Stone Fireplace, Stone Staircase, Limestone Fireplaces

Now they are risky words, because as soon as you estimate a finish date, things are bound to conspire against you to ensure that you cannot meet that date! Oh well, may be we’ll be lucky? Today the sun is shining and we are repairing the roof that got damaged by the scaffolders when they had to climb up it. Unavoidable actually, and they did explain that there was no alternative way of getting the scaffolding up without going over this low lean-to roof. Having said that, we didn’t realise that they would break quite so many tiles!

Still a day should have it all repaired and ship-shape, so we can live with that. Then we can get on with the lead work. There are the valleys (where two roofs meet) to do, and the sides and gable of the loft door. This is highly skilled work, but our roofer is a genius, so no worries there! We really do need the scaffolding on the front taking down this week, as the windows that are ‘half’ out do let in the rain, and a lot is forecast for this week.

Once that is done, we can get on with the internals. We’ve had a beautiful French style stone fire surround designed for what will become the dining room. It replaces an old reconstituted stone fireplace that has been in there for about 10 years. It will make a great improvement.

When removing the old timbers, we discovered where there had been an old loft door in the upper storey: the basic timber being clearly visible where it had simply been sawn off and tiled over. We decided that it would be desirable and relatively simple to reinstate this feature. It of course added a few more days work for the roofers and some extra work for the joiner, but in the interests of originality, we decided to go ahead. Trouble was, the joiner was now very busy on another project, and we were going to have to wait a while till he could come to us.

No problems there though, as we still had tons of jobs to do. The thing is, that all the really interesting stuff…. the improvements inside the building, seemed to be getting farther and farther away, and also were having their budget reduced with every extra day we had to spend on the roof. Oh well…. that is the joy of building and renovation of old property: It ALWAYS costs more and takes longer than your estimate!

So that’s the state we’re at now: But the roofer has toothache, and his helper has poorly children, so despite the sun shining, we won’t move far forward today I fear. I must go and get some lead… needed for the loft door and the roof valley. Very expensive stuff these days too!

Then, the weekend ahead… we may even do something tomorrow, but the forecast is rain again, so who knows.

So, no we’re on the last section of the roof; the bit with the massive oak truss that needs to be removed. This is one of those old ‘kingpost’ trusses; made of massive oak beams. The main oak cross member, that spans the outer walls of the building, is probably 12″ deep by about 6″ thick, the central post is about 8″ x 4″ and the two pieces that make up the triangular truss (and support the purlins which are also oak) are about 7″ x 5″ All in all, there is probably one to two tons of oak to be removed. Now the roofers are a very versatile lot, and with the help of a chain saw and some careful planning, they proceeded to remove all this oak. A great deal of care was needed, as the various beams were all attached to the walls and gables, and any large beam allowed to fall, would inevitably take with it, a large amount of walling or brickwork.

To my amazement, the roofers were like monkeys; running up and down the beams, sawing bits off, propping up others, and passing great blocks of oak from one man to another, and then down to ground level. I reckon in little more than an hour, the whole truss was removed. To think I’d been losing sleep about the potential disasters possible during this operation, and they’d made it look so simple! Great… another hurdle passed then.

The reinstatement of the roof, with new timbers and a steel ridge would prove to be relatively simple. The lifting of the steel ridge (RSJ)  being the hardest part, but again through brute strength and ingenuity, they made it look so easy.

So, first stage of roof completed, and now we can do the lower, so more easily accessible, but much older section. This is the oldest part of the house, and given the state of the timbers in the ‘newer’ section, I am expecting some horrors when we start taking the tiles off. The tiles are also a real mixture: Anything from newish machine made blues, that have been put on relatively recently to ‘plug’ the many holes, to very old hand mades with one nib. These latter tiles are apparently quite valuable, as they were literally made completely by hand and the nib was formed simply by pushing a dent in the clay with the thumb. (Must have been exciting work)

The tiles again, came off quite easily as there was no felt or mortar torching beneath. Despite the roofer’s keenness to strip the whole roof we managed to rein him in and convince him to just remove half first, so that we could make an appraisal of the timbers before we’d gone too far. No surprise to find that many were very rotten, but luckily we found we could renew them using the same method that we had on the first section of roof, and knowing that had gone well, I felt a little bit optimistic. The sun even shone for about 4 days on the trot, so everyone very content!

