The beginnings of the renovations was gathering up the courage to look at the old patch of damp in the bedroom up near the cornice.

I brushed off the old bits of bubbled paint, and was pressing my fingertips into the drylining, trying to see if the damp had wrecked the drylining. It all looked not that bad – the paint had been buggered, but the damp didn’t appear to have ruined the drylining boards. I kept knocking my hand around, tapping the walls to see if there were any changes in sound and I tapped along the cornice. Tap, tap, tap, thock.

My knuckles sank into the cornice. Excellent. There is a 5 centimetre in diameter patch of cornice that consisted solely of the paint that had covered it. There is an awful amount of crud behind the wall, so I fear that the damp was not fixed, but merely dried out at some point. Whatever caused the damp was probably fixed (I expect it was probably drainpipes), but the damage remained.

So the second joy of renovations is to call the strata management company and describe the problem and have them agree that it sounds structural and therefore part of the strata company’s responsibility!