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!

Repairs to Large Stone Wall

I have a new neighbour - not the other half of my semi-detached house but the other side.  Their house has a door onto the pavement, whereas my house is set back 15 metres, with the result that there is a wall  between my front garden and their back garden. They have done a phenomenal amount of work on their place in a very short space of time (mostly based on the right principles). One of the things they have done was to remove the huge amount of ivy on this 16" thick limestone wall which, sadly, has revealed that the wall is not in as good a condition as I thought.

The wall is of a mixed construction being partly coursed random rubble and partly roughly

squared - see photo (the bin is just there to give an idea of scale). Where it was clear of ivy (left of picture) there are mostly blocks with good pointing, which is why I thought the whole thing was in good condition; however, much of the rest is coursed random rubble. The whole is capped by 3" limestone slabs, 16" wide and about 30" long; these seem to have been set with a small slope for drainage. Now that the ivy is largely cleared (the darker area where the ladder is), it is apparent that the coursed random rubble is in pretty poor condition with loose or missing mortar, ivy penetrating the wall and loose stones in the first couple of feet down from the top.

The wall starts off pretty vertical (where it leaves the neighbours' house, out of the left side of the above picture) but moving away from the house it has a bow which means that the natural taper has become vertical on their side and a quite marked slope on mine. The top looks awful (left photo) but it's not possible to say what the original slope of the coping was; it has certainly increased a lot in places, but I don't have an clinometer so I can't measure it.

The trouble is that the wall is pretty big. My side is about 8 ft high, and their garden is probably about 3 ft lower than mine (as my garden slopes up and theirs is level throughout), so they have an 11ft wall towering over their patio. A major rebuild is definitely needed; legally I think it's their wall, but it's my ivy. Both houses are listed and in a conservation area. A like-for-like repair does not need LBC but, as it's so high, I'll find someone more experienced to do it for me, rather than do it myself as next year's project. I wouldn't want the responsibility if it fell over later.

I've had a builder look at it and his view is that the bow means that the top has moved over a foot out of true, which is a lot, and so it looks as though the neighbours and I will have a discussion about this with a view to rebuilding the top few feet sometime next spring!

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!

Wind and Rain - Wet or Dry?

I wrote recently about how this house is now warm and dry (see this post), and the recent weather has reinforced that view.  The wind and rain have been causing issues both to the Grade I listed church opposite, and to the 12 year old house of a friend who had water ingress affecting her electrics and security alarm. In both cases I went to investigate and the cause was the same - the driving wind from the south-west forcing water into cracks in the wall and gaps along flashing.

On the church there were small leaks at various places along the south arches where the nave meets the south aisle. As a result I had to go on the south aisle roof (on Christmas Eve!) to investigate and found that the flashing was pointed with cement which had come away from the limestone above, leaving a 2-3mm gap.  Since it was cement already I overcame my inbuilt resistance and used some fairly wet cement mortar to fill in this gap; however, it is a good illustration of why you shouldn't use cement on a limestone building - the cement is rigid and so will crack when the lead expands in the heat, whereas lime mortar is much more tolerant. At some time we will get all this cement out and have the job done properly with lime, but of course I couldn't do such a repair in this cold and wet weather.

The friend's house was perhaps more surprising: the water ingress was where the low front porch joined the front wall of the 2-storey house and at a quick glance from the ground it all looked OK. However, closer investigation using a ladder revealed cracks in the pointing of the front wall of the house, and some very poor pointing using mastic on the lead flashing at the join. In fact, there was what looked like the proper exterior mastic but also some clear mastic which really looked like internal stuff which someone had applied when a similar event had occurred before our friend bought it; of course, the newer stuff was no longer stuck to the older stuff so my recommendation was to get someone to sort the mastic properly and, perhaps, fill the pointing cracks at the same time. Of course, I am still officially convalescing so I didn't want to volunteer myself, even though I do have the necessary tools.