The second part of this lower roof was to be completely renewed, as it was very rickety, and had a massive truss which would spoil any room that may be formed in the roof space.

So here we are…. no tiles on the roof and faced with a very crooked and very rotten pile of roof timbers. Trouble is that the second floor ceilings are secured to all these rotten timbers, and so we cannot just ‘rip them out’ and replace them with new without causing even more upheaval and expense. Oh the joys of renovating old houses. Anyway, our roofer is an ingenious bloke, and he and the joiner decided to cut the upper half of the rafters off, which leaves the lower halves still attached to the purlins, and therefore still holding the ceilings up. They then put a new rafter alongside each of the old rotten ones and thus we have a new timber roof! Sounds simple perhaps, but it certainly wasn’t and it added two days to the schedule.

While they were up there, they also threw out all the old insulation, which was full of dust, old mortar, and quite a few birds’ nests! we replaced that with new insulation, and insulated the areas that are inaccessible except when the roof is off, so hopefully we’ll save a bit of fuel too, come the winter?

Once the timbers were all back on, we could get the felt and lath on, and more importantly, make the building rain proof again! This, relatively speaking proved to be the easy bit, as the reclaimed tiles went on very easily, and it seemed the job was all done in a couple of days. The leadwork and repointing of the chimney slowed things down a bit, but at least the house now looked like we’d actually done something.

Ever had the roof of your house re-tiled? Well let me tell you, it can be an absolute nightmare. The roof on my oldish house has needed doing for about 20 years: More tiles slipped off each year, and it had a very worrying dip in the ridge on one end suggesting that the timber beneath was sagging. The job was started on May the 18th, but rain for the first ten days meant we didn’t take any tiles off for fear of getting a flooded house! Instead, we decided to repoint the brickwork, which was also in a terrible state, and in fact the 10 days in which we couldn’t tackle the dreaded roof, enabled us to do a good proportion of the decaying brickwork. Eventually however, the rains stopped, and we could start on the job we’d planned for so long. As soon as we began taking the tiles off, we realised that the roof was in an even worse state than we’d thought. It’s a three storey house, so from below, apart from the obvious missing tiles, it was not apparent how bad the remaining ones were. In fact they all but fell apart in our hands, and we probably only saved about 10% of them (to be sold to reclaimers for repair of period roofs)

Worse still however, was the state of the timbers beneath. The roof was off such an age that it did not incorporate roofing felt. The many missing tiles therefore having let plenty of rain in over the years, and this water ingress had been very hard on the timber: Much was rotten.

Stone was first quarried (not surprisingly!) in the stone age. and it soon proved itself perfect for many uses, man soon developed tools with which he could produce ever more sophisticated things to ease his life. I expect fireplaces were a long way down the list of projects for these early stone masons. Initially as well of course, they would only have been able to work the softer stones with their rudimentary tools, but as the centuries passed, their knowledge and skills increased markedly, and it was not long until the more gifted artisans were turning incredibly complex buildings and works of art.

So you have your new stone fireplace installed, and now you want that traditional fire. In most cases an open fire is the first choice, but of course these are far from efficient as most of the heat disappears straight up the chimney! A wood stove is a far better option if you want the primary purpose of your fire to be heating rather than just appearance.

There are hundreds of wood stoves available these days, and all have their good and bad points. Most these days employ some sort of ‘clean burn’ technology which keeps the glass clear, so that you can see your fire, and goes some way to getting the ‘look’ that you would have had, if you’d chosen to have a fully traditional ‘open’ fire.

‘Clean burn’ does not however necessarily mean ‘efficient burn’ There are no two ways about it: The only way to get maximum heat and the most efficient use of your stove is to burn DRY wood. Wet wood will burn in your stove, but all the energy is used up in evaporating the moisture in the logs, and the efficiency is there fore very poor, and the heat emitted is low.

Dry wood burns much more efficiently, and needs very little air from your wood-burners vents. It will give off much more heat; last longer, and leave very little ash. Good logs of ideally ash or oak, that have been dried for a couple of years (stack them against a south facing wall with a tin sheet over them to keep the rain off) will produce very efficient heating.

Log supplies are of course harder these days, as more and more people have stoves and are searching for fuel. Keep a eye open for council workers trimming trees on the road side, or thinning communal woodlands, but you’ll have to be quick, as others will be looking too!