We had a full house today and it was pretty full on with masses of tasks ticked off the to do list! Tom, George and Dan were back for the day to work on some urgent tasks that would otherwise hold up the plasterers and roofers next week.
We have two cement mixers working today, Mitch on one and George on the other.
Charlie, Alan and Mitch are applying the second ‘float’ coat of lime plaster on the study and sitting room walls today.
The floats with nails hammered in to the ends. These are the floats that they use to create the patterns on this coat and the plaster is so sticky that they stick to the walls! They tried to tell us that the plaster was magnetic but we were having none of it…
Dan’s first task for the day is to secure the door frame into Zanna’s bedroom and build the stud work for the slither of wall that needs plastering here.
He also needs to raise the door frame so that the door actually shuts. It has never shut, this side has dropped by about an inch over the years… Zanna is very excited about this!
Tom’s urgent task today is to cement the tops of the gable end wall so that the roofers can tile up to this edge. They will then add the lead over the top of the wall before Tom fits the coping stones back on top to finish it all off.
Today there are 5 vans parked outside our house, 6 when our plumber arrived. Sorry Radway!
Billy arrived to fit the waste pipe and taps for the bathroom sink.
When we designed our steel bracket that will hold the granite top and sink we added a hole for the waste underneath the sink, but forgot to add a hole at the back for it to feed back into the wall, so Billy needs to drill through the 6mm steel…
The drill didn’t even touch it, so he moved up to an angle grinder.
This took a great deal of work to get through and caused many sparks.
Next week Tom will be finishing off the pointing on the front of the house, so he is preparing the wall. The huge lintel above the garage doors was covered in cement, so he has removed this to reveal a lovely timber lintel.
The plasterers have finished the second coat in the study and are working on the sitting room walls.
The floats sticking to the wall with the second ‘float’ coat of lime plaster. It is interesting that the patterns created on this second coat are very different to the patterns on the first ‘scratch’ coat, which had thick wavy lines.
Magic!
The stud work that Dan has built for the small partition between the landing and Zanna’s bedroom. Part of this partition will be glass so we maximise the light into the bedroom.
Billy finally got through the steel and has also fitted the tap. The first fix is complete so the plasterers can create the bathroom walls.
The old steel tie in the wall of the garage. This is utterly useless at this level, it should be at second floor level to be effective. There is another wall tie at the other end of the house that is also in the wrong place. They attempted to fix the roof spread at some point in the 1930/40’s but didn’t quite get it right. The walls continued to move above these ties…
The bottom of the wall next to the front door is very badly eroded due to the damp and the stones are crumbling away so Tom is repairing this.
Our front door frame is a mess. The door is smaller than the opening so it was filled in with concrete. Tom wants to remove all of this and temporarily fill the gap with expanding foam and lime mortar until phase 2 when we replace this door and frame.
Dan assisting with the measurements for the new staircase for the attic.
Dan has finished the stud work in the bathroom ready for the plasterboard. This is for one of the niches in the shower.
Charlie filling in the gaps between the lintels above the window in the study with lime plaster.
Our sole pumpkin grown in the garden. It is small but perfectly formed.
I had always assumed that was just an ugly concrete lintel over the garage door!
So did we until we looked inside the garage and could see it was in fact timber! We keep saying: “is this the last of the concrete?” but keep finding more!