Relaying the Hall Floor (Part 3 of 3)

Just realized that I never finished off this story! Doesn't time fly when you get older?
The hall was laid by my friendly professional - I knew that I would be lucky to achieve a job half as good as he has done, so it was well worth it. We used some stuff that I had not encountered before, called "AdhereCal". It comes in powder form like NHL but, when mixed, it looks like a fine lime plaster which is sticky like normal tile cement. It has certainly done the job for us, although there was a minor panic when he ran out and I was 25 miles away. Luckily I knew where one of the few local stockists was and was able to get there before they closed.
These photos show the finished result, with which I am very pleased - and so is t'other half, which is probably more important.

This is a close-up showing the corner of the hall in front of the front door.

The photo left shows the view after entering the front door and turning right to see the way through the arch, while the one below shows the view back from the stairs towards the front door and the arch, with the hall window behind the arch.

I have often been asked when the house will be finished. My standard answer is that, as far as I am concerned, the house moved from "restoration and landscaping" to "maintenance and gardening" in about 2013. However, now that the hall floor is finished, I really do hope people stop asking me that question.

The only things to be done are things that I have done before! The bathroom fan has been replaced, we have a new fridge, we had an new washing machine about 5 years ago (don't buy a Haier - there are no spares available), I have re-decorated the hall and lounge walls, I have re-built the cheap shed which I bought in a hurry in 2011 to keep things dry.

Relaying the Hall Floor (Part 2)

The new limecrete (NHL5) screed is laid (left) over the recycled foamed glass, and I have done a scratch coat on the lime plaster (below) where the old concrete skirting board was.

But things do move on slowly at times, like when you are waiting for the NHL to set completely, or when waiting for the scratch coat of lime plaster on the wall to go off so you can do the second coat.

The English limestone flags arrive today, I hope, but they cannot be laid for at least another couple of weeks, but it's more like three weeks - first it's the wait for the floor to be ready then - guess what? - the contractor has a planned commitment for 9 days on September 6th which means we are waiting until almost September 20th.

However, with a small delay the water pipe was fixed two weeks ago now. I am really glad that it was noticed as it would have gone sooner or later. The cost was probably an additional £750 (plumber and builder together). I can only guess at how I would have felt if, in a couple of years, the new floor had suddenly become very damp and we would have to done the job, cursing, at even greater expense.

I have also sold the Staffordshire Blue tiles for a reasonable price. They went to a flooring contractor who was going to lay them in a couple of days time in a house in London. Sadly I could not interest him in the collection of red quarries I have.

One job I can do is to paint the skirting board which has already been delivered. The profile matches what we have in the lounge which was made for us in 2011, so t'other half is very pleased. Result!

Bad Timing

I know my brother needs my kidney (see link on previous entry), but in many ways this really is bad timing.  I now have less than six weeks to do a whole load of work in the garden in order to get it ready for my convalescence.

I rather like the idea of sitting out in the summer sun for six or eight weeks, drinking a little lemonade and watching the birds feeding.  The plants will be growing nicely with a gentle fragrance filling the air, while swifts will be wheeling in the sky above.  The alert among you will have noticed the possibly erroneous assumption in all this: what summer?  We're into spring and even that refuses to work this year.  I certainly cannot do any lime brickwork while it's so cold, and I don't even really want to do any concreting or cement work while we're likely to get a frost at night.

I took delivery today of some granite setts which will act as one edge for my paving.  The other long edge is alongside the house; part will be a concrete strip which will support my cast iron grilles where I don't want to pave up to the wall of the old house. Where the paving goes up to the wall of the new extension I will have a strip of self-compacting gravel against the wall of the house as I don't mind that going a bit higher (and I don't have enough grilles!).  There is no point is replicating the earlier errors (of high ground against a porous wall) which I have permanently eliminated by spending a considerable amount.

Once I have done the edges, I can lay the flagstones.  These are on order at my favourite reclamation yard, and I think I've got him down to the lowest possible price of £32/sq m, which isn't bad if you say it quickly - mind you it is for proper 30mm thick real stone, not some thin reconstituted stuff.  I must admit that does sound expensive until you think how much good carpet costs; this stone will be around long after the carpet has given up.

