Finishing the Summer's Work

Firstly, here's a picture of the finished sash window (upper left window in the picture right). It was a lot of work - probably more than 60 man-hours - but it was worth it simply for the satisfaction of a job well done, plus the appreciation of t'other half!

As I said in August, I'd like to think that the finish on my window is better than the (not so long ago professionally refurbished) window of my neighbour (upper right).  Certainly mine was cheaper and still has the glass that it had when I bought it (although two large panes are not original wavy glass).

Apart from the sash window, I have also done the garden (right) along the side of the house.  This is the bit seen from the kitchen window, so it was really good to get it done before winter.

Having moved half a ton of earth from front to back, the side garden was ready for some turf which I acquired from a well known home store.  The bit recently done is in front of the shed up to the brick wall.  The turf didn't cost the full price as it was quite yellow but, having been down for ten days, it is now indistinguishable in colour from the stuff laid earlier (in three separate phases!) which stretches to the back wall in the distance.  NB The grass ramp is to allow me to push the mower up (as the same mower has to do this raised lawn and the front lawn) - I could lift it up now but know that one day soon it will become impossible for me!

I needed a small amount of top soil to sort out the levels of the last turf beside the shed; this was planned to come from laying a bit more driveway in front but this job just didn't get done for ages until happily it all happened suddenly a few weeks ago.  The new space (left) is only a small addition but I didn't want to loose too much of the lawn out front.  It allows much easier turning of cars in front, as well as a bit more parking when the family visit.

On the left is the view from the back of the garden looking along the side of the house. The back gates still need some work but otherwise now everything is just gardening rather than earth-moving, brickwork or stone work.  As my wife said, "you did all of that yourself!"

Compare this view with the next picture below, which was taken from pretty well the very same spot.

 

Here's a couple of reminders of what it looked like just before we bought it:

Firstly (right upper), looking forward from beside the kitchen, from the far end looking forward to where the back gates and my "repaired" wall now are (where the green bin is in the picture):


Secondly (right lower),  the view looking to the rear from beside what is now the kitchen window:

The tree (visible in both pictures) beside the wall of the house was a lovely pear tree which sadly had to go.  It was so close to the house that a chain saw could not fit between the tree and the wall, but a woodturner friend managed to fell it for me (in exchange for the wood!).  Note the concrete path (along the side of the house) which was about six inches above the floor level inside, whereas my black limestone slabs are five inches below the same floor level.

At the time these photos were taken, we had not actually found the side wall of the garden (somewhere to the left of the bottom photo) as the undergrowth was so thick!  Eventually (about three months later), to our surprise, we found that the garden widens out as you go back (and our neighbour's garden narrows) - I think it is because it follows a boundary along a mediaeval street, which predated both houses!

Serious Damp Issues

I've just returned from a short holiday in Venice - we had never been there before and it seemed like a good place to tick off our list of "must-do somewhen".  The whole place is 

fascinating, and it really takes a visit to understand how this small island (or rather a set of smaller islands) is set in a large lagoon with other inhabited islands around.  Much of the lagoon is very shallow and so is un-navigable by everything except the smallest boats, and it is not clear to the eye whether the sea is taking back the land, or the land is being reclaimed from the sea! Probably a bit of both, I fancy.

The Venetians have not helped their predicament by allowing very large ships to dock on the north side of the main island, i.e. the side furthest from the Adriatic Sea.  To accomodate these 100,000 tonne monsters (each with over 5,000 passengers!) they require to keep the waterway past St Mark's Square dredged to about 50 feet, which surely cannot help but encourage the town itself to settle gently?  We were told that most houses are so damp that the ground floor is not used, and there is often as little as a foot difference between the water and ground that we walked on!

Being seriously interested in old buildings and issues such as dampness, I took a lot of

photos which illustrate the problems they have.  I don't think these are attributable to rising damp (if it really exists!), but more largely due to the continually damp and corrosive atmosphere.  Anything close to the water will be washed frequently by natural or man made waves as well as the damp breeze, and so erosion is hardly surprising and is visible everywhere (photo left).

What matters, sadly, is that there has been much use of CEMENT (aaaargh!) and the effects of this are all too readily visible, especially where repointing has been done.

The next two photos on the right show all too clearly what happens when a lime wall is re-pointed with cement.  It might look fine to start with, but ultimately the brick (or stone) starts to spall (i.e. lose its surface) because of the continual presence of the water in the brick which should escape

via the pointing but cannot.  The upper photo is a classic showing how the brick recedes into the wall.

Cement is also used for rendering, with the result that it comes off in sheets.  The photos left and below show cement render just falling off a brick wall.

