Some old brickwork supported by fresh air!

This Saturday I finished off removing render on the south wall - all except the very top of the gable which is out of reach from a ladder.

The south wall, almost done! Held up in some places by fresh air.

Having stopped work on this wall in last weekend's freezing conditions, the job was completed this week. Two brick arches were found, one above the door and the other above the bedroom window in the centre of the photo above. Interestingly, this window used to be quite a bit larger than the present one - we knew this already, based on a photograph from the mid-1940's in which this window is taller than the modern one.

Arch intact above the door but its looks like the brickwork above it is held up by fresh air! 

This upstair window was larger in the past - you can see a nice old arch above the existng window opening.

One very eroded area of mortar joints was found between the door and the window above. Some of this had been patched with cement and in other places there is simply NO mortar - just dust - between the outer course of bricks. Thank goodness OLF has thick walls and the deeper layers of brick are still holding the walls up!

Some VERY dodgy brickwork above the door This will need some surgery! 

So, having completely stripped all the most easily accessible areas, the next step will be to erect a scaffold tower to deal with the tops of the gables on the North and South sides of the house. Hopefully this can start during the Christmas holiday period. Then, probably in January the east gable end can be stripped when my neighbour has time to help me out with a telescopic loader - I'll deal with the wall from the "safety" of the loader bucket!

Here's a quick reminder of what's been achieved over 7 weekends since the end of October:

The lean to was the starting point......

next came the North East corner............

followed by the North gable.....

and finally the South wall.

Watch this space for updates over Christmas and New Year! 

A slight change of plan

The plan for this weekend was to finish the south wall and that's how things started on Saturday. This was as far as I got after about 4 hours when the sun went behind the clouds and it turned bitterley cold. On Sunday morning I'd intended finishing the job but a cold SW wind led to a change of plan.

The South wall almost stripped of render

A stone foundation which had been covered in render, is revealed beneath the south brick wall.

One piece of good news is that I found the first sign of a surviving brick arch above the door.

First sign of the (crumbly!) brick arch above the door.

On Sunday having gained a bit more confidence on the ladder (!) I decided to finish removing render from the two walls in the NE corner of the house, since these were sheltered from the wind. This was how they looked after I finished working on them a few weeks ago.........

The NE corner on Sunday, before work began

 And here's how it looks now that all the render has been removed................................

The NE corner with all render removed.

So, the only render left to be removed now is the small amount left on the south wall, the top of the North gable and the east wall above the lean-to. Next weekend I hope to get the south wall done up to the level of the eaves. The rest of the walls should be stripped, hopefully by the end of January, with a little help from a telescopic loader (for the east wall) and a scaffold tower for the top of the gable areas. Then it'll be a case of letting everything dry out over the next few months and waiting for summer when the real renovation work will begin!

This old house is starting to give us some hints of how it will look when restored to its original state.

Missing mortar, an iron bar, a hidden concrete lintel, spalled bricks and a plastic bag damp proof course!

I started removing render on the big South wall of the house this weekend - this will be the last wall I will tackle and its certain to hide some secrets -the surface is very uneven and there are a lot of humps and bumps in it!


The big South wall which has taken a hit from a few hundred years of winter winds and rain

The first thing to be uncovered was not a surprise. This is the old "front door" of the house which we blocked up a few years ago when the entrance was moved to the other end of this lean to, away from the prevailing SW winds. Replacing these blocks with reclaimed brick will be quite a big job as there is now a shower room behind this wall!

The blocked up old "front" door, now with a shower room behind it! 

The south wall takes all the prevailing weather and as OLF sits about 750 feet above sea level it can get a bit wild and windy at times. So I fully expected that this wall would be the worst in terms of water penetration - I was not disappointed! There are quite a few places where the render was very wet - even 5 metres up the wall. The result is that there is quite a bit of erosion of the old lime mortar and a fair number of "spalled" bricks.