If I can get these done before the operation, I'll be pretty happy, but if I can also clear and lay some lawn I'll be even happier! So, I have work to do as soon as I can persuade myself that the weather is (a) warm enough for me to work, and (b) warm enough for concrete to set properly.

Reflections on the Last Two Years

Now that I have a bit more time for activities other than building work, I've been thinking about what has been acheived in the last two years and two months.  Specifically, I've been thinking about two aspects of the work, namely the things I've done which have really pleased me, and the things that I would rather had been done differently.

Under the latter heading come a few things which still bug me:

• The attitude of the Conservation Officer - this relationship seemed to have gone wrong near the start, but I still don't really know why, other than because (just possibly) the CO really IS an unhelpful person.
• The fact that Highways at the County Council told me that I could not widen the existing gateway to make a single driveway entrance for both houses as it was too close to a junction, but then (after I had made an entrance in the old wall) they allowed my new neighbour to make a new entrance even closer to the junction!
• A newly laid slate has slipped from the roof to the gutter, but the roofer has yet to come and fix it.
• The new kitchen sash window is four over four, not two over two as the rest of the windows.
• There is still no vent to the kitchen...
• Thames Water fitted an external meter in the pavement and this has been found to be a joint supply. Now we have to get an internal meter fitted, but that would have been so much easier if done before the new kitchen was fitted, as I intended.
• My new loft hatch is not quite square, because the joists were not parallel!
• The new extension is not exactly as intended - the roof is higher, the chimney lower and the plasterer gave me incorrect answers to two clear questions, with the result that the internal work I did is not perfect; one window cill has thicker render than he said, so it's almost level with the top of the lower window frame, and a plastered stud wall is thinner than the rendered blocks that it rests on.

Looking at the good side, there are lots of things which make me smile:

• The stone wall where I filled in the bottom of the old doorway
• The wall which I lime-plastered myself (the stone wall which is the join between the old house and new-build extension)
• The new 6' stone wall beside the front door, and the attached gates
• The new sash window which cost just £95 from a reclamation yard
• The front room floor where I replaced bits of joists and re-laid most of the boards plus some reclaimed ones
• The stud wardrobe frontage which I built for the master bedroom
• The wood-burning stove in the kitchen, in the alcove which I "found" by removing the old tiled fireplace
• The recently fitted secondary glazing (we are cosy, and it is quieter now)
• The limecrete/black limestone floor in the kitchen (laid by Chris, Shane and me)
• The black limestone floor in the new extension which I laid entirely by myself (on concrete...)
• The extension roof on which I laid over half the slates in just over a day on my own, much to Chris's surprise
• The casement window in the new extension which I salvaged from the old extension and did a major repair job
• The 1800+ Imperial bricks from the old extension which Jane and I salvaged and were re-used in the new extension (I only had to buy about 200 more)
• All the other little bits and pieces from the old building which I laboriously removed, kept and re-used
• Buying my own mixer, instead of hiring one
• Deciding that I would manage the entire process myself, instead of paying a builder to project manage it

Actually, the whole place makes me smile - it just feels so safe, solid and secure, just as a home should feel.

Another Limecrete Floor

A slight diversion from our house, to the church across the road where they are in the process of laying a limecrete floor in part the church.  This is noteworthy as all too often ignorance wins and a concrete slab gets laid, or the flagstones are sealed (so why bother with a breathable floor underneath?). I found a year ago that there was very little detailed guidance on-line when researching the design of our limecrete floor, so I make no apologies for giving such detail here again.

The church architect got the design of the floor from Ty-Mawr, who are one of the main lime suppliers in this country (I used Mike Wye but there are others...).  The floor design is basically the same as the one I laid in the kitchen here (see this post last year), apart from using Recycled Foamed Glass (RFG) instead of light expanded clay aggregate (LECA).  In detail, from the bottom up, there is a geotextile membrane, 200mm of (lightly compacted) loosefill aggregate of RFG, another layer of membrane, then a 3:1 mix of RFG and NHL5 to form the slab (I think, 150mm thick).

