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 .