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.

A floor to dance on, and A Mystery

This week's success was finding and installing some reclaimed flooring in the lounge.  I started the lounge floor job last November, and did repairs to the joist ends in one half of the room; basically the joists were rotten wherever they were close to a wall!  This let me keep the other half as a datum as I had no intention of doing a complete new floor from scratch.  However, when refitting the usable boards to the first half, I found that the boards were all different widths, which made the job immensely more difficult as I couldn't just use any board in any position, but had to find serviceable matching pairs to cross the room.  My next problem was that I went to the wrong reclamation company who didn't deliver the 24mm thick floorboards which they promised.  I then found that I was driven by the various contractors who needed me to do preparation of some sort to keep everything going (OK, I could have paid for someone else to take off the old plaster...) and the floor took a back seat for a long while.  Two weeks ago I found a gap in my own schedule and did enough of the floor to let me start on the other half of the room - hence the joist story earlier this month when I removed the remaining floorboards.

On Wednesday this week I re-visited another reclamation yard which had no floorboards when I had visited before.  This time I was lucky as they had a huge pile of reclaimed pile, 20mm thick and 200mm wide.  I reasoned that I could plane down the edge of the last 24mm board and so this thickness would be OK.  Then I persuaded the lad to go through the pile with me so that I could choose over 100 feet of matching boards of suitable lengths, and they even delivered for free that same afternoon! 

So, Thursday's task was to finish off the joists in the front half of the room where it had all been so damp.  I got quite bored cutting nine notches in lengths of new 4x2 to retain the same level when replacing the slightly different sized older joists.  This worked surprisingly well - I won't bore you with my calculation and cut marking technique but it worked!  The photo (right) shows the joists in the bay window; note that I have not changed the position of the joists at all - the ends you can see are original, apart from the two where I have added an end-piece after sawing off the very end in order to retain as much as possible of the original wood.

Then I started to fit the new (reclaimed) boards and the floor was virtually finished by Friday; it would have been completely finished but I ran out of screws.  I also had a single uncorrectable mistake, when my very last saw cut was 10cm short...  Fortunately Jane was going past the reclamation yard later, so she picked up another 2 metre length for me.  The photo (left) shows the almost finished floor in the same bay window - it's almost fit to dance on (if I could).

Other Progress

Plastering has continued; progress is slower than I had anticipated.  Doing the two skims over three major items takes two days, so in four days this week, Phil did three ceilings and three walls (plus a few other odd bits).  We hope to have finished the upstairs completely by the end of next week, and another week should see downstairs done apart from the walls with the two chimneys and the kitchen window wall.  We are progressing and the end is in sight, but it has been a long haul.

We have also just received Listed Building Consent for the various items already mentioned such as the new fires, the kitchen floor etc.  Hooray! First major hurdle over.

A Mystery

Finally, an unsolved mystery: I have gained a step ladder.  I don't have a photo of it but I'm sure you can use your imagination.  On Wednesday I thought I heard a sound at the back door, but when I checked there was no-one there.  An hour later, going outside, I noticed that there was an aluminium step ladder propped on the wall a few yards past the door.  Phil and Jaye agreed definitely that it was not there earlier, so where it came from is a mystery.  If it was one of my other contractors I cannot understand why they would leave it here now as they are not expected back for weeks.  In any case, anyone who knows me wouldn't just leave it without a word, they'd pop in for a chat, wouldn't they?

Ivy is The Enemy (and Fun with Joists)

Apologies to anyone called Ivy - I assure you that this is nothing personal.

When we bought our house, there was a very large growth of ivy up the front corner and over a good part of the roof (photo left).  This growth, reckoned to be over thirty years old, had damaged the gutters and filled them with compost so that no rainwater flowed at all in almost half of the roof's guttering.  The ivy was so thick that it had actually protected the stone wall which was in great condition, but at the edges of the ivy the wall was green and damp (well, that rainwater had to go somewhere!).  This ivy has been removed (photo right), leaving only a large stump of multiple stems about a foot high beside the corner.