The slab has now been laid by The Limecrete Company and looks impressive (right).  The edges have a vertical inch thick piece of woodwool, whose function I have yet to understand but it might be related to crack prevention.  There will be underfloor heating (UFH) pipes added with a 3 inch Glaster screed and 20mm Creeton limestone tiles on top, although this heating will not be connected until a new boiler is fitted in a later phase. This work is the second stage (of about four!) of renovating the church; phase 1 was electrics, lighting, sound and internal redecoration.  The next phases will also include installing toilets and a servery, and levelling the entire floor with the same sort of floor with UFH (and chairs instead of Victorian pews).

More Lime Plastering

Well, I've finished off the scratch coat on that wall, and I'm now waiting for it to go off before I do the float coat.  I'm pretty happy with my efforts (so far) but I must say that the bit around the door was far more difficult than I had expected.  My admiration for Phil the Spread and all other plasterers has increased in direct proportion to the ache in both my arms, specifically the elbow joints.  Both forearms felt as though they were about to fall off after I finished, and I had only done two mixes on each day; how do these guys do five or six?

Anyone who saw me will probably have wondered why that idiot was mixing mortar outside on such a cold day.  Even cement would have been out of the question, so to knock up lime seems idiotic.  I'm well aware of the issues with lime and cold weather (or, for that matter, lime and hot weather!), but I did have a plan.  The mortar was all carefully kept inside so was at about 18 deg C, but I had no intention of using my mixer indoors as you end up with lime splashes over everything within a wide arc in front of the mixer.  These splashes can also be at quite an unexpected range!  My solution was to pre-warm the mixer with a couple of kettles of boiling water, and then cover it up again as soon as the load was in the wheelbarrow.  Once inside, the joy of lime is that it stays workable for as long as you can be bothered, although you do need to knock it up again when the hawk is loaded.

The other real pain is cleaning up afterwards.  The mixer is done first, then the water/sand/lime mix is poured into the wheelbarrow which acts as the sink to do all the tools, leaving the wheelbarrow itself as the last thing.  On a cold day there is a real incentive to all this VERY quickly!  Then, inside to sort out the floor: our black limestone flags look wonderful but you need to clean all the lime mortar off before it sets or you will have a real job on your hands later on.  A decorator's sponge is a good tool, plus a large bowl of warm water and some disposable gloves (which of course I was also wearing for all the plastering).  Then it's wipe and rinse continually for ages.  One thing is always to do complete flags so that cleaning doesn't show.  I used the same method while doing the grouting, but you have to develop a technique for wiping the surplus off the flags right to the edges without leaving any signs of wiping.  I found that a careful sponging along the edge with a gentle turn with the fingers to use a fresh bit of sponge seemed to work very well; the turn twists the sponge from behind and brings it over the mortar which reveals a nice clean edge behind it.  Again, frequent rinsing of the sponge is critical.  I really am longing to have the whole job finished so that perhaps the floors will need cleaning less often!

One reason for the extension taking a long time is of course the weather (and the forecast for Saturday is minus 10 deg C!).  Another reason is that I get tired quite quickly, and have realised that pushing myself too much on one day simply means that I then achieve even less the next day, so a sensible, steady pace is required for maximum achievement.  Thirdly, I have been to see the doctor recently and it took several visits to decide that there was nothing wrong with me apart from advancing years. Finally, of course, there's my grandson to see - when you've got a cute little kid like him to play with, it certainly puts things in perspective and you wonder why you bother doing things at the speed of the modern world.  I spent three hours babysitting one afternoon the other week and it was FUN!

Lime Plaster and Grouting

It seems a very long time ago that I last used any lime mortar.  It was certainly before the winter set in, but I suppose it was perhaps even September last year.  Well, today I was at it with a vengeance, as I tried my hand at lime plastering for the first time.  It's all very well looking at someone else doing it, and talking about it, but there's nothing like actually doing it yourself, on your own.  There's no-one to blame if it goes wrong, and there's not even anyone to ask for help.  The trouble with plastering generally, but especially lime plastering, is that it's so messy.  If ever I have complained about plasterers being messy, I apologise, as I have found out for myself that whatever you do with plaster, some gets on the (wrong) walls, the floor, all the tools, the ladder especially and of course oneself.

