The Restoration - Week Sixteen

For the first week in a long time I wasn't around for most of the week so it was nice to see the dramatic changes to parts of the house when I returned.

The biggest step this week was the fitting of all the timber infills above the windows. This has really transformed the look of the house and its great to see our vision become reality.

Adding the wood arches is the finishing touch on the new windows and doors.

The front door will be sanded and painted to match the windows once the builders have finished when it won't be in danger of getting knocked or scratched :0).

The completed windows and doors really change the look of the house

Another job done this week was the repointing of the verges which, as you can see in the photos above are wrapped in Hessian to protect from frost.

Last week we thought the whole of the large chimney would need dismantling and rebuilding but on Monday this week, after a closer inspection, it was decided that repointing the lower parts would be sufficient and it would only be necessary to rebuild the top section. After removing the flaunching we found four flues, three blocked at various levels in the house and roof space. Only one is in use today for our woodburner but we'll fit capped, ventilated pots to all the blocked flues to restore the original look of this big stack with four pots.

There are four flues under the Hessian protecting the repointing and its easy to see which one serves our woodburner!

The last major job done this week was to repair the chimney breast in the kitchen. There were a lot of crumbled bricks and very little mortar under the plaster when it was removed but now its looking in much better shape!

The brickwork still needs some cleaning to remove old limewash and distemper but its now repaired and structurally stable.

Next week we hope to get close to completing the repairs on both chimney stacks. As well as the stacks there are also quite a few other outside jobs to complete; relaying some rows of roof tiles and fitting new guttering along the west wall, laying new ridge tiles, fitting airbricks in each gable to ventilate the roofspaces and repointing the stonework at the base of several of the walls. So we have our fingers crossed that winter waits for a couple more weeks!