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.

Secondary Glazing

I mentioned before how the Conservation Officer (erroneously in most people's view) sweepingly declared that "you can't have double glazing in a listed building".  That was in relation to a brand new sash window (far right below) which replaced a metal Crittal door and two windows on the side of the house (near right below), which seemed an inexplicable decision; I made sure that the design of the window will allow for double glazing if I so choose in the future, and the CO never realized!  I should point out that I agree that, in a building like this, one should not remove old sash windows and fit uPVC ones as they always look wrong - the thickness of the glazing bars is a real give away apart from the lack of wavy glass - but I did think that DG in a new window would be allowed. Anyway, with that history, I was never going to bother to mention the subject again to the CO, and so the house has remained draughty with a corresponding high gas bill last winter. As a result, I turned my thoughts to secondary glazing, and recently this came to the top of my list of "Things to do before winter". 

Secondary glazing is acceptable on period properties without conservation consent as it a reversible change (other than a few screw holes), and also it is not like double glazing, in that the space between the two panes is not sealed so it does not provide the same barrier to heat loss.  Basically it does reduce heat loss to an extent, but it also reduces draughts and noise.  The sash windows in this house are ideal for secondary glazing as the frame of the sash provides a good flat surface for the inner sheet.  You can get complicated systems which, for instance, add sliding glass in a frame, but I chose a simpler system which comprises a sheet of acrylic with a soft plastic edging strip, held against the sash window by little nylon clips and screws. I'm sure there are other suppliers, but I bought all my stuff from Tubeway Easyfix (http://www.tubeway.co.uk/).  They were kind enough to send me, free of charge, a plastic mitre block for cutting the plastic edging, which got omitted from my order.  Since this item retails at £7.05 + VAT, I'm glad I didn't pay for it; you would think they would always throw such a little bit of plastic in for nothing.

There are relatively few issues with this system, although the price of the acrylic sheet surprised me; I used 2mm thick sheet, although you can use 3mm or 4mm (even more expensive!).  One issue seems to be the size of the sheets; most of my windows are 90cm wide, and so need acrylic sheet which is about 95cm wide; of course, one of the standard widths is 92cm so I had to go to the next size up, with consequent additional waste and cost.  One potential difficulty is cutting the acrylic; I was told that could probably score the acrylic and break it like glass, but even with 2mm thick, this just did not work reliably.  Hence it had to be cut and I quickly proved that you cannot use a hand saw as this causes cracks along with a very rough edge. However my jigsaw with a fine blade proved to be the business so long as you don't move it too quickly, but even then you need to support the edge at the point of cutting or you get a jagged edge with cracks.  Straight edges help with positioning the clips, so I always made sure I had an edge cut by the supplier along the bottom when I fitted the first clips.

I've now done five windows, including the large one in the main bedroom.  This one was so large that I was unable to buy a sheet of acrylic big enough, so I have made a wooden horizontal support which runs across in line with the join in the sashes, so that it isn't seen from outside.

This support was made from four bits of stripwood, and there is a groove top and bottom to hold the edges of the acrylic; the strength is primarily from an expensive piece of hardwood (30mm x 10mm) which forms the visible side in the room. Photos of the system are quite difficult to do, as all they show are the windows and you can hardly see the edge of the acrylic, which is the whole point really.  However, here's a detail picture so you can see the edging and the clips:

The draughts have largely gone and the difference in room temperature is quite noticeable; it really does make a difference and there is now less need to keep all internal doors closed.  I've still got to do one in the hall, one in the extension and a pair in the bathroom (left); the bathroom ones fell to the end of the list due to the refurbishment work needed on the window frame and the fact that I will have to re-fit the venetian blind on another bit of stripwood to hold it away from the acrylic. The main renovation of all these windows will get done next summer (if we have one) and the main aim will be to keep the old glass wherever possible.

Having eliminated a lot of draughts, I will have to make sure that the house is still well ventilated - there has been no dampness or condensation anywhere in the last year since it dried out, apart from what we caused with cooking and showers.