This week, inside that corner of the wall, I have recommenced work on the floor joists.  I already knew that the joist beside the wall was rotten due to damp as a result of the concrete path being too high.  However, I was surprised to find something which, at first glance, appeared to be a 1.5" iron pipe, right in the corner.  Closer inspection showed that it was, in fact, a root of ivy!  Somehow this has penetrated the 18" thick wall, and then it dives down underneath the end supporting wall for the joists (see photo, right).  Happily, the root was easier to cut than the trunk of the ivy which I have been trying to remove for ages.

You might think that ivy looks pretty on the side of your house but, believe me, you need to treat it as the Number One Enemy - get rid of it.  Given half a chance, it will do all sorts of damage, by growing into (and through!) walls, under lead flashing, between junctions in gutters, under slates/tiles, and so on, causing damage which will probably be seen first as dampness.  By then it is TOO LATE and you are already into expensive repairs! 

More Fun with Joists

Continuing the joist work, I then removed the floorboards in the rectangular bay window; this was a known problem area which I had been avoiding for some time.  I fully expected to have to replace most of the six joists, as I had previously found all the skirting board very rotten.  Of course, I should have known better: whilst removing the boards it was clear that there were bigger issues, as some of the joists were not attached to anything except the boards!  The joist at one end of the window (lying on its side on the right of the photo) was the worst, as the wall plate on which it was meant to be resting had also rotted into oblivion at that end.  The photo (right) shows (top left) the remaining piece of the wall plate and a surviving joist (centre).  In fact, the whole wall plate was rotten and pretty useless so I lifted that out, together with four of the joists.  I then could see that the two brick-high supporting wall was actually pretty bad as well; the bricks were all loose and, in its 1.75m length, there was a gap of about 50cm.  It also suffered from being built too close to the outside wall; the gap was about 5cm at most.  Consequently all the stuff which falls down the end of the floorboards (like plaster and rotting skirting boards) had been trapped between the two walls, even covering the wall plate.  As the outside wall was damp (high ground and the rainwater falling from the broken gutter), the dampness had been allowed to invade the inside and this is why the wood had rotted.

Thus it was today that that I found myself mixing a load of hydraulic lime mortar in my own mixer (for the first time), rebuilding the supporting wall and fixing a new wall plate, instead of just using the same bit of 4x2 to replace some joists.

I decided to improve the design by building the new wall three inches further in, thus allowing space for any future debris.  As with joinery, I find this sort of thing quite satisfying, even though it wasn't the task I intended to do.

As part of this job I realised that I had not seen evidence of the air-brick; a long time ago I had ensured this was clear outside to encourage ventilation.  Closer investigation revealed that there was a large clump of cement covering it, which I then removed with a couple of taps with a club hammer.  Presumably it had been blocked because it was causing a draught, but whoever did it seemed to be entirely unaware that its function is exactly that!

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.

Kurt the Destroyer

We've owned the house for six weeks now, and I'm still amazed at the speed of things.  The roof is almost done, but we lost the whole week except Monday to the weather - annoying when it would only take three days perhaps to finish.  The electricians started last Friday, and the ground floor installation is almost done.  Neil the contractor employs a younger chap called Kurt; he is really very good and likeable, but this week I have discovered that he is really "Kurt the Destroyer".  Chasing the runs for the cables into lime plaster walls produces prodigious quantities of dust and debris, which covers everything including the kettle, cups, tea bags, first aid kit, my glasses etc.  He just doesn't notice or care, it seems (what is his own house like?).  Feeding cables down the walls from the joists above means that he has to lift the upstairs floorboards and so makes a mess works both upstairs and downstairs at the same time.  He also broke a window in the French door (which is going to go eventually, but not yet) by trying to get a massive tool store in through it, which was NEVER going to fit.  So, the entire place is a real mess, and we have invited the neighbourhood round on Sunday for mulled wine and to have a gander at our work.  (The real reason is so that when we finish they will appreciate what we have done all the more!)