On the plus side, our own house has stoutly resisted the weather and has only ever had water ingress at one point - a southerly wind can force rain onto and under the front door despite a decent weatherboard and some cunning work by me on the doorstep. We use a bit of newspaper to mop it up and otherwise ignore it! As I look out now on New Year's Eve and see the rain still falling, at least I can feel content with this house being warm and dry - now I must go and check the church...

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?

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.

Useful Links

I thought it would be helpful to anyone thinking of undertaking a similar project for me to give a list of helpful websites of people I have used.  I should have done this a long time ago!  (You get a bit slow when you get to my age.)  I'll probably update this list periodically in future:

• Lime products plus helpful advice
• Mike Wye Associates http://www.mikewye.co.uk
• Old House Store http://www.oldhousestore.co.uk 
• and there are lots of others if you search for Lime Mortar Suppliers
• Information about limecrete - http://www.limecrete.net
• Information and Forum for Period Property owners (excellent forum to learn about lime, dampness and how to look after old buildings etc) - http://www.periodproperty.co.uk
• Cast iron rainwater goods - http://www.rainclear.co.uk
• "Conservation" roof lights - http://www.therooflightcompany.co.uk
• Hardware odds and ends - http://www.ironmongerydirect.co.uk and http://www.screwfix.com
• Listed Property Owners Club (who have an annual show at Olympia each February) http://lpoc.co.uk
• Society for Preservation of Ancient Buildings http://www.spab.org.uk
• Tree felling and removal, supply and planting of new trees and hedge - Nicholsons of North Aston http://www.nicholsons.gb.com 
• Sash window manufacturer - Traditional Joinery http://www.traditional-windows.co.uk 
• Wood burning stove and chimney liner -  The Fire Place http://www.the-fire-place.co.uk
• Architectural salvage on line - SalvoWEB - http://www.salvo.co.uk
• The Haynes Period Property manual - http://www.period-house.com/
• Black Limestone flags, imperial bricks, cast iron fireplace plus various other odd bits - Burgess Reclamation http://www.burgessreclamation.co.uk
• NB There is another reclamation company near here who are very noticeable on Salvo which they seem to use as their main marketing outlet.  I ordered my front door from them and had great trouble as they couldn't deliver, because the manufacturer couldn't get wood that big!  Then I had trouble getting my money back which took over seven weeks.  I've never been back.

I can also recommend a plumber, lime plasterer, electrician and groundworker who are all small local tradesmen who did an excellent job.

I'll leave it to you to decide which is the best of the national chains who stock building materials, as I don't think they need me to advertise for them.  Suffice it to say that I think it helps if you can get known in these places to the extent that they don't ask your name but still give you your discount automatically.

[Edit 21 June] Here's a link to another blog which I have started.

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!

The Next Phase

With the impending arrival of autumn (given that we have hardly had a summer, again), I've had a breather this week and done very little on the house.

Our thoughts are now turning our focus to the question of the "service wing" extension at the back of the house.  My understanding is that the house has had three major phases: firstly (in 1834?), it was a rectangular schoolhouse of squared limestone with a ridge roof running east to west; the front was at the eastern end where there is part of an archway visible in the wall.  Then they converted it to a pair of semis, facing south (we own the western half, on the left of the photo right), adding a larger rectangular structure (in coursed rubble) to create the back rooms and allow for the front doors to be positioned on either side (just visible on either side of the photo right); we have dated this to prior to 1870.

Finally they built the brick extensions at the back on either side as the kitchens. This extension (left and right) is a brick built, single storey structure with a simple slate roof, set at an angle which appears too shallow for slates.  The brickwork is now in poor repair, one wall (photo below right) is bulging badly with loose bricks and daylight visible!  Additionally the roof structure is rotten after the years of damp neglect, and the ground around has been concreted at the level of the floor inside, adding to the damp problems.