A 100th Celebration

No, I'm not that old although I do sometimes feel it.

The celebration is because the Blogger editor tells me that this my 100th post since I started this blog twenty seven months ago. Having a back-up on Word, the word count tells me that it now comprises almost 62,000 words, which is probably a whole book, I suppose.  The blog has been quite useful for myself when I have forgotten how, when or why I did some particular thing, and it has also encouraged me to take a couple of thousand pictures of the work as it progressed.  Mind you, there are still some things of which I have managed to fail to take pictures; this surprises me as I seem to have the camera close to hand most days.

Some unexpected good weather this week has allowed me to lay some more concrete near the back gate and to start finishing the low wall in the front which leads up to the new wall.  I'm still putting off the inside jobs until the weather is too bad to work outdoors at all.

Finishing the concrete at the back gate was a relief; I had already purchased a monkey tail bolt (right) - the sort with a long handle to operate it, as these are often used at the top and bottom of large doors and gates.  Since I wanted the half-inch square bolt to locate in the concrete, I had to leave that bit of concreting until after I had fitted the gate and the bolt, so that I could set the bolt in its receptacle in the ground and concrete around the receptacle (a bit of square tube, just visible in the photo); even so, the bolt needed modifying as I wanted a greater travel than any bolt I found, since I wasn't sure about how close to the ground I would get the bottom of my gate.  This modification was easy once I had found some rivets to allow me to drill out the existing and move the retaining bracket up a bit.  In the event, the gate is satisfyingly low (ref cats, comment below) and I could have moved the bracket a bit less.

I treated myself in a shop recently and bought a blacksmith-made Suffolk latch (photo left) for these gates.  You know, the sort of one where you operate a lever on one side with your thumb above the handle, and it lifts the latch inside.  I have to say, at £35 it was quite expensive compared to mass-produced stuff from W and HB, but they cannot even get close to the quality and feel of something properly made like this.  (Yes, I need to restore the paint finish...)

The gates need to be secure so there are two other horizontal bolts plus a support strut which goes to the new gate pillar; of course, when secured the Suffolk latch will not open the gates from outside, but other than some ugly padlock I could not see how I could secure and open the gates from both sides.  In fact, what I really wanted to secure the gates with was one of those bits of 4 by 2 which fits into brackets on either side - like an old fortress gate.  I would have wanted to use oak (which is obtainable) but I couldn't find any nice sturdy brackets anywhere; brackets made out of wood would be a bit too chunky for the size of these gates.  Anyway, the gates are now pretty secure and, to my delight, they keep the local cats out; one of these is a huge, insolent black moggy and another is pure white.  They seem to have used the garden as their own pathway from front to back for years, stopping for a bird meal somewhere if they got lucky.

I also want to put a strip of wood down the front edge of the right hand gate as a stop for the left hand one; I found a long strip of half inch seasoned old pine removed from somewhere, but I can't recall exactly where.  As I've said before, keeping something which "looks useful" for a year or eighteen months on the off-chance, and then finding a use for it is very satisfying as well as economic (I once used a car light bulb which I had bought 17 years previously for an earlier car!)  Strip, sand, cut to length, fill, sand, prime, undercoat, top coat and then I can fit it.  Then there's just a drip strip along the top of both gates and a quick touch up of the paint, and they will be done.

There's then just the small job of painting the left hand gate black.  This is not so easy as the paint is some incredibly hard modern stuff on which all known sandpaper seems to have no discernible effect.  I did the road side a long time ago using my sander plus a good number of sheets of aluminium oxide paper, so I guess it will be the same again, but largely by hand this time thanks to the ledges and braces.  You can see why I am leaving that task for later!

Woolly Loft Insulation

Having completed the wall last week (at last), I found myself curiously relaxed this week.  When the weather is OK I will finish the gates, but they are secure and useable for now, so what to do?  Then I remembered my list (from August) of the tasks that I wanted to do before winter.  Most of these were left from last winter as the extension and the wall have managed to fill most of my time, as well as using most of my energy.  I am painfully aware that jobs like finishing the bathroom and the bedroom wardrobe have literally not been touched since we moved in (July 2011); happily, 'er indoors has been most patient but I'm aware that I can't rely on that indefinitely.