Another technical issue if the frequent use of stone in an unnatural bed, i.e. laid with the natural grain (due to being sedimentary) at right angles to the ground.  This encourages vertical splits and just looks wrong anyway, as shown left in a wall where there is also spalling brickwork due to cement pointing.

This sort of thing is evident everywhere, and I fear for the future of the buildings for this reason alone, never mind the rising sea levels.  Unfortunately they seem to have made their natural problems worse by their own poor maintenance practices.  However, on the plus side, they do have lots of lovely old buildings (right), even though most of them look in need of a bit of TLC!

Renovating Sash Windows

Well, four years after moving in, I cannot procrastinate any longer: I have started to renovate the sash windows at last.

The house has seven old sash windows (as well as the new double sash in the kitchen and the replacement Venetian window in the lounge, both fitted in 2011), most of which have old wavy glass.  Four are standard two over two, two are a pair of one over one in the bathroom (but they are totally separate windows) and the final one is our bedroom window at the front of the house (photo right): it is basically a normal two over two but each glass has an extra narrow pane on its outside, so there are two normal size panes and two narrow ones in each sash - eight bits of glass in all. Being a cautious sort, I wanted to start with a standard one at the back of the house but t'other half wanted me first to address the tatty complicated one at the front.  The thick paint was flaking and was missing two sash cords, the glass was barely attached and the cill was rotting, not to mention the catch which was rusted solid and loosely attached.

So, first thing on Monday last week, after much research and some advance purchases, and with a fairly favourable weather forecast, the lower sash was removed.  Basically, the process with each sash was to remove the glass (carefully!), completely remove all paint

and old putty, do any necessary repairs, prime, refit the glass and finally finish the painting.  Concurrently, the window frame itself needed a complete strip, replacement of four worn brass pullies (pulleys?), four new sash cords and new parting beads, not to mention some major woodwork repairs.  Looking at the photo (left), it reminded me of having a missing tooth for two weeks - too late to go back now!

The lower sash had loose tenons at the bottom corners, not to mention three loose glazing bars, and so needed re-gluing.  The photo right shows its condition after removing the glass and doing a fair bit of stripping.  One of the narrow panes had been cracked when we bought the house, and I had kept an old piece of wavy glass for just that job - it just needed cutting down.  The rest of the job was some hours of stripping, scraping and sanding, plus a small amount of extra gluing.

The upper sash came out on Tuesday morning.  This one had never fitted properly, and the reason for this was immediately apparent as the weights rested on the bottom while the

window was an inch from the top.  It also had a nasty steel bracket holding the centre glazing bar to the bottom cross member - sadly it wasn't in the right position and there was a 7mm gap to the lower bar.  That one I had already decided to do with some stuff called "Repair Care Dry Flex 4"; this is designed specially for things like doing structural repairs to window frames and isn't cheap - but it does the job admirably (the yellow green bits in the photo left)!

I managed to remove all seven unbroken pieces of glass from both sashes without further breakage - the eighth piece was already cracked when we bought the house and I had kept some old glass from the old lounge window as a replacement.  I also decided to use "Repair Care Dry Seal" instead of linseed putty; this is permanently elastic and seems a better bet after my poor efforts at using proper putty a few years ago!

I thought I had a good idea of how long all this work would take but, once again, I underestimated and it was not until Wednesday of this week (nine days after starting) that I 

was able to fit the freshly painted and glazed sashes back in place (right, before glazing).  I reckon it was over 40 manhours of work as well.  Everything went to plan except that it all took longer; even the weather was kind and no rain got onto my south facing work site until I was refitting the sashes.  I did break one of the narrow pieces whilst cleaning it but, fortunately, I had kept TWO pices from the old lounge window!  The only other issue, at the last minute, was a nasty splinter in the index finger of my right hand, due to careless sanding.

There was also the small matter of the window cill, which was oak but suffering from rot. 

I took off all the poor wood and covered the whole thing in Dry Flex, leaving a gap underneath for some sealant.  At the left bottom corner the sash frame had rotted and so this also received the Dry Flex treatment.  I slaved in a new bottom piece for the front frame, plus some bits for the cross member, both visible in the photo left.  The parting bead is also visible but this is simply a press fit (well, block and mallet).

So, I need to finish off various bits of detail like sealing around the frame and doing the black top coat, but the (almost) finished result has already attracted positive comment from friends, who say that it looks better than the similar window next door (restored three years ago by V******a).  I'll post a completed picture soon.

Casting Lead Sheet

Had a really interesting day this week: a few of us from the church were invited to the yard of our contractors (Norman & Underwood in Leicester) who are doing a lot of stone repairs/replacements on the church (thanks to our HLF grant).

Apart from seeing the stonemasons at work on our stone, and having a go ourselves (see right - with one of our finished stones in front), we also saw lead sheet being cast (even though they are not doing our roof as it's not lead). This casting is done largely in the traditional manner on sand and N&U say that they are the only people in the country who still do it in this way; they can re-cast the lead from a particular roof and so send back essentially the same material as was removed from the roof, which pleases the heritage-minded.

The casting process is called a "throw", although that seems an odd word for such a carefully done process.  It requires a sand bed to be prepared, about 6m x 1.4m, which has to be done from scratch for each casting, obviously with great skill to get it perfectly smooth and level. This photo shows them aerating the bed first.  There is a wheel on a track on either side of the bed which helps as they run various wooden tools along it as part of the smoothing process, which is then followed by a final go by hand with upturned copper trays about a foot square.

 

The furnace at one end is lifted up and tilted to produce a river of molten lead (right) which goes into a trough and then they wait for the temperature to come down slightly to the desired figure (330 deg C, we saw). 

Then it is released and flows along the sand (too fast for me to take a picture!), and the two workers take the wooden tool sitting on the wheels along the bed at the right speed, with a bow wave in front (photo left), any surplus lead going off the end into an old bucket on wheels. Done!

Edit: I was also given a DVD by the company, which I watched last night (it was a bad night on TV).  I learned that the said wooden item is called a strickler, and to my surprise the verb "strickle" is in my dictionary.  It means (in general terms) exactly what the two men were doing with it!

The thickness of the sheet is controlled only by the speed at which the workers move along the molten lead. Here the lead has just been poured and they are about to do this critical run along the bed.









Then they cut off the edges and ends, and cut the product into separate sheets and roll it by hand, with all the still warm surplus going back into the furnace for the next go. This produces about 5m of sheet about 1.25m wide, and each go takes about 25 minutes so they can do 16 casts in a day. We saw the sheet cut into four bits, each weighing about 50kg (it was Code 6, I think).

I wouldn't want that job as it looks really physically tiring and I bet they have back problems. There is no doubting their skill at producing such a product but I have no idea how much it costs!

NB N&U did the lead casting for the inscription on the coffin of Richard III.  We saw a copy of this which I think is destined for a museum,














and they did an imprint in the sand from the original for us!

A really good day!

Using a Scaffold Tower

I have been very busy this last week.  I hired a scaffold tower for the whole week, as the fire alarm in church needed a servicing; they need a tower to get up high enough for their long pole to reach the detectors in the ceiling.  As this is an annual task, it had to be done in July, and so I had saved a set of other tasks that would be done at the same time.  These included a repair job to the CCTV camera which is mounted high up, the replacement of some high light bulbs, and the removal of the string from balloons which has got wrapped around the fans in the ceiling of the church hall.

At this stage I will vent my anger at the church architect who told my precessors what to fit in the church without a thought for the subsequent maintenance or the running costs.  The uplighter bulbs fitted five years ago are halogens and I have proved that switching the uplighters off saves about £50 per month.  The fire alarm is overly complex, and is wireless even though you could have hidden cables in the roof structure without them being noticed.  The CCTV camera (also fitted five years ago) had a wonderful pair of devices which allowed the video signal and the control inputs to share the same cable.  Great idea, but it's another two components which can go wrong - of course one did, probably in my view because of the known dampness under the suspended wooden floor.  Guess what? These boxes are no longer made so we would need two new, bigger ones at vast price.  However, we fixed that issue by laying the extra cable instead so now there are two less components to go wrong.

Anyway, there was a need to remove the tower from the church for Sunday and, as the hall was also in use, I brought it over to my house for "storage".  It seemed sensible to make use of it so this weekend I have:
a. Refitted the stuff in the gutters that prevents leaf build up (and they are now held in by some wire)
b. Fitted tingles to hold the three slipping slates in the area of the vent slates in the roof (done poorly as they were an afterthought...)
c. Tackled the poor pointing and defrassing on the west wall - there was thin cement over the pointing in some places, and spalling stone elsewhere, plus some large holes which I had blocked temporarily three years ago...
d. Then I had to tidy up the bits and dust all over the path below!

The aluminium 6 metre tower is a wonderful design.  It has three pairs of frames, with easily fitted clip-on bars in two lengths - one for the horizontals and one for the diagonals. Every item is very light; there are four stablisers, and wheels on the bottom of the frames.  On Saturday, Jane and I erected most of it in about 20 minutes; the difficult bit is positioning the top platform at the right level, but I found that the height was adequate at the top of the second frame which avoided that difficulty. I actually got her to go up it once just so she could agree that it is safe when you are up there (and so stop worrying!).  On Monday after doing the wall I took it down on my own and moved it to the church hall, all in about 45 minutes.

Then in the hall on Tuesday we attempted to remove the string from around the fans in the ceiling.  This string is the residue from balloons released by hirers who think it's funny to watch them going round! Sadly, this was one job we couldn't complete, although we did remove the balloons which surprisingly had been there for over three months with no sign of deflating.  The reason we couldn't fix the string was that the tower was too low with two sections and too high with three.  It turns out that we should have had some half frames which would have been just right, so that job will have to wait until next year.

On Wednesday the tower was taken away at last, and I have to say that it has been a most tiring week! I lost count of the number of times I went up and down the tower - at least I should be a bit fitter!

Recent Progress Photos

I promised some photos of the recent work in my last post.  Here's a view of the end of the finished wall, showing the problematic steps and the patio:

The rest of the dry limestone wall is to the left of the steps and goes along the side of the house - it's about 12 metres long.  Note on the right the small brick wall which retains some earth to protect the footing of the high rear wall; the small wall has the remnants of the paving as coping - and a spare seat!

Here's the view along the side of the house, towards the steps and patio.

Top Tip 1: when doing stone walling, avoid curves and corners - I made life very difficult for myself with my design.

(Left) A close up of the steps, showing the alternative lining for them - when I decided that mortared limestone would take up too much of the width of the steps, I used off-cuts of limestone flooring from the church work last year, cut into one inch strips and held together with NHL 3.5

On a sudden whim, on Tuesday I decided that the weather was cool enough to allow me to do lime work outside, so I decided to finish off the wall end to one side of the front gateway; I did the other side properly two years ago and this side has been dry assembled since 2011 - but was now spreading a bit.  This is the halfway stage when I had done the two levels of stone:

Here's the finished article with the corner coping stone attached on Wednesday.  As you might imagine, I had some difficulty doing this wall with the four year old hornbeam hedge in such close proximity!

Top Tip 2: Always finish a wall BEFORE planting a hedge beside it!!

Well, it's Progress, but not much!

I have been busy this year - honestly.  Much of this year's progress is based on the recent acquisition of my own angle grinder as a birthday present!  However, I don't feel I have much to show for my effort because the list of achievments is largely small jobs, or larger jobs which have been going on for too long.

This year so far, other than normal maintenance, I have:

a. Cut several large coping stones in half lengthways in order to make them a sensible size to cap a 4" thick brick wall.
b. Finished the dry stone wall which forms the fascia to the block/brick wall which holds the garden back, as it is higher than the house floor level.
c. Cut and fitted various items of stone flooring to make the wall lining to go beside the steps up to the lawn.
d. Cut and fitted yet more left-over flagstone into suitable sizes in order to act as coping stone on another low brick wall; these will allow people to sit on them fairly comfortably when we hold a barbecue on the patio!
e. Removed the remaining gunk from two doors and the panelling to the kitchen (the wall is 17" thick) using heat gun plus scraper, then a Stanley knife scraper then sander or just sandpaper, in order to enable painting of the surface. This was a nightmare job.
f. Painted both hall doors (to lounge and kitchen) plus the above mentioned panelling to the kitchen plus the inside of the front door, all in Laura Ashley Eau-de-Nil; although I didn't choose the colour, I am very pleased with the choice and the overall effect.
g. Chosen the shade of Earthborn claypaint for the walls of the hall, stairs and landing, as we finally decided that the yellow limewash done in 2011 was a bit too bright.
h. Painted the back and one side of the shed (see earlier) which I did in early March as I couldn't paint last year because it is too close to a lot of undergrowth.
i. Fitted the bath panel properly (at last!!)
j. Cleared the rubbish (an empty one tonne bag, some old bricks, various tubs of stuff and a rotting pallet) from the area beside the back window.
k. Laid some setts at the end of the paving to hold it away from the wall below the back window, as it's a bit high compared to the floor inside, and laid the last of the paving on sand to fill the gap.

The last of the jobs above to be done was the completion of the wall (b. above); having finished it a couple of days ago, I realise how this interesting but tedious job has been hanging over me for 32 months since I laid the foundations.  Perhaps I do feel that I have something to show for my hard work after all!

Now I have to finish plaster repairs in the hall (these are partly done so not listed above), then paint the hall, stairs and landing with the claypaint.  Then there's a widening of the drive, which will provide some earth to do the last of the landscaping in the back garden, to be followed by some more turf which will effectively complete the back.  Finally in the front I need to build one wall end with lime mortar in place of the present dry construction which was temporarily done in 2012. Then it'll be a few internal details like a new wardrobe and clearing the second bedroom, plus finishing the 2011 wardrobe in our bedroom and a lot of decorating!

I'll put some new pictures up when I've been able to buy some batteries for my camera...