The task was to plaster the old wall which forms part of the rebuilt extension.  It's the wall which forms part of the kitchen and the old brick extension was built outside, so what once was an exterior wall became an internal wall (see photo left).  Apart from this wall, the entire extension is in modern materials but with lime in the pointing to give that softer look.  When we demolished the old extension, I removed all the old plaster (lime and modern pink) on this wall and of course found some lovely Cotswold stone underneath; well, it's coursed rubble, not squared but it's still lovely.  I did contemplate keeping the stone visible but there were several reasons not to.  Firstly, there used to be a hatchway in the wall which I removed and bricked up about a year ago: I had no thought of having an unplastered wall so the bricks seemed a good idea at the time, hence the plastered square in the centre of the wall in the above photo.  I think we plastered it as I thought we'd keep the old plaster (never thought it would come off so easily!).  I don't think I ever mentioned this hatch on this blog, so here's another picture, from the kitchen side (right), before we did the kitchen last June.  The wall is almost 18 inches thick, so it used 70-something bricks going right through to the extension side. 

Secondly, we fitted T-pieces to the water and heating pipes (which you can see in the pictures) to take them through the wall in preparation for the extension.  So these all come out on the extension side, at about a metre up as you can see in the photos.  I've forgotten why they weren't at floor level, which would have been a better idea!  Possibly the second fix plumbing was done after the kitchen fit?  I love hindsight.


Anyway, I managed to do the haired scratch coat on about half of the wall today before getting tired - it is tough on your right arm.  This was two mixes, which I think was not bad considering the spread and his mate used to do five in a day, but I was on my own and my grandson came to see us.  (No further excuse needed!)

I've also been grouting the black limestone floor, which is tedious and, if you're not careful, very hard on your knees; last time (in June) I got housemaid's knee!  So, I've been doing that job in small goes and have now done about 80% of the extension floor, so I'm almost there.  Left, you can see some gaps unfilled, but the rest of the floor is done in the same yellow mortar as can be seen near the camera. I should point out (just in case you've not realized) that the floor and the wall are in the same room, so cleaning up all waste mortar soon after it is dropped is essential to avoid staining on the limestone.  Next time I'll mention my technique for cleaning lime mortar off black limestone (exciting stuff - I must have become a nerd).

Last of the Black Limestone Flags

Well, I hoped to finish the black limestone flags on Wednesday a week ago; I'm pleased to say that I actually achieved this on the due date, to my surprise!  They are not perfect, but then they were never going to be, considering that I'd not done this job before.  Believe me, just because you've laid a few wall and floor tiles of the ceramic variety, don't think that qualifies you to lay a 40mm+ mortar bed and large (i.e. heavy) limestone flags of up to 30mm thickness; it is VERY hard work when you are mixing, levelling, cutting and laying all by yourself.  Apart from the second day, I did two mixes every day and found that this was a decent amount of work which left me tired but not (quite) exhausted.  On the second day I did three mixes and realized my mistake when I sat down in the evening and didn't move for four hours!

Levelling the bed for the individual stone thickness, so that the stone was at the correct height in relation to others, was one problem I had anticipated; I had not realized how difficult it would be to get the heavy stones perfectly square in relation to each other, and with the right gap.  Either they were level but too high, or were sloped, or angled, or the gaps were not right.... or all of these!  You also have to be careful with the order of laying as you obviously don't want to lean on ones just laid.  Since I was doing two mixes and then calling it a day, this wasn't too much of a problem, apart from where I was cutting an edge.  In an ideal world you would lay the stones in the middle and work out to the wall, but then you have to cut and lay the ones at the edge with the wall, so what do you stand on to do that?   My solution was to work with my back to the door (see above), so that the last one was in the doorway, which meant that I laid cut stones against the wall and worked away from the wall.  However, this was my undoing as I dropped the last one in, lovely and level, one cm below the door, and found that it was too small! Instead of 10mm, I had a 25mm gap either side of it, which could have been largely avoided had I measured and cut the edge ones more accurately to suit.  Hopefully, the grouting will hide this sort of blemish, and no-one else apart from Chris will notice where the floor is not level.

