The last corner?

The last corner! Or is it…? It’s the last corner in the older part of the house, but there is a corner in the dining room (the side of the house we are tackling in phase two) which Martin, our structural engineer, wants Tom to fix in this phase, annoyingly for Tom…

Like all the other corners in this house, the rubble used to build it just crumbled away once Tom removed the cement which was covering the front.

A ‘Strongboy’ Acrow Prop is used to support the top of the wall while Tom makes the repairs.

Stonework repaired, once the mortar is dry the channels for the steels can be cut in and steel bars added to tie in the corner.

A sample of the blue colour that we found on the lime mortar on the landing wall, should we need it.

George is on mixing duty today (and carrying buckets of this up stairs and ladders) trying to keep up with Tom!

Dan has found a solution for this floor. To make it level the joists would go into the window lintel, not an option, so Dan is going to chisel out the ends of the joists so they fit over the lintel.

The floor will be a little higher on one side than the other (so I will still need to put books underneath my bed legs), but it won’t be out by 5 inches which it was previously! Yes, it was that bad.

Cleaning up the steel angles before they get fitted to the joists. They have been rusting away in the building site for a few weeks.

Dan chiselling out the end of the joist so it will sit on top of the window lintel.

Seeing if it will fit. It does 🙂

Measuring the second new joist to fit over the top of the lintel.

The finished joists. The stark contrast with the wonky old lintel and the pencil straight new joists is quite fabulous.

The other end of the joists where they sit into the central beam.

The new steel angles alongside the old joists. You can see how short the joists are, these will be extended with good bits cut out of the rotten joists that have been replaced. These white ends will need cleaning up as they were hidden under the buttress when the soda blasting happened.

All joists and steels now fitted and (relatively) level. The joists will now need bedding into the wall with stone and mortar, then the ‘bow tie’ details added at the wall ends (more steel angles with long steel ties secured through the angles and into the wall with bolts and resin).

I did Google ‘old timber floors with wooden pegs’ and they are extremely rare as they were generally replaced over the centuries, but they did exist. This would explain the large holes cut in lines in the tops of all the old joists. So our (already very old) floorboards might not be the original ones! Wow.

Tom has moved up to the roof to fix the very top of the last corner.

A lot of stone and mortar is required as there is nothing there except a piece of timber…

Tom has repaired the top of the wall under the wall plate at the same time.

The steel shoe that Dan fitting yesterday. It was a tough job, apparently this timber was rock hard making it very difficult to cut. Good to know this beam is doing its job at least.

Tom was complaining about his sore knees so we lent him Cat’s pink gardening kneeler. He was delighted.

Tom repairing the left side of the fireplace in Zanna’s bedroom. He is replacing the red brick with stone.

The Strongboy Acrow Prop being put to good use again.

This is one of the old flagstones that we discovered chucked into the buttress in the study (bastards), so we are turning this one into the hearthstone at the bottom of the fireplace.

A world of timber.

George has moved all the old tiles that were stacked up against the skip as the skip is getting changed tomorrow. The broken tiles we are keeping for use as hardcore when we dig the french drains at the front and back of the house.

Skip full of buttress and broken roof tiles.

New building supply delivery has arrived. More bags of sand…

More steel… This time it is steel strapping that will tie the timber wall plates to the tops of the stone walls in the attic.

More bags of lime…

More food porn… Our beef tomatoes are ripening well, just need a week or two of sunshine.

Our beetroot has not been a huge success, we did eat a couple of little ones yesterday and they were lovely and sweet, but many are just leaves, all tops and no bottoms.

Jasper, tiring of the building work (as are we all), will never understand why we don’t play with him and his sticks all day long.

Our front door next door is looking nice though (the white cable going through the letterbox is our internet). The wild flowers are being grown in a rusty old bucket we found in the woods. It’s knackered and squashed with holes all over, but it functions perfectly as a planter. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere…