A very exciting day with lots of progress! Pete and Roger, our roofers, had promised to come today if it rained and luckily for us it did, quite heavily too…
This morning Dan finished the door frame on the staircase. He has shaped the edge so there is a lip for the door to sit in, and of course he will be adding a stop chamfer. We do love a stop chamfer.
The finished frame is looking fabulous. This has always been so wobbly and there was a huge gap on the right as the wall had moved away from the door frame.
George on knocking back duty with the wire brush.
The oiled dormers, ready for the weather!
Pete and Roger start by installing a sill that sits at the end of the wall plate and wraps over the edge of the wall directing any water away from the walls and into the gutters below.
Dan couldn’t repair the stair handrail and door frame and not repair the balustrade on the landing! This was wafer thin pine that wobbled and would most likely fall if you dared lean on it. This was not original, it was a modern (badly constructed) addition.
We have plenty of oak left over from the dormers, so he is using new oak. We have always talked about having toughened glass with an oak frame but didn’t imagine we would be able to get this made for a while.
Dan’s workshop today is the sitting room… Henry is on standby!
Cat preparing the dining room window for Glynn to repair at the weekend. She is stripping the paint and putty from the frame, trying really hard not to break the glass. Not at all easy with a heat gun but this is the only way to remove the paint, chemical paint strippers do not work on the windows.
Tom and his beloved lime mortar.
Roger almost defying physics with a bundle of roofing battens.
Tom is now rebuilding the section of wall where the two bay windows are (for the sitting room and the bathroom). This is the single skin stone section of the wall that was collapsing and had bowed outwards, not unsurprisingly.
You can see the poor state of the old mortar too, these stones came out so easily you could have pushed them all out from inside with no effort… Thank god this is being repaired, and thank god we uncovered it. We could have sat on the window seat and fallen out of the house through the wall!
Pete and Roger are making the house water tight with the breathable roofing felt. This is the good stuff, it’s extra strong, extra waterproof and extra thick. Before they can start this they have to hammer in all the old nails sticking out of the rafters, and there were thousands of them!
It’s fascinating watching them do this, one wrong move and they would fall through the roof!
In fact Pete did fall off a roof back in June and broke his hip. Over 30 years in the roofing business and this is the first time he has fallen off!
Tom and George making amazing progress with the pointing.
Cat (looking a bit tired, let’s be honest) stripping paint from the dining room window on the inside as it is now pissing down.
Our new oak balustrade is coming along really well.
These roof vents are especially designed for listed properties where you cannot change the look of the roof. They fit underneath the tiles and blend in almost invisibly. We bought two different colours to see which one matches best. The terracotta one is fine, although it is not quite as good in real life as it looked in the photos (an online dating phenomenon too).
The front of the roof is now water tight, the back is a little trickier as it has the dormer windows. Pete and Roger will return on Friday to finish this.
Feeling cosier already.
The dust sheets protecting the lime pointing from drying out too fast over night, although I am not sure there is any danger of this, it is still pissing down.
Dan had a failure with his expanding foam gun and left it in the dining room. Cat was in the room above and heard a hissing noise and ran downstairs to find it had exploded. It created quite a mess!
The aftermath in the skip.
The aftermath in the dining room.