Plaster Progress, and Felling a Tree using Lime Mortar

Good progress on plaster has been made this week.  The first of the skim has been applied and the results are fantastic - Jane has "never seen such smooth plaster" (although I had never really noticed her caressing plaster before!).  I've been asked to always include photos, but seriously, it is very difficult to take interesting or even comprehensible photos of grey plaster.  Trust me - it is smooooth.

For the record, we have been putting on a haired scratch coat of 3:1 (aggregate:lime) mortar, followed by a float coat of the same without hair, then a skim of lime plaster (3:2) which is sponged, followed by a thinner skim of Regency plaster (really fine stuff) which is trowelled smooth.  Pre-mixed products take one variable out of the equation, and are available from Mike Wye (www.mikewye.co.uk) who have been very helpful with advice; I thoroughly recommend them.

It was the eighth delivery of a 900kg pallet of lime mortar and plaster which caused me to tackle a job this week which I had been deferring.  There's a holly tree near our front gate which is smothered in ivy; it's a trunk about ten feet high, very top heavy and leaning towards the pavement, about 25 degrees from vertical.  The rope in the picture right shows the true vertical.  I know how to cut a tree down, but this one needed special attention because of the safety aspects of the leaning - I did NOT want it to fall the wrong way!  I have a new 10 mm nylon rope and just needed something to attach it to in the middle of the lawn.  Thinking about this in the night recently (sad, isn't it?) I realised that the answer was a one tonne pallet of lime mortar!

So, when a delivery came at 10am one day this week, it gave time in the day to tackle this vexing question.  A pair of pallets was piled in the middle of the lawn, with my rope securely attached to the centre (so that the wood could not break and let the rope pull free).  The other end of the rope was tied around the top of the tree.  Then the mortar (in 45 ten litre tubs) was unloaded from the roadside by hand as normal and loaded onto the pallets and the tension in the rope was increased by propping another pallet underneath (see photo left).  Then taking a deep breath, it was time to start sawing a slice out of the tree on the lawn side.  I chose to start about a metre up, as that seemed about right (using my Chartered Engineer's judgement), and I was quite surprised how easy it was to cut the ivy/holly.  The "melon slice" was removed, but I thought that I had only cut about a quarter of the holly.  Nevertheless, we thought we'd try to just pull on the rope before I bothered to cut the opposite side of the tree a bit higher up.  Perhaps Jaye (the spread's labourer) is stronger than he looks, because with three rhythmic pulls, there was sudden movement and the whole top came towards us and fell at our feet (photo right).

The photo of the cross-section (left) shows that, in fact, I had cut about half of the holly tree as well as the complete ivy (which was actually a greater cross-sectional area).

The additional good news is that the view of the house from the road is much improved (right), even though neither Jane nor the neighbour noticed when they walked through the gateway!

Soil Pipes and Useless Joists

Our house has a very small bathroom: 2.1 x 1.5 metres (although it is 3 metres high!).  We usually use a shower not a bath, but feel that a house does need a bath, so we were looking at options of using part of a bedroom for a bath when inspiration struck.  Various suppliers do shower baths which are "P" shaped, so you shower standing in a decent area which is also flat; the inspiration was to discover that they also do these - wait for it - exactly 1.5 metre long.  This then fixes the design of the bathroom as there is only one way that can fit everything in.

Part of this design is that the toilet has to be moved, and this necessitates changing the branch in the soil pipe from left hand (135 degrees) to right hand (112.5 degrees), and moving the branch up a small way.  See existing arrangement, right.  So, this week, I have started by lifting the bathroom floor and removing three feet of the internal soil pipe which is four inch diameter lead pipe.  Being a foul pipe this could have been an awful job but, since the toilet has not been used for ages, it was all dry and so not too bad at all.  The wall of the bathroom was one of the really damp places in the house due to the state of the roof, and so (with the roof fixed) I was very surprised to find dampness still present in the floor.  This was doubtless related to the discovery of a 6mm hole in the side of the lead pipe!  I also found that the toilet had been moved once before as the pipe once went through a large cut-out in the second joist from the wall.  The joist is 7" x 1.75" and the cut-out is almost 6" deep (see gap in front of the pipe in photo left).  This hole had been ignored subsequently when they fitted the floorboards, which had spanned the gap and rested on the rotten end joist... 

Unfortunately, as so often happens, another job appeared whilst doing this one.  The plaster of the hall ceiling under the bathroom floor is not just lath but was actually rotten lath held up by plasterboard.  This combination was in a very bad state (due to the hole in the soil pipe) and, in the corner under the lead pipe (above) the board was not attached to the rotten joist at all!  In no time it was all down in a heap on the floor.  Standing on the few remaining bits of floorboard on joists with just space below is surprisingly disconcerting.

Back to the joists: I quite enjoy this sort of joinery.  Fortunately both joists have good wood at the ends so I have fitted a 6" doubler to each joist, attached to the originals with a copious number of 70mm screws.  In doing this I found that the second joist had predictably split in the middle where the six inch gap started, so I added a couple of screws upwards to re-attach that as well.  In the photo from underneath (see left, before I did the first joist), there is a line of light visible between my doubler and the original second joist - this is where the cut-out was.


The other job was to start removal of the old external soil/vent pipe.  This is an unexpected expense as, to install the new branch, the pipe has to be rebuilt from the ground right up to the (new) flashing in the (new) roof.  I have started by grinding off the old external toilet outlet (right) to remove the pipe in the wall, so that I can progress inside.  We will need to dismantle the old stack, order the required new bits (if we can save any?) and then re-build it all when the new outlet has been fitted.  All that is a joy for a later week! Happy days.

Vandalism, an accident and flooring

Plastering continued this week, with much of the scratch coat being covered by the float coat, ready for the final skim.  This has been coupled with the start of the first fix plumbing, intermingled with floorboard work.  I've been delayed on doing the lounge floorboards by a reclamation company who are complete rubbish.  They promised me a new front door and some (fairly thick) pine floorboards; the door proved impossible for the manufacturer, and they sold the floorboards to someone else, and then blamed the 16 year old yard lad for this mistake.

We had some vandalism this week.  I arrived early one morning and found an upper main pane of the Venetian sash window (two over two) had been broken (to match the boarded lower one, broken before we bought the house).  There was glass both inside and out, and almost none left in the frame.  It looked like an attempted break-in, but if it was, why choose the front window, and break one of the upper panes?  Surely you go round the back and break one at waist height?  I called the police and, when I was talking to the (very) young constable, a chap came over from across the road to say that he had heard it (at 1.10am that morning) and had seen the miscreant departing on a child's silver scooter in the direction of the town centre.  The PC (scenting an arrest) said that he would check on the town centre CCTV to see if there were any good pictures of the unusual sight.  No news yet, but at least this confirmed that it was simple vandalism rather than attempted burglary, which consoled me slightly.

I forgot to mention my little accident the other week.  We are applying for listed building consent (LBC) for various things, including the replacement of two awful 1950s fireplaces with a woodburning stove and a nice Victorian fireplace respectively.  Unfortunately, I seem to have pre-empted this permission when I had to fit a floorboard under the end of the existing fireplace in the lounge.  As I lifted it slightly, its weight took control and the entire concrete facade fell forward, landing with an almighty crash which left the white concrete moulding in about twelve pieces, and an ugly gap into the chimney above the brown tiles.  Oops.  Hopefully the LBC will be forthcoming in March, which will make me legal!

In praise of Gas Men

Yes, I really do want to sing the praise of the various contractors who have installed my new gas supply in the last ten days.  I'll even name the company - Southern Gas Networks - as they have exceeded all my expectations (OK, my expectations were pretty low!).  I only paid for the work in early January and they advised that they were expecting to come in 35 days; being a pessimist I assumed that was 35 working days - seven weeks - so I was quite surprised when they said they would come on Feb 3rd.  They even tried (twice) to come earlier as they wanted to keep their emergency team busy on something, but both times the team were then called off to an emergency... I was then pleased when they actually did come as promised on Feb 3rd, and by the next day had completed laying the pipe from the road to the house.  This is about 25 yards which required five hand-dug holes to connect together using their mole (see last week's blog), plus a hand-dug trench at either end (to connect to the main and to the meter box). 

So it was last week that I had a procession of men from their contractor ("Enterprise") who is clearly on a very strictly controlled contract.  Firstly two men came to do "the black stuff" (i.e. filling the hole in the road and pavement).  Then two more came who compacted the three holes which required concrete, in preparation for a third pair who actually laid the concrete.  Special mention here for the young lad who did the concrete (the new bit, right), for carefully copying the pattern in the rest of the concrete around the manhole cover, and doing an excellent job of it.  Finally another pair came (in two vans) to collect all the signage and fencing - all done by Feb 10th.

