The scaffold is up!

In readiness for the building work to start in earnest next week most of the scaffold is now up apart from around the chimneys. Its starting to look like a proper building site and its great to see things getting underway. Its almost 1 year since we started to think of taking on this restoration and finally the creative work is about to begin!

All systems go......-.

Finally a new blog post after a quiet few weeks! But things have been happening behind the scenes. Over the last two months quotations have been received for the restoration work and new windows. Since the work of specifying what was needed to complete this project was getting increasingly complex, I jumped at the offer of assistance from local surveyor Peter Napier http://www.napierandco.com/historicbuildingconservation.html who has now been hired to assist in managing things. Peter has been a great help in drawing up a specification of the work required and in sourcing contractors and window manufacturers.

For my part I've been busy clearing two skips full of render away from around the house so that scaffolding can go up in the next few weeks.

The rubble pile is almost gone at last as I fill our second skip, bye bye cement render!

We are expecting the scaffolding to go up at the end of July with the work starting the following week. It looks like being at least a 3 month job so fingers crossed for a mild summer and early autumn. Our builders will be Philips & Curry of Oswestry http://www.phillipsandcurry.co.uk and the windows, which are to be triple glazed and painted with linseed oil paint from http://www.linseedpaintandwaxco.co.uk will be supplied by Williams Homes of Bala  http://www.williams-homes.co.uk/windows.php

Watch this space for updates!

Damp below render, 7 metres up a wall.

This weekend I finally put up a scaffold tower (lent by my friend Mick, thanks Mick) so that I could remove the remaining render from the tops of the north and south gables. This revealed some clear signs that even at 7 metres up the wall, moisture is trapped behind cement render! So that's certainly not rising damp!! It also revealed a bit more dodgy brickwork in need of attention :0(

The scaffold is up at last!

The render on this North gable came off nicely in big lumps. There were clear signs of moisture trapped in the wall. Take a look at this photo - the render on the light areas had been removed for about 15 minutes and started to dry out but look at the dark damp spot where the render is newly removed! This wall is now breathing at last :0)

Clear signs of trapped moisture beneath cement render!

It wasn't all hard work - time to take a break and soak in the view of the newly created veg and fruit garden - formerly our miniature Shetland pony Herbie's paddock (now grazing happily with new friends elsewhere).

Well, finally the north gable is done and the whole north side of the house is now clear of cement render.

The North side of OLF, now ready for renovation to start!

Next, onto the south side to put up the scaffold.

The brickwork on the south gable is not in great shape - what's under the remaining render?

This side of the house takes the full force of the prevailing winter weather and this is at least partly responsible for the poor state of some of the brickwork. There was an area just above the left-hand window which looks like it has moved a bit over the years and needs some attention.

More brickwork in need of repair :0(

The render on this gable was quite stubborn in places but after about 3 hours working off the tower and ladder, the south gable was finally clear of render.

The South side of OLF ready for the real restoration to begin.

So, OLF is now ready for the professionals. Once the weather is warm enough to allow the use of lime mortar, the task of cleaning brick, reinstating brick arches, stripping out cement or old lime mortar and repointing in lime can begin.

Please check my Blog in the coming months four updates when the work gets underway.

Its been a long winter - but we've been drying out!

Finally we seem to be emerging from the winter freeze and work can now begin on removing the remaining render ahead of the arrival of the experts to sort out the brickwork and lime mortar pointing. This has been the worst winter for snow since we moved here almost 20 years ago. Here was the scene that greeted us a couple of weekends ago....

I've now started to clear the rubble from below the gables so that we can get a scaffold tower up and the render removed from the tops of the gables on the North and South walls.

We have already noticed a big difference inside the house with less (or even no) condensation in the places where we used to find it - so the walls have already started to dry out and warm up since the render was removed. The brickwork and mortar, although in a poor state in places, has dried out tremendously over the winter and the walls are starting to breathe again.

Even parts of the walls where the bricks and mortar are in a real state have dried out very well. The wall in the photo below was one of the wettest spots and is now completely dry, despite being south facing and open to all the winter rains and gales.

Although I have taken a rest from render removal over the past few months I've not been completely idle. This winter we have created and planted a fruit garden in a small paddock where we previously grazed our miniature Shetland pony Herbie. He has now moved to new accomodation and the veg and fruit garden has been developed where he once munched the grass. Hopefully all those poos will have increased the soil fertility too!

This was the paddock being levelled in October 2012 in preparation for creation of the fruit garden.

And this was the start of the fruit garden on January 4th 2013 - putting in the supporting poles and wires to espalier and fan train the apples, pears, plums and cherries as well as a bed of raspberries and some blackcurrants and gooseberries.

And finally on March 16th the finished article, complete with traditional hedge, expertly layed by Ben Booth-Jones from www.wood-matters.co.uk

Watch this space, I'll be starting to update the Blog again as work starts to get the scaffold up and the rest of the render removed.

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 .