Looking at the weather forecast, it was easy to decide that the loft insulation was top of the list.  A long time ago I opted for a "cold roof" which means laying the insulation onto the joists and ensuring that the loft space above is well ventilated; I bought lots of "Thermafleece PB20" almost TWO YEARS AGO with the intention of laying it as soon as possible after we had plastered the ceilings.  However, things often don't work out as you expect, do they?  This stuff isn't cheap but it is far preferable to fit something like this in an old building because it's breathable, whereas that modern stuff actually prevents the passage of water vapour and it never dries out if it gets soggy. I managed to do about two-thirds of the loft before the onset of winter last year, but left the difficult bit around the hatch until last.  Now it was time to tackle this.

"Thermafleece PB20" is actually 60% British sheeps' wool and 40% recycled polyester which gives it body.  It is much nicer to handle than man-made stuff as it doesn't irritate your skin.  However, I found on the first two occasions I used it that it can irritate your throat (or perhaps that was the dust in the loft); I developed a cough in the following week each time and so I then decided to always use a face mask - this has worked!

It is however more difficult to cut than other modern stuff, and you can't tear it easily.  It comes in compressed rolls and I realized that it was far preferable to try to cut it whilst still compressed.  I used an 8" carving knife for the cutting, with frequent pauses to re-sharpen it on a steel.  I either cut it on the roll by piercing the roll radially many times with the knife and then hacking at the remaining bits, or else by laying it on a board and slicing it whilst also trying to keep it compressed.  Both these were nevertheless somewhat trying procedures, as well as being tiring on your arms.  Annoyingly I found an easier way this week, only about an hour before I finished. I found this by accident as I was cutting off the end a piece which was going to fit up to a joist; I laid it over the joist and put another piece of wood under the insulation so that I was cutting between the pieces of wood.  For some reason cutting down and through the fleece was very easy and effective.  What was a two minute job became a ten second one!

I have laid three layers: a 70mm layer between the joists, and two 100mm layers over the top.  Indeed, this seems a bit "over the top" but the levels of insulation recommended have increased since the days of a simple three inch layer of horrible fibreglass stuff.  The thickness of the top layer can be seen in the photo on the left. Note that in all these photos there is a good gap between the end of the insulation and the roof itself, as ventilation is important (contrary to those who would like us to live in sealed boxes!).

I had a spot of bother when doing this job in 2011 as I wanted to board the area under the roof light.  Unfortunately this was near the central internal wall and the joists on the front of the house were larger than those on the back, so you can imagine the issues I had with relative heights of joists, insulation and board.  That was when I ran out of time and energy over a year ago, but this time I persevered and have succeeded.

The last job I had to do was to fit the loft hatch and add some insulation on that as well, as it was probably a major source of draughts last year.  Hopefully the expense of this stuff will be borne out by the improvement in the warmth of the house and a reduction in heating bills over the duration of our retirement.  You can but hope!

O Wall! O Sweet, O Lovely Wall!

The wall is complete! (Apart from a few details... )

Many people better educated than myself might recognise the above quote from "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  You might think that this would be the most appropriate quotation for me (despite my failure in English Literature 'O' Level!), as I savour my hard-won success.  However, given the way I feel right now, a rather more appropriate quotation is found just a few lines further on in the same opus: "O Wall! Full often hast thou heard my moans"!