Having moved here from Central London, I was used to large development companies leaving huge holes with temporary traffic lights on busy roads for a week or three with no work happening.  In the case of the Shard (at London Bridge), there is even a road (St Thomas Street) which has been blocked one way for a couple of years, causing even greater traffic issues than already existed in the area.  Then, conflicting for about ten months, Thames Water dug up the adjacent Borough High Street to replace the water main....  To my mind, if they cannot build a place without causing huge inconvenience to thousands of people on a daily basis for years, I'm not sure why they should be given permission in the first place. [/rant]

Anyway, the meter came yesterday (Mon 14th) so job done.  I'm very happy with the utilities here!

Gas Men and Holes in the Ground

After reaching the take-a-breath stage with the plastering, the gas man came this week.  The house has no gas (although next door does) and so they had to fit a new gas supply pipe from the road up to the side of the house where the kitchen will be.  This is quite a long route, and I am grateful that the surveyor stretched his tape measure to do it all for no extra cost.  He was well aware of the issues about not fitting unsightly meter boxes on listed buildings, and had had this debate with his own company many times before.

Of course, when the manager came last week, he had a different idea about the required route, and then the actual workers had their own variation as well.  They have to dig two holes and then use a tool called a mole, which operates on compressed air and burrows under the ground from one hole to another.  In fact, for our property they had to dig five holes and join them up like a dot-to-dot picture.  Then at either end they dug a trench for the connections to the main and the meter box.  This may sound easy and in fact they made fairly light of the issues, but I reckon I was right to be worried about the difficulty of the possible routes.  The job took over two days, and so one night the road was partly blocked by these works; Jane said, "I've never had a road blocked for me before!"

I dug a hole where the meter was to go, partly as I wanted to know how deep the "foundations" of the house were.  The answer was about a foot from the current surface!  In this photo you can see the three bottom courses of stone, which sit on a line of stones laid at right angles, sticking out about four inches from the wall.  It looks as though they laid these longer stones across ways, and then just built the wall on them.  I think this bottom level was pretty much the ground level when it was built.


The gas men found a old wall, in the gateway near our front wall but about a foot into our property and about a foot down.  Despite the availability of local limestone, this wall uses a good amount of granite - where did that come from?

The existing wall is at the top left of the photo, heading down, and the older wall is in the middle just above my toe, highlighted by the low sun.  There was also a possible mediaeval tile fragment as well as a few other bits of pottery, but clearly everything there has been disturbed over the centuries and is out of context.  However, overall, we think it shows that our house is on a very interesting bit of ground (in the archaeological sense), and now Jane wants to excavate the entire garden!

Plaster, plaster everywhere

More plastering this week.  I have underestimated the amount of time that it takes to get the scratch coat on - he works really hard, but even so by the end of the day there is still so much left.  The signs of progress are most welcome - at last I feel that the house is going back together.  There is a real delight in seeing a uniform covering over walls and ceilings where there used to be damp patches, peeling wallpaper and, in the case of the bedroom ceilings, actual holes with real daylight.

A job next week will be to remove the plaster in the bathroom - at least there is a benefit to having a very small bathroom! - and this should be the last significant amount of plaster to be removed, apart from the kitchen ceiling which I think is doomed.

Having failed to publish this at the weekend, I can add that we have now removed the plaster from half of an internal wall in the kitchen-to-be.  This has had the wonderful effect of revealing the quoins which formed the corner of the original building; in the photo (right) this structural wall extends to the left and also goes directly away from the camera where it forms the front left corner of the house.  The bottom stone is the plinth which stands proud by about 3 cm, in exactly the same way as the wall at the front. 


Also, further along the same wall there is squared limestone (left) which matches the front wall of the house.  All this proves that this thick internal wall along the centre of the house was originally an exterior wall, when the building was first erected as a school, I understand (in 1834).






I have also found that another external wall, which is lined with brick, was originally just painted white on the inside, not plastered.  You can see where the builders have created a pattern by chipping the paint to provide a key before plastering.  Presumably this was the cheaper surface finish on the wall when the building was a school.

Lime Mortar and a Cement Mixer

Tuesday this week saw the commencement of plastering.  To facilitate this protracted process, I decided to invest in my own cement mixer.  This was a financial decision based on the probable number of days that one would have to be hired at about £27/week, not to mention the effort of taking to and from the hire shop when not in use.  Boots, wheelbarrow, mixer... where will it end?                                         
As a listed property, there is no doubt about it: we have to use lime mortar to plaster, just as I had to replace rotten ceilings with oak laths, NOT plasterboard.  Another important principle is that you must not strip all plaster from complete walls regardless - only really bad plaster has been taken down, and as much as possible of the original plaster has been retained.  Due to the leaking roof, we had a fair amount of poor plaster, not only in two whole ceilings but also on solid walls which had been subject to continual dampness for years.  We have left several small patches of popped plaster where they were surrounded by good plaster; this benefits you for several reasons:

1. Applying lime plaster is not cheap as the application is a three part process which is quite labour intensive.
2. Removing the old plaster is a VERY messy job!
3. The lime mortar itself is not particularly cheap unless you slake your own lime and mix it all on site.
4. Replacement laths are not cheap either - I have already used almost 1000 feet of lath (at 27 pence per foot plus VAT).
5. Getting rid of the old plaster is also not cheap - and we have so far removed between three and four tons of it!