You could pluck this brick out of the wall if you wanted!

Loose bricks and an iron bar! 

Although its not obvious in this photo, the majority of the bricks below the bedroom window have almost no mortar left between them and a lot of them are "loose". A large iron bar (in the bottom right of this photo) was also hidden under masses of render and it appears to be connected to two iron ties attached to beams in the kitchen ceiling inside. Yet more brick arches above the kitchen and bedroom windows have been stripped out and will need to be reconstructed.

Badly spalled bricks near the base of the kitchen wall

In some places the cement render was extremely thick - up to an inch and a half - and in one of these spots it was covering a concrete linted, randomly located in the middle of a wall. Presumably this replaced an oak lintel above an old doorway or window but its not obvious exactly what was originally located here.

Concrete lintel above some kind of old opening in the kitchen wall.

 Towards the base of the kitchen wall I revealed what appears to be a botched attempt at a damp proof course, inserted at some time in the fairly recent past during some reconstruction of the wall. I'd lay money on this being old plastic fertiliser bags!  The wall ABOVE the plastic was wet for about 1 metre, indicating that any dampness in this wall is not rising but has come through the render and been stuck behind it. A feature of this south wall so far, at all kinds of heights, has been that a lot of the render is wet - proof that rainwater has been driven into the wall by strong winds, through fine cracks, over many, many years. Once in the wall the water is unable to evaporate because of the cement render and waterproof paint. This wall should now start to dry out!

A rather "agricultural" attempt at a damp proof course! 

 Good progress was made this weekend with about 10 hours of work and one more weekend should finish this wall, apart from the top of the gable.

About half of the south wall has been stripped - one more weekend should finish it, leaving only the high parts of the gable on this wall and the north side to be done from a scaffold tower .

No more drill holes and a nice old arch

This weekend I made rapid progress on the North gable wall.

The North gable wall

The first pleasant surprise this weekend was that the drill holes from the old injected damp proof treatment which I found on the north east walls did not continue round the corner onto the north wall. The North wall is brick sitting on stone with the old slate damp proof in between, so thankfully no wanton destruction of old bricks has taken place here.

The second surprise was that the bathroom window (that small one on the top left) still has its original arch and (rotting) timber beam BUT the window was originally wider than it is now as you can see in this picture:

At last we've found an original brick arch! The bathroom window is now narrower than the original window. This will either make a nice feature when the brickwork is renovated or we may consider reinstating a larger window.

Most of the render on the North wall came off very easily - it was really hollow in places and damp in places where water was trapped in the wall behind. There is one patch of soft cement base coat (from very recent patching of the render) which is not so easy to remove as its a rather shallow layer. The top layers came off easily here but left this base coat behind. I think this might brush off more easily than trying to use the chisel which was threatening to damage the bricks too much. I've left this patch for now and may just wait until the "pro's" can remove it when the brickwork is being cleaned.

Cement render base coat from a recent bit of patching.

So, the North wall was stripped, apart from the topmost parts after about 6 hours work and I am amazed at how much I've managed to remove so far after only 4 weekends. At least the money saved on this job can now be spent on more creative parts of the renovation - like rebuilding old brick arches which looks like being a significant cost.

Here's how the North gable looks now - compare it to the before shot at the top of this blog post.

Not bad in 6 hours - one nice old brick arch revealed but the arches above the other three windows will need reconstruction.

After making such good progress over the last month I'm having next weekend off but then:

Next: work starts on the South wall - 

next Blog post December 2nd.

Good progress..............

Saturday began with a return to the area below the kitchen window which had proved stubborn last week. It was a tough job to remove the render from this area as it was about three layers thick in some places; newer cement on old cement on very old lime render! The brickwork here is in poor shape and some reconstructive surgery may be required later on.

Finally after a lot of pounding, the bricks below the window are revealed.