I sit here feeling very tired after a long and hectic day's work.  I had finished off the stone structure on Tuesday and today was the icing on the cake, or rather the copers on the wall. I'm quite surprised that I have built most of the structure using stone that was already at the property; all I needed to acquire was the faced stone (including the pintle blocks for the gate hinges) which forms the quoin.  I was pleased that it was pretty level for the coping stones to be laid, and also when I made a small framework to lie on the top I proved that it was pretty well parallel as well.  I used this to draw a line showing the width of the coping stones and, hence, where I needed to grind an angle on the (few) protruding bits.  There is a bend in the wall - I didn't want to make this too easy for myself! - and of course I had forgotten about the coping stones when I designed the bend.  This bend was required because I didn't want to uproot the ivy climbing up the boundary wall, which would have been necessary if the new wall had been straight.  Another difficulty was that the soil rises in the direction of the boundary wall, so the foundations required a lot of thought.

Today I hired an angle grinder again [Top Tip: buy your own blade if you think you'll hire one more than once] and spent the morning cutting and grinding in preparation for the afternoon when my son arrived (with grandson) to help with the difficult bit - lifting the copers carefully into position on their mortar bed.  Since the heaviest weighs about 45kg, you can imagine that I had quickly decided that this was too much for me. I made a mix of NHL (sharp sand: building sand: NHL3.5 in 5:1:2 ratio).  This is basically standard 3:1 but I added the local building sand which gives a good colour match to the house pointing.  My grandson loved the mixer but was otherwise confined indoors as I had to wield the grinder again to make the last coping stones fit. 

However, in my haste I made too much mortar and so after my son left I spent the next three hours doing pointing and minor repairs to use it up; I gave up when it started to rain as dusk was falling.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.  A lot of thought has gone into this wall; I find that things usually turn out better if you think long and hard before you start, and try to imagine exactly how things will be done and what problems might ensue.  (There have also been a few sleepless nights.)  My vision was to build a security wall which would look as though it had been there for years, and I'd like to think that I have succeeded.  However, I'm glad I'm not doing that for a living - I started in May and thought it would be done by early July!

Feeling Old

So is this the feeling of getting old?  Creaking joints, tired muscles, strained ligaments and that internal voice which keeps asking "should I be doing this at my age?", not to mention a general lack of energy and motivation.  I've always known and recognised my physical limits (not to mention legal and financial!), but suddenly there are many new ones coming into play; it's as though there is a Sgt Wilson inside me saying "Sir, are you sure that's wise?".  Drat, he's often correct.

I've done a fair bit on the front wall since last week despite the weather; but I've come to a stop due to simple tiredness.  Those at a similar age will perhaps recognise the signs of not sleeping particularly well or, if you do sleep well, still feeling tired the next day.  I tend to sleep well for a period which might be five or six hours if I'm lucky, but could be just two or three if some drunken berk wakes me up; thereafter, getting back to sleep may be difficult.  [Our house seems to be on one of the few ways that connect two parts of the town, and there are some (I'm sure it's the same people) who seem to love shouting in friendly terms at each other as they wander back home at 1am, 2am or even 3.30am.  Since the house is Grade II listed, I cannot fit double glazing to the bedroom windows but I do have secondary glazing on my immediate to-do list.]

Last week I enlisted the help of my son to lay a large flagstone on top of the wall, to be under the end piece of coping stone.  I could just manhandle this piece of stone on the ground but he picked it up on his own (with some effort, I think) and it was a joint job to get it to the top safely.  It went on surprisingly easily as for once all my measurements were correct, the cutting of the stone was spot on and also the mortar bed was perfect first time.  This was needed as the 14" coping stones are all narrower than the wall at the gate end, and so the flagstone also has bevelled edges to help with rainwater flow.  The 18" width of the wall at the gate end was governed by the size of the two 24" x 18" x 6" pintle stones which I purchased last year, and there was no way that I was going to cut them!  I have carefully made the rest of the wall narrower so only the end two feet needed this treatment.

