Paving Part 4 - Finished At Last!

I realise that I never uploaded photos of the progress with the paving - I think that was because my camera batteries expired.  At the time of my last post on paving - here - I had started laying the slabs at the back of the house but had yet to tackle the back door step.  Since then I have made considerable progress:

Firstly, I did the back door step. This uses some old engineering bricks

(in a sort of larger than usual Imperial size) on a concrete foundation set in a rectangle, with one in the middle as well; in the photo (right) there are extra ones inside which were used to support the temporary step while the cement set.  After they were removed, the structure was in-filled with gravel and topped with a 90cm x 60 cm x 4cm limestone slab which matches the ones I've been laying.  The step is above halfway as you have to step over the bottom of the door frame and, in any case, it is quite difficult getting that sort of thing spot on.

The result is pretty pleasing and certainly my grandson finds it easy to use, which is what matters.  The rest of the paving was pretty easy, aided by judicious use of an angle grinder, hired for possibly the last time.

Here you can see the finished back door step surrounded by the paving, with the addition of the stone seat which I bought on the spur of the moment at my favourite reclamation yard. My grandson has already found out with his head how solid the stone seat is!

I'm also quite pleased with the infill up to the wall: this is "self-compacting gravel" as recommended by my groundworker for the driveway, and it seemed a good thing to fill the gap.  Having a thing about dampness, even in a brand new construction with a DPC like this, I didn't want the stone going up to the wall as that would then cause rain to splash on the wall.

Then, last week, we had the pleasure of sitting with the entire family on our patio for the very first time; I now have to do the barbecue - if there is any summer left for entertaining.

Window Arch Repair

The windows of the house have bricks to provide good edges around the window, as the walls are made of random rubble.  Above the window is an arched soldier course, i.e. of bricks on their end, and these are called rubbers.  This is, I believe, because the bricks are actually slightly tapered in order to give the arch its shape, and this taper was achieved by rubbing the bricks against each other. 

Above the hall window is the soil pipe we fitted in 2011, and when we did that I observed that the surrounding stonework was not in great nick (see first photo).  I did a bit of pointing in this area last year (or was it 2011?), doing some deep fill and letting it go off before doing the surface bit in an appropriate colour.  So, when I mixed some more coloured mortar the other day (see the previous entry), I was keen to get this area tidied up.  However, it took all of 30 seconds up the ladder to realise that things were worse than I thought: where I had done the deep pointing above the rubbers, there was (already) a 2mm gap between the pointing and the rubbers.  This could only be caused by the rubbers dropping down.

Movement like this is NOT good news, so I called Pete who did the brickwork on the extension in late 2011.  He came round for a look, assured me that he could sort this in less than a day, and duly turned up this week.  He came armed with his Acrow prop and the "Strong Boy", a flat plate which attaches to the top of the Acrow (see second photo)- and yes, it is strong.  He fitted it in under the large stone just below the soil pipe, and also fitted some shaped wood to support the brick arch.  He then proceeded to remove nearly all the mortar below the Strong Boy, and ended up with some stones and all the rubbers loose (aaargh!!).

The next step was to push the arched wood up to restore the shape of the arch and then insert bits of slate between the rubbers (I think in four gaps only) to make the arch secure.  Slate is brilliant for this as, after all, it was produced under thousands of tons of pressure, so in compression it is fantastically strong.  Then it was replace the brickwork and mortar, tidy up the pointing and the job was done (see third photo).

I am very pleased with the result, as it has removed one of my major headaches.  Since I was paying him for the day, he filled in time by doing the drilling job for the kitchen vent (see previous entry), so I got TWO tricky jobs out of the way for the price of one.  Well worth £150, I reckon.

Loose Ends

It's been a mixed bag recently, with three jobs making significant progress after years of procrastination.

In a spirit of tidying up I decided to mix some more of my local sand & lime putty mix for pointing; then I thought I would do some pointing myself, and my daughter visited and did some more!  So the stone wall which I built last year is almost fully pointed at last (right).

Thus encouraged, I then went back to pointing the side wall of the house which I did a couple of years ago (plus a bit last year) under the new window which I fitted.  Beside that window is the downpipe which had a large hole about 9 feet up; the water gushing through this caused severe damage to the wall as it had been happening over a long period of time.  I only realised how bad it was when clearing the gaps out before filling - in one place I could get my flat hand into the hole, and then curl my fingers up in the void.  There were also some bits where some idiot had smeared a thin coat of cement over the wall, which can only hold moisture in, rather than stop it getting in!  I've now re-pointed a good deal of the worst bits on this wall, mindful of the general rule to not re-point unless absolutely necessary; this is good advice, not just for the integrity of the house but also because it really is a tedious job.  I'm quite pleased with the result!

Having done that pointing, I could now attach the shoe on the bottom of the downpipe.  When we took the ground level down in 2011, I had been left with an annoying gap of about 4 inches at the bottom.  I really didn't want to spend £65 on a new 6 ft length, just for that, and I found a shoe which was longer than usual, but it was still a bit high above the drain.  To bring it down I have used a spare elbow with a collar, and cut the bent bit off, so now there are two collars at the bottom (photo left), and it is a perfect fit (although the groundworkers always seem to attach the gully too close to the wall...).

Then I was urged by 'Er Indoors to do the last bit of skirting board in the lounge; it's one of those bits with a right angle that fits beside the chimney breast, and the old one was rotten; when I had a go a while back, it all went wrong because I didn't cut good 45 degree mitres and so the result was awful.  That was pretty discouraging, spending a couple of hours and achieving absolutely nothing, so I left it.

Anyway, today I had another go and not only cut the two pieces successfully but also fitted the result in place AND painted it (photo right).  Once again, I'm pleased that I can choose a job for the day and do it completely without having to go and buy anything at all.

The third job was the drilling of the hole for the vent in the kitchen (left).  This was not done when the kitchen was fitted (errr... two years ago!) as they intended to chain drill a rectangular hole through 18 inches of stone! I was not impressed as I am sure that this would have caused immense damage to the remaining wall.  Today Pete (who did the brickwork on the extension in late 2011) came and drilled it with his 110mm cutter on an SDS drill, which took him about an hour and a half. It's one of those jobs that perhaps I could do myself but really I am quite happy to pay someone who knows what he's doing.

Now that the hole is done I can purchase the necessary bits to duct the extractor over the hob outside instead of re-circulating it - perhaps I will have done that by Christmas?