I’ve seen bits of wood embedded in the inside of walls before and assumed they were intended as something to nail things to.   It turns out they are called bond timbers and were commonly embedded in walls up until at least 1850 as a reinforcement that might stabilise the building a bit should you have forgotten to build foundations.  One of my bond timbers had rotten so I’m replacing it with bricks.  The rest aren’t too bad.

The Edwardians built the half brick internal wall to the right and they also put some bond timbers in, but they missed the point and put them where they wouldn’t tie to the timbers in the external wall.  The external wall doesn’t seem to have moved much recently as there were no cracks in the modern plaster, but it is worth making things a little more sound while the wall is exposed.    I put in a few new bricks in to the corner and re-jointed other bricks to tie the walls together all the way up.

I have taken on some more work, partly based abroad, so progress will likely slow even more.

I have ordered some new sash windows for the rear of the house to replace the nasty 1996 efforts, and I have come up with an elegant custom secondary glazing system for the front of the house which will give me something to do in the winter evenings.

I’ve been a bit quiet recently.   The weather hasn’t been very inspiring so I’ve been busy earning money this year to pay for work on the house instead of actually working on the house.   Also I didn’t have any matching bricks to tidy up some of the holes in the kitchen wall – this hole was from the industrial extractor fan outlet.

I found bricks at Solopark in Cambridge which I think will match reasonably well.  They are still wet in the photo but should lighten as they dry out and end up quite close.

The hole made a lot of difference to light in the kitchen.  I have planning permission for a ground floor window beside the hole but a full height window doesn’t work with the ground levels and a domestic sized oven extractor would become difficult.   I’ll try to borrow light from the snug and shed instead.

I’ll be quiet again for a while – there are a few similar holes to brick up that I won’t bore you with, but check back after that for the the exciting kitchen window.

Drains have been a problem since we moved in but I need to fix the damp wall in the kitchen before I go much further with that.  The drains tended to become blocked in much the same place in the yard, but much less often since the willow was trimmed.

It turns out the kitchen drain had a botched concrete joint and no rodding access.  Later on a land drain was installed by knocking through the pipe and concreting in the new connection. Tree roots had found their way under the concrete and filled the drains with roots.

Replacing the defective joints with an inspection chamber was fairly straightforward, but lowering the hopper is taking a lot more thought.  Ideally it would be at the bottom of the trench as that would hide the pipes and keep the kitchen wall dry, but I don’t want any overflow to end up in the trench.

I ended up building a retaining wall with a 2 inch gap to the kitchen wall with the side open to the trench that runs around the house. It is just enough gap to clean out with a stick and I’ll put a cover on top to keep leaves out.  The gully and hopper are set to ground level and will have an edging behind so any overflow will flow into the yard drain and not the trench.  All the drain pipes still need to be realigned.

Finally the land drain has been brought closer to the inspection chamber to allow ground levels beyond to be raised a little, and I’ve added a new hopper for a gutter on the shed and a pipe to extend to the barn gutter later on.

The building inspector was happy so I could move tonnes of earth back into the hole.  You can save money on pea shingle by using wooden shuttering close to the pipe and filling the pipe side with pea shingle and the other side with earth.

I’ve filled to about 3 inches below finished level.  I’m planning to surface using granite setts, but might decide to lay them later on once the outside wall of the kitchen is finished.

Sometimes it is difficult to see beyond what was there to start with.   Later I have other ideas for what I might start calling a courtyard, and I’m in the mood to have the finished level a few inches below the original level (which I set out to) so haven’t surfaced.   I think there is room to adjust the height of the drainage.

I can only claim to have finished the exterior of the upper storeys of the main house and it only took 4 months longer than planned.  I’ve not really started on the building regs change of use stuff that I’m supposed to be doing.   A final coat of limewash on the north gable and some cleaning up are the only things left to do before the scaffolding comes down next Thursday.

I’m planning to keep the gable covered with hessian over winter to reduce the chance of frost damage to the new render, so this is a sneak preview of how it might look when it is revealed next spring.

The oak will darken over time and the frame will become black and white.

You can’t see a lot through the plastic sheeting, but from the road the timber frame in the gable looks like another part of the half timbering on the facade.  I think it will look interesting when it is finally uncovered.

The rear gutter wasn’t mounted well – some screws miss both the gutter brace and the the facia board and just manages to engage in the tip of the rafter. There is a long row of these.  I think I’ll have the gutter and facia board off and do it properly as it’s not a job that can be done later from a scaffold tower.

With the ends of the slates supported by the facia board there was a fair risk that we would break some.  We were lucky.  The new facia board is 2 inches taller than the old one.  The plastic eaves protector came out with the old facia board and needed to be nailed to the new one before fitting.

The north corner of the house is slightly lower than the south so there isn’t as much fall as there looks in the photo.   We placed a hosepipe at the end and adjusted the gutter height so there weren’t any puddles.  It was quite a fiddle to set accurately.

This is probably the first time that water doesn’t puddle in the gutter – it had always followed the line of the roof which isn’t straight. The eaves protector has been trimmed at the gutter mounting points to avoid forcing the gutter down.