Yesterday I did a lot of work on the wall, including lifting the first coping stone in place six feet up onto the bevelled flagstone (photo coming [Edit: I'm not posting the photo as the wall looks quite silly with just the one piece of coping stone! It's all out of proportion]), so I'm getting there. However, the coping stone was heavier than I realised and I could have done with the assistance of my son again.  The weight was bad enough - it must be about 35-40kg which itself made my knees creak - but then positioning it on the wall was quite difficult due to the shape; I could easily have damaged my back as I leant forward with it but chose instead to rest it on the mortar bed which then had to be re-spread.  Hence, last night I was particularly tired and slept through over eight hours without stirring (a rare occurrence) until woken by t'other half putting the radio on. This morning I can hardly get going at all, and there is no way that I will do more than potter around doing bits of small jobs.

After laying the first coping stone on top of the wall, one old song from The Jungle Book keeps coming into my mind - Kenny Ball singing "I'm the King of the Swingers".  This contains the memorable line "I've reached the top and had to stop and that's what's bothering me."  Unlike him, it's not bothering me and I shall be delighted when it's all done!

[Edit: I'm advised that actually Kenny Ball's version of "I'm the King of the Swingers" was a cover, following the film.]

Stone Walls Do Not A Prison Make...

...but it certainly feels that I am trapped by the need to at least get the front side wall and back gate done before winter sets in.  There has been progress on the walls and so an update is merited.  

The front wall is almost there.  I really want to get this done to full height finished with coping stone and pointing before I remove the horrible fence panels.  These are what everyone sees when walking by, and I don't want to draw attention to my wall by being seen to be working on it for so long.  I just want to unveil it and see how many people notice it.  My hope is that relatively few will actually notice it as the plan is for it to look as though it's been there for ages.

On the left is the view from the house side (obviously I can't take a picture from the street side as the fence panels are in the way).  There is only the coping stone to add at the left hand end.  Try counting the number of stones in this wall, and then think about how long it has taken me, given that on a good day I might select and lay just ten stones in four hours if I'm going well.  Then I'm shattered and can't do any more for a couple of days...

Also visible in the picture above are the hinges for the right hand gate, plus three bits of batten to make a frame.  This was done to prove that the pintles were in line, and to allow me to position the hinges on the uninstalled gate with reference to the other gate.  (NB The vertical battens are not parallel as the holes in the hinges are not identically spaced, which surprised me.) When the gate is fitted I shall only have to sort out its locking and latching and then I shall have some security for the first time.  It will also keep the various neighbourhood cats out; they seem to still regard this place as their hunting ground, but we like looking at the variety of birds!

The retaining wall (of the "upper terrace"!) has been extended and so now runs from the back wall alongside the house, past the extension and as far as the kitchen - that's about 12 yards.  I've been using the damaged Imperial bricks in this - why use good ones?  Here's a current photo showing the end of the wall and the steps up the earth bank (with the top step which has been added since the last post):

This photo clearly shows the difference in ground levels since I decided to make sure that rising ground would never again cause dampness here.  The house is just six feet from the bottom of the steps and the original ground level at the base of the house was just above the level of the bottom concrete step.  The temporary wooden board at the bottom of the steps is about 2cm below the final new ground level.

I cannot do the stone facing for this wall yet as that job will use up the remaining stone when everything else is done.  When other walls are done, I will choose enough decent bits to cover the brick and facing stone along the top of this one, and only then will I be able to do the face with small bits.  Obviously I don't want to break up larger stone yet as I need a good choice for the other jobs.

A Step up in the Garden

Just for a change from walls, I have recently (almost) made a set of steps in the garden.  The need for these steps came from the desire to ensure that the house was never troubled again by the dampness caused by rising ground.  The photo (left) shows the garden as it was, with high ground and the old extension; the new steps are where the scruffy elder was growing, and go down about a foot below the old ground level. We took away the raised earth from beside the house last September (see this entry), and made a sort of lane beside the house with a two to three foot high earth bank.  A retaining wall is being built to keep the earth bank away from the house, and so the steps are needed to reach the higher plateau of what will be a lawn (in due course...).

These steps (right) have been made to last, using Thermalite blocks on a concrete foundation, and concrete slabs as the steps and risers.  The annoying thing here was that I tried to make 6.5 inch steps and the first one came out at 7.5 inches; I tried to correct this on the upper two steps and they still came out at 7.5 inches! Hence the top step, when done, might either have a smaller riser, or else I will be moving soil around to get a decent level at the top.  The blocks are easily cut using a sacrificial saw - I used one left by my builder last October.  However, I had another issue with cutting the concrete paving slabs.  They are REALLY tough, and I now reckon my design is over-engineered as I have taken the trouble to make sure that the slabs are properly supported, but now I don't think that I needed to bother as they are so strong. I've only tried a few cuts and found that my new grinding disc is already completely knackered.  So now my technique is to simply score them with the grinder on both sides, and then split them using a lump hammer and my 3 inch bolster - result!

The sides of the steps (and the rest of the retaining wall) will be faced with small bits of limestone to mimic a dry stone wall, except that the back of the stones will actually be set in mortar - probably NHL3.5.  I then hope to grow plants to trail down the wall from the top, some campion at the bottom and, perhaps, something actually growing in the wall itself to give that effect of a lovely Devon lane.  It's just a personal memory of childhood holidays there...

Front Lawn and Driveway

After all that's been done on this house in less than two years, you wouldn't think that I could have a problem over something as simple as cutting the grass.  The problem is storage - there is nowhere to keep a lawnmower, so until there is I don't want to buy one.  I used to have a sickle (inherited with the property) which kept things under control last year but somewhere this has been lost; I think I hid it so that my grandson could not hurt himself (or us!) with it, and now I cannot find it.  This was useful at keeping the weeds down, but is a bit labour intensive really.  Slowly this year the grass has grown to represent a moderate hay crop in some places; since the lawn I seeded in March has grown wonderfully, I'm puzzled as to why the old lawn has grown so slowly. 

Anyway, the solution was quite simple in the end - I borrowed my son's mower! This seems a small payment for the babysitting that I do (even though I do enjoy looking after my grandson).  His lawn is less than half the size of mine, so the mower had a good workout.

Of course, having done that task and made it look very nice indeed, only a day later Colin, my friendly groundworker, came and drove his digger over it.  Reason? At last my neighbour is having his driveway done, so very soon he will be able to enter the front garden through his own gateway and park on his own drive for the first time. On the right is a shot of the work in progress, with the mown lawn being abused and the first pile of three being prepared for the grab lorry.

The photo below shows the almost finished task, which has a lot more driveway than mine.  The old gap in the wall is on the left; I had my eye on the stone from the new gap but sadly his part of the front wall had been rebuilt at some time in the recent past using C*M*NT mortar, so it took a pneumatic drill to prise it all apart.  [I'm sorry that I just cannot bring myself to spell the C-word with regard to its use on period property.]  The result is that many of the stones are broken and unusable.  In comparison, my bit of wall came apart very easily last year - see this previous entry.  I'm not sure that it had any mortar at all apart from some recent c*m*nt pointing which was not very deep (or useful, of course).

There was a small problem yesterday when one of Colin's workers pierced the neighbour's water supply with the pneumatic drill - I think Colin was quite embarrassed by that! Fortunately it was on the right side of the meter only 18" away, and a groundworker has all the necessary bits and knowledge to fix that very quickly; no harm done.

Limestone Walling for Beginners

The wall beside the front gates progresses slowly.  This is not really because of the poor weather, as I have done a lot of work on it in this last week by second guessing the weather forecast.  The lack of speed is simply because building a proper stone wall is a laborious task which cannot easily be done more quickly, especially by an amateur such as me.  The new wall is hidden behind this fence panel (photo right) to the left of the front door, and extends to the boundary wall on the extreme left.