Our plan is to repair this building with a new roof and re-positioned doors and windows.  Originally we wanted to extend it but this application was refused as it would have spoiled the symmetry of the pair of buildings.  Our plan now, with the Conservation Officer's verbal agreement, is instead to add a conservatory which, being obviously new, does not have the same effect on the symmetry.  This conservatory will be a solid piece of structure, hopefully from 6" square oak in a natural finish (if we can afford it!), although the CO has said that it should have a brick wall at one end so that the conservatory is not visible from the front... words fail me.  I'll do anything that gets it done and saves me having to have further interaction with such an unpredictable person.  The application is in and so now I need to come up with some decisions.

The major decision is how to do the repair work.  The building is single brick but we will have to make the walls thicker to meet Building Regulations; hence, does everything have to be done in lime?  I am all for it as a general principle but if this is not actually essential for breathability, it would make sense to make the entire finished extension using modern materials, even with Thermalite blocks on the inner skin!  Then a builder I know just threw a huge spanner in my works by suggesting that the inner structure could be an insulated wooden frame.  I have no idea as to whether this would be acceptable to the CO.

Then the next question will be the materials for the conservatory - the ideal desire for green oak will be simply a matter of whether we can afford it.  Hopefully, as it's not large the cost will be vaguely sensible...

Then all I have to do is to enlist the required contractors and we're off!  Firstly the lads to demolish most of it, then the groundworker to remove a lot of concrete and earth, then also do the foundations and drains, then the brickie for the footings and walls, then the same demolition lads to do the roof structure, slates and lead.    Finally, we'll get the same plasterer, electrician and plumber back.  Sounds simple, doesn't it?

[Edited 6 Sep to include photos of service wing]

A Missing Blog Entry

I just want to say that I posted an update on a few things on Thursday May 12th, but it has disappeared!  Apparently there is a problem with Blogspot and they had to reset things back by a couple of days on Friday 13th (no, I'm not superstitious); although there has been a promise to restore the missing ones, mine has yet to re-appear, which is MOST FRUSTRATING as I spent a couple of hours on it.

Of course, it is very difficult to remember exactly what one wrote, and any attempt to do it again would be of lesser quality.  In future I'll keep a draft of what I post...

For the record, it was mostly about doing a bit of limestone wall in coursed rubble - the bottom of the French door which will now be just a window.  On the left is a photo of my handiwork, of which I am quite proud, although it did take an awfully long time.  I have deliberately left the pointing deep so that eventually I can point it in the same colour as the old pointing, but I couldn't do the matching as the same time - it all took a very long time!

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 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?

Looking after old buildings with love

Still waiting to exchange contracts, so here's a bit about my knowledge and experience of old buildings:

I once went on a one day course with the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) called "Faith in Maintenance".  This excellent course was aimed at people who were elected as churchwardens and suddenly found themselves responsible for possibly a massive 800-year old Grade I listed church, without an idea of how to look after it. 

The major lesson from the course was "control the water" which goes on/in/down roof, gutters, downpipes, drains etc.  If you do this successfully, we were told, you will do four-fifths of the job.  Essentially, prolonged exposure to water means serious damage to an old building, and a high repair cost.  The old proverb about a "stitch in time saves nine" is very relevant but understates the saving as spending £500 on roof maintenance every year may well save a capital expenditure of a thousand times that in a few years time.

The second lesson was to never use inappropriate materials; I shall probably go on about this at length in this blog, but principally do not mix modern materials (cement/gypsum plaster) with old materials (lime mortar/plaster/render) because it doesn't work!  You have to understand how the building was intended to work with dampness and go with it, not fight against it.  A modern house sits on a waterproof membrane and works on keeping all moisture out by using impermeable materials, whereas a building made with lime mortar/plaster does not expect to be bone dry all the time (but see lesson one above!).  Instead, it expects there to be draughts, and manages moisture by allowing it to evaporate through the mortar in the walls.  Replacing the lime mortar with cement means that the moisture goes though the stone or brick instead, causing damage such as delamination of the face of the stone or brick.  Covering a wall with (impervious) gypsum plaster instead of lime plaster means that moisture will be retained inside the house; it has to go somewhere so it will form on the inside of the wall or run down windows excessively, etc.

So don't mix vinyl paint, ribbon pointing or injected chemical damp-proof courses with lime walls.  Basically, if you want a modern house then buy one, don't try to convert an old one.