I mentioned last time about choosing to use an irregular floor pattern, but forgot to mention how I did the actual irregular design.  I only had three widths of flagstone, 45cm, 60cm and 75cm, all 60 cm long.  I found some unhelpful advice of the internet which suggested that five different sizes was the minimum for an irregular floor.  However, I didn't want to cut them except where they abut the wall as the edges are attractively dressed and I quickly proved that dressing is another skill I don't have (quite apart from the effort in cutting up to 40mm of limestone!).  So I just sat down with a pencil, eraser and squared paper and tried it until it looked right.  Being multiples of 15cm, it was just possible to achieve a layout which looks random, but it was actually hard work, even for an engineer.  The trick with the layout was to not work from the edges; I started designing at the doorway to the kitchen, and moved towards the centre, then worked back towards the edges, as those edges would be cut if needed.  There are two basic rules for an irregular floor. Firstly, never have four stones meeting at one corner; you always need to have a T junction, not a crossroads!  Secondly, don't have long joints covering several stones; for the sizes I have, I decided that three stones was the longest joint I wanted but had to go to four a couple of times. 

Having finished the flags, I moved on to do the floor in the loo and utility (i.e. carrying on out of the door in the photo to the external back door).  The floor in here will be ceramic tiles (450mm square and about 8mm thick.)  These are much easier as they will be stuck onto the bed once it is set, thus giving myself two goes at getting it all level - once with the bed and once with the adhesive.  You've got to make life easier for yourself where you can!  I've done the bed and am now waiting for it to set, so I've gone back to grout the limestone flags.

NB In the photos above, I'm quite pleased with the ledged and braced door you can see.  This is re-used from the old extension, and is fitted in almost the same place with the original latch.  I did have to buy some new T-hinges but even these are identical to the ones I threw away.  I might have to paint it somewhen...

More Black Limestone Flags

We got the first fix plumbing done a week ago, so the time had come to get on with the floor in the new extension.  I bought the black limestone flags some time ago; these are the same as we fitted in the kitchen last May, which looks great (see this link).  Chris and Shane did wonders with the kitchen floor so of course, I wanted them both back for this one.  However, I knew Shane had broken his leg, so Chris was going to do this with me doing all the mixing and cutting.  If that sounds like hard work, yes it is, and I wasn't really looking forward to the job.  Then earlier this week Chris came round and said that but he's been rather busy with a spate of roof work after the recent high winds, so it would not possible for some while.  Time to bite the bullet: let's do it all by myself!  So, I have been really busy this week and can vouch for just how tiring this sort of work can be.

Of course, it is not so clean now

I'll give some detail of the complexity of the task: firstly, you need to decide the pattern for the floor.  Ours would have to be the interesting completely irregular floor to match the adjacent kitchen, so that decision was easy.  Then, there is the question of the mortar mix; I decided to use up the hydrated lime left over from the brickwork on the extension, and a quick internet search gave me a 1:3:10 ratio of cement: hydrated lime: sharp sand (see this link).  For a bedding mortar you must use sharp sand (NOT building sand), so I ordered a tonne bag from the local merchant, which arrived on Tuesday; this had to be barrowed round the back before dark as we had previously had a couple of hundred kilos nicked one night from the front garden!  Now, I have my own cement mixer (right) so I just had to hire a grinder and I was ready to start.  So, I started and immediately found that I wasn't ready as I couldn't find the (previously purchased) disc for the grinder! Sigh...

So next morning I eventually found the cutting disc and now the fun started: make the mix and try to get the right consistency - too wet and you weaken the final mix, too dry and it becomes really hard work.  Then you lay the load to the right thickness (how?) and completely level (really?) so that the stone (of uneven thickness) is nice and level at the right height when laid - perfectly placed in relation to the other flags and correct in three dimensions.  I was matching the level of the kitchen floor (where I started) and wanted to get to door on the other side the room at the right height with a nice level floor in between.