Before finalizing the design of this wall I did a fair bit of research to see what sorts of wall could be described as the local style.  Although this was interesting, I actually got confused as there were so many slightly different styles which I had never noticed until I took fifty pictures of various local walls!  I therefore settled on the obvious idea of making it the same design as the boundary wall that it meets, although I am adding on the top some coping stone which was removed from the front wall where I put in the driveway (see photo at the bottom).  The end of the wall has to be 17" wide as that is the width of the reclaimed cut stones with pintles for gate hinges (which I bought last year), and the lower one can be seen in place in the photo left.  As the coping stones which I have are 14" wide, the wall will have to narrow slightly both as it rises and as it goes further away from the hinge line. It also has a slight bend in it, which is why the courses look odd in the photo left (NB It is about 27" high here and still needs pointing).  The finished wall will be about 6 ft high at the end for the gate hinges (i.e. the left hand end in the photo), and about 8 ft long, so that I will have a pair of gates beside the front door, and then the wall will extend across to the external garden wall.  The soil rises as you get closer to the garden wall, so the height above ground will be only about 4 ft at that end; to aid security, I will plant blackberries which are growing freely here - they are really nasty so will be quite an effective deterrent.

I am using a 3:1 mix of sharp sand and Castle NHL5 plus a small amount of building sand for the mortar of the main structure; possibly I could have used NHL3.5, but I wasn't sure so went for the "eminently hydraulic" NHL5 (see the Mike Wye website for explanations!).  For pointing I shall use a 3:1 mix which I have already tested and made up, using local sharp sand and lime putty as this will give me a good match with colour seen locally.  I think I read somewhere that it helps a wall if the outermost mortar is more porous than the internal mortar.

Technically I am repairing the wall, as I found the old foundations of a brick wall whilst digging the foundations for this one.  I am embarrassed to admit that the foundation is comprised of concrete blocks as I want this wall to be solid and to outlast me.  I know that lots of old walls stay standing for umpteen years but I bet that the people who put those up had a lot more skill than me! 

It might not be obvious but it is essential that limestone is laid in the correct orientation: the strata in the stone must be horizontal, as this is how the sedimentary stone was formed; if you lay it on its side then the strength is reduced significantly and it might well split.  It helps a lot if you can lay each course using stones of a uniform thickness, and you should also try to use the thicker stones at the bottom of the wall (but that might just be to save lifting heavy stones up high!).  The shape of the stone is clearly important as well; I am building a wall of squared faced limestone by re-using old stones which are already essentially in the shape of blocks.  You can do a wall using rubble, which sounds terrible but means that the blocks are not squared and you probably have to use the natural face caused when the stone is split.  Even then, you still want to build it in courses, but they can go up and down gently with a varying thickness, rather than being in neat horizontal lines.

I am trying to make the wall look as though it has been there for ages by using weathered stone which looks grey rather than yellow, and the source of a lot of this was the driveway cut through a low wall (the right hand gap in the photo, right).  However, that only gave about 20 sq ft of stone, and I probably need 50-60 sq ft.  I have also got some various bits of stone which were lying around this property, plus some yellow stone from under the kitchen floor, plus some more grey bits found when digging the foundations for the extension.  More recently I had some good fortune when the digging of a soakaway in the churchyard two weeks ago yielded another 5 sq ft of lovely squared blocks which have dried out and look very good.  [Top tip: sodden limestone and bricks dry out very well if you remove all the earth and mortar, leave them outside (raised off the ground on some old batten) and brush it periodically with a stiff hand brush.]

One obvious reason for the poor rate of completion is that my own skills are limited - after all, like many other tasks on this house, I have never done this before.  Although I have a good idea of how it should be done, there is no substitute for experience.  Another reason is that the supply of stone is limited (and the stone has been spread over a good area of the intended lawn), which means that the choice of each stone is quite time-consuming, but pre-sorting the stone by thickness helps speed things up.  I try to choose all the stones for several feet of a single course before mortaring them all in as that seems to speed things up as well.  I do actually find the job quite satisfying; this is possibly due to my mathematical bent and my liking for jigsaws.  I also used to play Tetris and am good at packing the car for going camping.

My final reason for the slow progress is that it is very tiring work.  My elbows feel strained and I have been sleeping very well recently.  Hopefully I can make more progress in the next week or two, and I'll post details when I unveil the wall to the public!