My experience with a 320 year old church

In a sense I was lucky as the Grade II* listed church I looked after for five years only dated from c.1685, apart from the late mediaeval tower base.  In the church I found many examples of poor repairs and maintenance:

• cast iron downpipes replaced with black plastic
• earth/leaves/twigs allowed to pile up outside a wall, causing dampness and cold inside (see right)
• gypsum plaster repairs on lime plaster walls (it really does fall off)
• modern vinyl paints used on walls and stonework
• lime plaster falling off because of prolonged flow of rainwater due to a blocked gulley on the roof
• extensive use of a cement skim (about one-eighth of an inch) over walls, window cills and stonework, presumably done in some cases to tidy up the appearance of these items
• water pouring down inside the walls of the tower due to the internal roof not draining. This was caused by excessive pigeon guano (see right, lower), which itself was there partly because a previous rector had placed nesting boxes up there!
• damaged window panes not replaced - when these were done, I discovered that one pane, which had a sheet of clear plastic over the hole, had been missing for over 20 years; the annual maintenance had been to replace the sellotape holding the plastic!
• poor workmanship by roofing contractors, who had fitted new slates and copper valleys, but had bodged the woodwork around the clerestory windows (using untreated one-inch plywood in one place)
• the many church doors had been repainted without permission or skill - the old royal blue was now covered by grey paint which looked like the stuff used to paint battleships, and it was peeling as they had not even sanded down the blue to provide a key

The same roof window, before and after. 

 The same roof dormer door, before and after.

Most of these matters were rectified in my time, together with many more, but we were very busy and some remain...  You could sum it up by saying that the church building was not loved, and old buildings need to be loved if they are to survive.

Our Restoration Plans

The structure of the house is part ashlar and part random stone construction with quoins, with lots of land around it. It has high ceilings, spacious rooms, old sash windows and red and black floor tiles, plus a late Victorian extension at the back which we intend to demolish and replace with a stone-built extension of slightly greater size.

Our plan for the house is to restore it largely as it used to be, using appropriate materials (i.e. lime not cement etc).  The only constraint here is that Jane does not want the interior to remind her of the sort of house that her grandparents lived in when she was young!  Hence if we aim for Late Georgian/early Victorian rather than late Victorian, I should be OK.  

What's wrong with the house?

Issues with the house are:

• The leaking roof
• The ivy (on roof and walls)
• The dampness, principally on the walls and upstairs ceilings
• The brick extension
• The lack of a gas supply
• The lack of any form of central heating

I also anticipate that the entire electrical and plumbing systems will need to be replaced, and that the joists and rafters may be suffering from dry rot/woodworm/other.  Apart from that, it's great!

The current single-storey extension is in danger of self-demolishing as it is only of single brick construction and the end wall is bowing to a considerable degree.  Also, the extension's door and window frames are rotten, the roof leaks, the floor is damp and overall there aren't many good things to be said for it.

Fixing the roof and guttering etc will address the major cause of dampness.  The work to be done will be to remove all ivy and slates, repair the roof structure as required, fit a waterproof membrane, fit new battens, repair soffits and fascia, fit new cast-iron gutters and downpipes and replace lead flashing and slates.  The photo on the right shows one of the downpipes with a fairly obvious major fracture which had clearly been there for some years, judging from the damage to the pointing lower down.

So there will also be pointing to be repaired as required with lime mortar (NOT with cement - I'll talk about that separately), windows to be repaired, and various matters to be addressed at ground level where the ground has risen up.  In some places the soil is against the wall at a level ABOVE the floor inside, which causes dampness; elsewhere someone has used concrete to fill in gaps (for instance) between the stone step and the wall outside the front door, thereby raising the ground level again and causing dampness.  The photo on the left shows a wonderful bit of cementing which traps two inches of rain water against the wall, between the drain and the edging.  It's hardly surprising that there is a lot of dampness!

There's also a small crack above the front door (photo right), but I'm not yet sure if this is a structural item or just a decorative surround.