(You might ask why one does such a renovation?  Well, in my view, either you do it properly or else you buy a new house - it is not fair to our heritage to buy a traditionally built house and then fail to respect its method of construction.)

Anyway, progress this week has been good.  In three days, both entire bedroom (lath) ceilings, both sides of the lath wall between the two bedrooms and a stone/brick wall have been scratch coated, as have two large repairs on the landing ceiling, and some other parts of a wall (right).  This means that you can no longer see the rafters from the bedrooms, and so the roof space is now physically separated from the first floor, for the first time in several years, I suspect. 
If you think this doesn't sound much, then you try making this soft mixture attach to the roughly 1" x 0.2" oak laths without dropping too much on your own head.  Actually, the process is made easier by adding hair to the lime mortar to strengthen it - our mix uses straight horse-hair.  I admit that some of ours had been bought (ready-mixed) before Christmas and the original hair was probably weakening as it dissolved in the alkali, so to be sure we added extra hair.  This decomposition was certainly happening as it was starting to smell quite bad!

Just to be clear about the general process for plastering: a fairly thick layer of haired lime mortar (normal ratio 3 sharp sand to 1 of lime putty) is applied to a prepared wall or ceiling - this is known as the "scratch coat".  Then when that has "gone off", another thick-ish coat (without hair) is applied, called the "float coat" because a float is used to get it smooth, ready for one or two thin coats of lime plaster (which is 2:1 very fine sand mixed and lime putty) to give a smooth finish.  There are variations, of course, but that's the general gist of it.  It is a very labour-intensive process, spread over a considerable time, so you can see why modern plaster (gypsum-based) is so attractive to builders.  However, lime mortar is more carbon-friendly, as it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as part of its setting process (as it reverts to calcium carbonate), and it is also easier for a DIY-er to use as it does not set so quickly but stays workable for hours (or even days in low temperatures, as  I have found out!).

The house emerges from the Enchanted Forest

Following last week's removal of the scaffolding, and with the completion of the 1st fix electrics, I have been recovering my breath before the start of the plastering, and doing some tidying up.  Hopefully, inside we have almost seen the last of plaster removal; the outside especially was getting very bad as contractors do tend to throw things anywhere out of their way, and it was pretty bad to start with as all the ivy from the roof is still lying beside the house.  I have tidied up the scrap metal, moved a large quantity of old plaster into a huge pile, and have even cleared the path!

Today Chris and I attached the top two sections of cast-iron downpipe on both the side and back of the house.  (The bottom pieces have to wait until the drains are sorted out.)  While we were doing that, Adam the joiner came round, bringing his chainsaw, so at last the pear tree (the one that grew up to two inches from the house) could be felled.  Adam also does wood turning and you can see why he likes pear for this activity as the wood is very close-grained.  To complete the change I decided to take the garden saw to the large buddleia before it reached conservation size.  So, the side of the house lost its pear tree and the buddleia in one day, and now feels decidedly spacious.  The Enchanted Forest (see "It's all in the Name" last August) really is no more, therefore, and is now just a patch of undergrowth with a couple of trees.


Confession Time

 

This week I have finally finished the laths in the ceilings of the two back bedrooms and the patch on the landing, ready for the plasterer.  These are hand-riven oak laths from a well known supplier in Devon.  I bought 300 and, to my surprise, have only about 20 left.  After all my hard work, I think that they actually look quite good, and I am very pleased with my efforts; right now I am almost feeing disappointed that they are about to be covered up!

Unfortunately, I had a little accident this week whilst splitting a wide lath to fit a narrow gap.  I was standing beside a window for added light, and managed to tap the window with one end, with disastrous results.  The really annoying thing is that I now realise that the glass was clearly old - it's only when you break it that you notice the distinctive features of old glass.  I have checked most other windows and now know that a lot of the window glass is older than I realised so I'll just have to be more careful in future.

The scaffolding comes down!

