and removal of broken screws.  Today was priming the woodwork ready for top coat in a few days’ time.   Yesterday I made replacement flitch plates out of 3.5mm galvanised steel, drilled and countersunk then etch primed and painted green to protect where the galvanising was damaged by working the material.