What I found was that I could only do three mixes (or perhaps just two!) before I really became very tired.  This was enough to do about six flags and took me about 4 hours.  Although this sounds really slow, I worked out that actually the two young fit lads would only do about 50% more flags than me in the same number of manhours, so perhaps I was doing OK (at my age).  Of course, the two of them would each do twice as many manhours as me in a day so yes, I am very slow.  I am fairly happy with the result so far (left), although the worst flag is one of the first ones laid - it is ever so easy to increase the depth without realising, and a very small amount on the spirit level is actually quite significant over these lengths.  In one sense, these are actually more forgiving than perfect square ceramic tiles, as they are meant to have character!


So here I am after four sessions without 60% of the floor done - completion next Wednesday perhaps?

The Limecrete Floor Part 3 - Laying Flagstones

I'm sure some purists will not approve, but we have bought and laid black limestone flags on the limecrete floor in our new kitchen.  These are imported from Spain but they might be from elsewhere as I asked the question but have forgotten the answer (an all-too-common experience at my age). There are some remaining questions about how to keep them clean and black, and what to grout them with, and sealing; I don't want to seal the flagstones as I want the floor to be breathable and also, our experience of sealing is that you have to do it often, forever!  I'd welcome any comments on these matters.  Otherwise the floor is finished; the kitchen is now off-limits for a couple of weeks (photo right above shows the first day's achievement).

The quantity of materials for the mortar bed again caused problems; I got a sufficient amount of NHL5, only by calculating for 5 or 6 bags and getting 9 for safety!  However, I calculated that we needed only about 600 kg of sharp sand, so bought a tonne bag from a local supplier.  Over the bank holiday weekend we ran out of both sand and time, so adjourned until I could get some more sand delivered - I got another tonne and I think we used about 300 kg. The issue (I think) was that the slab and screed were not actually level; I measured a 50 mm depth to be filled to be level with the floor in the hall, but at the far side of the room the depth was nearer 80 mm.  Also, the flagstones were of variable thickness some were only 18 mm but others were anything up to 38 mm; this made it hard to guess the average thickness in order to calculate the average depth for the bed.  I think I used 30 mm for the average stone thickness (hence a required bed thickness of 20 mm) but it was probably nearer 25 mm, so the average bed thickness needed was more like 40 mm - quite a large error.

Chris and Shane again did a sterling job.  Chris (left) did the actual laying and level checking while, apart from doing the mixes, Shane also did the required stone cutting using a hired 9 inch grinder (for which I bought the blade as the hire cost was over half the purchase price).  This is not easy - I had a go, and found that there is a good deal of skill and strength needed, as well as the ability to see the cutting line through the clouds of dust.  See Shane (right) cutting a bit of limestone coping for me.



My main roles were moving the buckets of mix, selecting the next stones and a layout which Jane and I had produced the evening before (it wasn't easy!).  What we wanted was a layout with no discernible regularity and very few continuous joint lines.  Unfortunately, we did not get the expected sizes of stone, and it was just not possible to achieve the second aim; we expected to get 60 cm stones in a selection of lengths - 30 cm, 45 cm, 60 cm, 75 cm and 90 cm.  These being multiples of 15, I thought that something would be achievable, but what we got we lots of 45s and 70s (yes, NOT 75 cm) and relatively few 30s and 60s, with only one 90 cm.  If you think you can do better, try to find a way of making a 6.1 x 3.6 irregular pattern rectangle with cut sides only at the edges (or else you have to dress the edge as well).  Of course, don't forget the chimney breast and the fact that the room is not a perfect rectangle...

Other progress this week has been tiling half the bathroom (so that the basin and loo can be installed), refitting the last skirting boards (so that the radiators can now be fitted), cutting the original quarry tiles at the doorway to the kitchen and re-fitting them (flush to the new floor), and stripping more brown gunk (not shellac, I am told) from all the internal doors.  Finally, Jane has rolled the walls of the main bedroom with white emulsion in her customary "it's OK to get it all over me as well" mode.  She was amused (I hope) when I offered to fetch the car rather than walk along 100 yards along the road with her in that state - well, what would our new neighbours think?