At last, having had a nearly finished roof for several weeks, it is now complete (and is a thing of beauty) so the scaffolding was taken down yesterday - photo right (ours is the left hand half).  We have actually owned the house for only eleven weeks and a lot has been done, but I have really become fed up with ducking my head to avoid the diagonal scaffolding tie-bars between the French door and the front. I'll probably still be ducking for weeks, even though the path is now clear. 

Today it was quite a surprise to find how the left side of the house was now quite light, without scaffolding, undergrowth and leaves; working inside (with no electric light) is now much easier.  Also, we had not really remembered how light the house itself was, as we had only been inside it a few times before the scaffolding went up.  It was a real delight to find the sun shining into the front room this afternoon.

Apart from repairing ceiling laths in the two back bedrooms, we have been removing lime plaster in preparation for replastering.  Much has been damaged by water ingress from the roof, especially though a split in the lead in the box gutter. The two back bedrooms are separated by a lath and plaster wall, which also required to be stripped as the plaster was all crazed and had come away from the laths - huge areas moved alarmingly, and some had been patched with modern alternatives.  Don't ever assume, just because something is covered with lath and plaster, that it is not load-bearing.  Kirsty What's-her-name on one of those property programmes on TV loves to suggest that a wall will come down in minutes, just based on tapping it and saying that "it's only a stud wall".  It's not always true for plasterboard, and it is certainly not always true for lath and plaster!  This is the wall structure we uncovered:

Those two X frames which you can see are both made from oak beams, 4 inches by 3 inches.  Each X is about 6 feet wide and 8 feet high.  At the top of the central stud, pointing downwards, is a metal bolt which has a square head about 1.5 inches across.  The laths are in really good condition and even the nails are still shiny, not rusted.

This is a major piece of structure and not just a simple stud wall, although at first its purpose puzzled me.  There is no corresponding wall in the kitchen beneath; on the right of the picture is a major internal structural wall, about 18 inches thick, largely of squared limestone, and on the left is the external wall which is about a foot thick, in limestone rubble.  After mulling this over whilst going to sleep, finally it dawned on me: this structure is holding the external wall in place!  [Edit: a more learned friend says that it "to provide lateral bracing and stop any movement in your load-bearing walls".  That's what I meant to say...]

We now move to the next phase of work; the first fix electrics is almost done and re-plastering starts this week.  My groundworker will be in soon to look at lowering the path and drain, the gas supply is being arranged and the plumber will be giving me his quote tomorrow.  We are applying for various permissions (still) which I am afraid might well turn out to be the critical path.  Perhaps we might be in by June?

Happy New Year

A Happy New Year to all my readers. I am really surprised by the number of readers recorded, and the amazing variety of countries represented from all round the world. Please feel free to recommend this blog to any friends who might be interested in this sort of thing, and also to make comments against any entry (especially if I've said something silly or missed a horrendous typo!)


Christmas Presents

Not only do I have a "contractor's wheelbarrow" (see earlier), I have now bought myself (as a personal Christmas present, because Santa didn't) a proper pair of working boots with steel toecaps.  They are very comfortable, although I note sadly that they were made in China, like most things these days.

However, I did get a few books for Christmas and some tools, like a new spirit level and a plumb bob.  The books included not one but two copies of a really useful book called "The Old House Handbook" (Roger Hunt and Marianne Suhr, published by SPAB).  My two children obviously know the sort of thing that I like now - it's just a shame they don't talk more often!

Fun with the local District Council

I put in claim for exemption from Council Tax on the grounds that the house is uninhabitable.  They quickly sent me a bill showing that I owed them nothing for this financial year; however, they soon followed that up with a request for documentary proof of the uninhabitable status, such as a contractor's estimate or surveyor's report.  Having neither of these, I sent them a set of 22 assorted photos by e-mail and have heard nothing back yet...

In October I submitted the required (being in a Conservation Area) "Notice of Intent" to cut down the 24 cm diameter pear tree which grows very close to the side of the house (there is just a 10 cm gap).  They replied, saying that they had six weeks to object and, if I heard nothing by Dec 1st, I could go ahead.  On Dec 3rd, I received a letter dated Dec 2nd which formally granted me consent to fell this tree.  Of course, by Dec 2nd the tree was a 5 metre high stump, with all four branches on the ground!

"Hey Big Spender"


Before Christmas I promised the answer to why I found myself humming Shirley Bassey's "Hey Big Spender" whilst doing laths in the bedroom ceilings. Think of the words which go something like (from memory):

"Would you like to have fun, fun, fun?
How about a few laffs, laffs, laffs?
We'll be having a good time!"

Personally I don't regard doing lath repairs as a good time, and can't see how anyone else would either.