A few cracks had appeared in the verge caused by the cement being pushed past the battens.  Also the undercloak has separated from the cement.  I’m planning to seal the gaps with lime.

I made up a 1:1 lime to soft sand mix with some black cement colour powder and worked it into the cracks.   Hopefully that will make it fail less quickly in the future.

The rest of the roof is OK – it doesn’t leak any more, there are no condensation problems inside, and nothing has fallen off.

It is late October and it is madness to be considering lime rendering at this time of year.   Normally you would get your exterior lime work out of the way by the end of September.   The trouble is the lime will take a month to dry in cold weather and will be damaged by any frost before it is dry.  I’m gambling against a frost in November else I might have to do it all again next year.

The render will be applied onto woodwool boards which are fixed onto roofing battens screwed to the oak frame.

Both oak and lime require stainless screws.   The tannins in oak corrode normal screws and electroplating doesn’t like lime.  The holes need to be pre-drilled and a steel screw driven in and then removed to reduce the chance of the stainless screw breaking as it goes in.  There is no chance of removing the stainless screw from oak.

The bricks immediately above the oak frame were not supported and had come loose so needed to be removed and replaced again.   I have fitted a slate undercloak between the bricks and the frame.

Hessian is my plan to reduce the chance of frost damage.  It should prevent dew forming on the surface of the lime and freezing, and will hopefully insulate a little to retain heat from the wall.  It is supported on eye bolts drilled into the brickwork with a rope threaded through.   I’m hoping to come up with a plan which will allow the rope to be withdrawn from ground level after the scaffolding has come down.

More than half of the first coat went on in a day.  My current recipe for render is a bucket of rendering sharp sand, a bucket of soft sand, and a bucket of lime (NHL 3.5 to help avoid frost damage).  1:2 lime to sand is quite a strong mix, but tests with less lime proved crumbly.  The surface will be roughed and scratched when it becomes firmer tomorrow.   I had planned to whitewash the infill to match the front of the house, but the earthy colour of render looks nice.  I might try adding some pigment to the limewash.

Late October turned out to be warm and the render is drying well.   It is still drying slower than it did in the summer but that is handy as it allows me to use lime late in the afternoon and finish it the next day.  It should be possible to apply the final coat around 5 days after the scratch coat (which has been scratched).   I brushed the remaining smooth bits after the photo to help the next coat stick.

The final coat of render seems to be taking about twice the time of the first coat.   I troweled on the lime trying to make it smooth and level, then after a few hours used a polyurethane float to flatten it, filling in low spots with more lime.   Next day I went over it with the polyurethane float again, then lightly wiped it with a damp sponge to fill in the imperfections.  This left a flat sandy finish which I will claim is traditional.

The finished render is recessed about 5mm behind the frame which will make it easier to lime wash.

It’s about time the scaffolding came down.  The lime work is finished.  I used a mix of brick and tile to infill between the new and old frames and have fitted some steel to hold them together.

The new timber frame started going in on Saturday (the original was rotten).  My cousin John made it from air dried English oak.   It was nerve wracking removing the old frame – the inside of the house is full of acro props, the chimney extended to support a purlin, and various braces added to support the brickwork.  In the end it turned out the original frame had stopped being structural a long time ago.

The original wall plates are better than they look.  The ends were damaged by waterproof paint but the rest was able to dry into the bedroom wall so hasn’t been too badly damaged by beetles.  The wall plates stuck out from the wall to allow material to accommodate a fish tail joint in the tie beam.   Some lead hats were fitted before the frame was pegged together.

The current roofline is shallower than the original, and the oak timber ends behind the facia board before it meets the chimney and does nothing useful structurally.   We kept that feature because I wanted to indicate the original roof line, but annoyingly the new wood is curved and probably could have been extended all the way to the chimney.  I might stud and resin fix some new oak in place to complete the rafter.   The tie beam is extended past the wall plate (it was originally cut diagonally) so it can support the facade.

The studding is taking a long time because all the wood is a funny shape and each joint has compound angles.   The pattern of stud work matches the original apart from some slight modifications to avoid gaps of more 600mm between studs which is the width of the woodwool board infill.

The frame is starting to look nearly finished with most of the second floor studding in place.  I’ve still to finish off the barge board on the front of the roof which is tapered.  I tapered the wrong face and need to buy another bit of wood but the frame took a week and it is Saturday again today.  I’ll get on with the infill.

The front gable has an 8 inch overhang.  Originally the roofing battens were exposed but now the roof has been felted. I wanted to add some sort of cover under the felt and hit upon the idea of ply secured by strips of wood about the same size as the original battens.

I think it turned out quite nicely.

The plan was originally to sort out the timber frame in the other gable before completing the paint.  The new plan is to finish the paint, install the remaining leading, repair the paint, then ruin it all with dust when the timber frame goes in.

The leading was out of schedule partly because I didn’t notice a tiny crack in the original leading until I was just about ready to start painting.  It’s on now and just needs rendering in place and the paint touching up.