After that slow start this weekend saw rapid progress across the north east corner of the house. Especially on the east facing part the render came away in big sheets. At one point a piece about 12 feet across by about 3 feet was ready to drop in one go! It had to be broken up on the wall before it fell from about 10 feet up, in case it demolished the window sill below! I managed to remove everything within about 3 feet of the gutter from an extending ladder but getting higher than that would have been a bit dangerous. Fortunately a friend has now offered me a loan of a scaffold tower (cheers Mick!) so once all the lower parts of the house have been removed, the tower can be erected to deal with the rest, including the high gable ends.

Work starts on the east wall render which is coming off very easily

The render on this wall was very hollow and came off in big sheets! 

An old lean to used to sit in this corner of the house and its outline is now clearly visible. The inside walls were limewashed and the remains of this can be seen in the photo below. Another modern lintel has been installed above the window on this wall so a brick arch will have to be reinstated here later on to restore the original look.

The outline of an old lean to is clearly visible - the inside walls were limewashed

This weekend's "surprises" were two damp proof courses, both on the same wall - one slate probably Victorian damp proof layer dating this wall to sometime around the 1870's (according to the Internet!) although we know that this part of the house was standing in the late 1830's as it is shown on a Tithe map. So presumably this part was rebuilt at some time in the Victorian era.

The other damp proof layer is marked by a set of drill holes in the same wall, just above the original slate layer. It's where a chemical damp proof material has been injected, probably sometime after the '60s. Hopefully these drill holes can be repaired or the bricks replaced with reclaimed ones.

A stone base to this wall with a Victorian slate damp proof layer below the brickwork. Then 20th century drill holes, unfortunately in the bricks where a chemical damp proof treatment has been injected.

The south east corner - only the top 3 feet to be removed later.

And, the story so far......

BEFORE

SO FAR

Next stage of the project - the north gable end..........

Some old secrets revealed..........

This weekend saw the second session of render removal from OLF and a few secrets were uncovered, some interesting surprises and a couple of disappointments...........

Work started on this section of the  North wall

Brick arch has been removed and replaced with a concrete lintel

First the disappointments. Sadly the old brick arches above the front door and the kitchen window have been removed recently during the installation of the modern door and window, so a decision will need to be made later on whether to reinstate these arches.

Brick arch removed and (presumably) a concrete lintel lurks behind the 3 courses of modern brick

Along part of the wall underneath the kitchen a (useless) chemical damp proof course has been injected some point in the past. Happily the drill holes seem to be in the lime mortar rather than the bricks so the damage to the brickwork is minimal......

Old chemical DPC drill holes in the lime mortar. the black circle is cement blocking an old drain pipe hole.

 Now for some more interesting surprises which add a bit more mystery (as if that was needed) to the history of OLF. Until now the brickwork and the pattern of the bricklaying has been consitent, along the lean-to and round the corner to the North side. However half way along the upstairs bedroom window, things suddenly and dramatically changed! The bricks were suddenly much more orange and the pattern in which they are laid is completely different. To my untrained eye it looks like the building may have stopped at this point some time ago. The bricks are certainly lower quality and they are slightly smaller. Presumably this is an older part of the house than the part we have revealed so far?

Suddenly the bricks to the right are more orange, smaller and are laid in a different pattern. The centre of the house is to the right so this is presumably an older part of the building.

The next secret to be uncovered is a bricked-up old doorway leading from the present kitchen to the outside of the house. You can see the brick archway above what was once the doorway. We know that there was a lean-to building here in the poast as you can see the pattern of it on the current render so this door would have gone from the house into the lean-to. 

Its also clear that this doorway was probably bricked up in the last 50 years as the mortar used is cement based, although the bricks themselves look old.

So, good progress this weekend and some interesting historical puzzles to tease us. Hope that we reveal more mystery as we go.

Finally a shot of the progress this weekend and the total progress so far..........

This weekend's progress - about 6 hours worth.

Progress until now, faster than expected so far!! 