I had some success this week; the front room floor joists are virtually finished, and I have ordered some reclaimed floorboards which are to be planed to size. In the meantime, in preparation for Sunday's visitors I have re-laid the old floor boards (without fastenings), and the whole room feels better.

I have also constructed a loft access hatch.  This might sound simple, but when you have suspect and not necessarily parallel joists of various sizes, with a rotted sill plate (due to the roof leaks) which I had not noticed before, it becomes decidedly complicated.  I had to design and construct a new pair of joists to support the sides of my hatch as I did not trust the existing joists to bear the additional weight.  This is a view from the hatch along the new joists:

This is the new bit of sill plate (the bit of wood on which joists rest), made from the bit of joist which I had just cut out for the hatch space.  There is a real joy in immediately finding a use for a nice bit of oak which you have just made redundant!  I was quite surprised to be able to lift the new joist (on the left) with my shoulder whilst slipping the new sill plate underneath.



In case you like roof timbers, here are a couple of views of the A-frames inside the roof:

So, before the roofers cover the membrane and it is lost to natural light for 40 years, I have been able to make the loft hatch.  At least there was a benefit of the bad weather!

Is it really only three weeks?

We seem to have done so much in only three weeks; the roof is progressing slowly, thanks to the usual autumnal weather, but at least we have seen the first slates go back on.  Encouragingly, we don't seem to have lost as many slates as first thought, so just a few reclaimed ones will be needed to complete the job.  Also, the scaffolding has been extended (see the platform above the gutter level) to permit work on both central chimney stacks, which should start next week.

This week's drama was inside.  I decided to take up a few floorboards in the lounge (the rest of the downstairs is solid floor); we knew that there was some issue with the joists where they meet the wall which has the solid hall floor and stairs on the other side.  In fact, the twelve joists are in better condition than I had expected, thanks to a good-sized air space underneath, apart from three places where no air could circulate due to builders' rubbish.  The end of the joists do not rest on the solid foundation as I had expected; rather, there are four small brick walls which support the joists, each with a bit of four by two acting as the sill plate on top of which the joists rest.  After I had taken up the two floorboards closest to the solid wall, I could see that there was indeed some rot/woodworm etc in some of the joist ends and in a few floorboards. Also, the sill plate was rotten in a few places.  Well, that's still fixable. 

I think that the ends of the joists should not actually contact the solid wall but they do - someone had thought it a good idea to fill the gap with mortar, which then enabled the joist ends to become damp and hence rot.  Also, the plaster was too low behind the skirting boards and actually touched the floorboards, again helping dampness to spread and causing rot.  I could add some photos of really bad bits of rot but I'm sure you know what it's like - it looks OK but crumbles in your hand...

I was still thinking that I could fix this all myself when I cleared away some plaster and caused some mortar to fall off which revealed WOOD at the base of a brick wall.  It was with a sinking heart that I removed the plaster at the foot of the entire twelve foot wall to reveal that it was built of brick with a wooden foundation layer at floor level.  I went home both depressed and puzzled! 

The next day, further investigation revealed that this wood may be actually in quite good condition so I shall consider treating it and leaving well alone.  I then resolved to take some more floorboards off to discover the extent of the woodworm and rot on the joists, especially the joist beside the damp external wall (where someone has installed a raised concrete path outside).  Take my advice - be prepared if you do this, and know when to stop.  The first thing was that I found more wood in the external wall - this was a smaller piece which of course had rotted thanks to the damp external wall.  I think it was to help secure the skirting board, but it had long since ceased to serve any purpose except to act as a sponge.

Three hours later I had removed about half of the flooring in the lounge and, hopefully, I have found the end of the woodworm and rot.  I also had the joy of removing a twelve foot piece of skirting board complete without damage, only to see it split under its own weight as I picked it up - woodworm again!  More firewood.

So this time I went home via a well-known supplier of building materials to buy a load of new timbers with which I shall discover if I can fit a level floor, once I can find about twenty five feet of reclaimed 7"x1" pine floorboards which do NOT have woodworm and rotten bits!