Day 1 - no turning back!

This is Old Lawns Farmhouse as you will never see it again. Today is the first day of what will be a lengthy project with an unknown ending! 

Having decided to stay put in our old Shropshire farmhouse for the foreseeable future, our thoughts then turned to what work should be done to secure and preserve it for the future. Like many old houses with solid walls Old Lawns Farmhouse (from now on known as OLF to save my typing fingers) was rendered with a thick coat of cement render, probably sometime in the 1960's. Intended as a means of weatherproofing, this cement based render in fact causes old houses like OLF to slowly degenerate by locking in the moisture which inevitable finds its way in via cracks in the render over the years. The walls of these old houses were intended to breath, absorbing moisture and allowing it to evaporate back into the atmosphere. The use of natural materials like lime plaster inside and lime mortars between the bricks and stones in the walls meant that this breathing could take place. Smothered by cement render on the outside and gypsum plaster on the indside, this breathing stops and the building starts to slowly suffocate. Any moisture finding its way into the wall from outside is trapped and has only one place to go - into the house, causing damp patches and helping to raise the internal humidity, resulting in condensation in the corners of rooms (low down near the floor), lifted internal plaster and flaking paintwork. Water vapour generated internally, by kitchens and bathrooms and people breathing(!) is also trapped inside the building and adds to the humid indoor climate.

You can read more about all these issues at www.heritage-house.org which was the place that eventually convinced us that we should take action to save OLF. Following a visit by Pete Ward of Heritage House Ltd in early October 2012, we decided that the first step in renovating OLF will be the removal of the external cement render on the ENTIRE house. Depending on the condition of the brickwork and stonework underneath we will then decide what to do next. There are a few options:

• Clean the brick surfaces and repoint with lime mortar. Possibly paint the re-pointed brickwork with a breathable clay based paint if the decorative appearance is not too attractive.
• Repoint with lime mortar and re-render but this time using lime render which will allow the walls to breathe.
• Apply a breathable external insulation layer and re-render on top of that with lime render.

These options get progressively more expensive but the decision of which route to take will mainly be made based on the cosmetic and structural condition of the brick/stonework once it is revealed. Which takes us to the second post in this blog - what lies beneath!!?

What lies beneath?

Having received the report on OLF, I was inspired to pick up my lump hammer and chisel and start whacking the cement render on the lean-to at the east side of the house. Although we will need the experts to do the vast majority of the work, hacking off render is something I can manage- it just takes time and energy. I'll be taking off as much as I can on the lower portions of the building and let the professionals tackle the parts which I can't reach. We have also decided that the west wall, which is the only stone wall, will be gradually worked on, removing render and re-pointing with lime render bit by bit. This way we can check on the structural integrity of the wall as we go as its likely that this wall could be full of "holes" where old mortar and stones have shifted over the years. This means that this will be a job for next spring/summer since lime mortars can't be used in the colder temperatures of a Shropshire winter.

And so to work on the lean-to with the hammer and chisel! Here are some shots of the progress made today.

I started at the south east corner and this came away very easily in big lumps. Most of the cement render was visibly wet and clearly trapping water in this corner of the wall. Even at the top of this wall just to the left of the window, the lime mortar between the bricks was wet beneath the cement render. So this is not "rising damp" as it is about 1.5 metres up the wall!! This is water trapped inside the wall by an impermeanble coating of cement!

This is some of the wet lime mortar - after a couple of hours in the open air it was already visibly dryer after years of being permanently wet. You can see how it has eroded away due to the permanent moisture in the wall.



Now you see it! 

So the hacking continued, revealing that the wall was considerably dryer away from the SE corner. This east facing aspect is one of the more sheltered sides of OLF which explains why the wall was dryer, the further away I got from the SE corner.

And finally after just 2.5 hours of work all the render is removed from the lean-to and the renovation of OLF has started in earnest.

Now you dont! 

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