Wow. The house looks very different already.
The building work started this morning or should I say the demolition work started this morning. There are two guys at it and when I popped round at lunchtime to give them a second set of keys much progress had already been made.
As you might expect there is mixed news. Upstairs the rear bedroom no longer has any ceiling or any plaster on any of the walls. Apparently the plaster wasn't "live" (a new phrase I have learned) which means it was no longer attached to the underlying wall. There is a large and rather worrying hole in one corner through which you can see outside! At some point somebody had just decided the best way to fix this problem was to plaster over it! It is difficult to know why the hole is there but obviously it is going to get filled. If it was movement in the walls then it is historic and no cause for alarm for us. There is a lot of repair work to do on all of these walls and I wasn't that impressed with the vertical crack down one wall but I am assured that this is nothing to worry about.
Here are some pictures of what it looks like now (click on any of them to enlarge, they are of reasonable quality and really show the detail). The paper like stuff stacked up on the floor is some very old fashioned loft insulation.
Once these walls have been repaired we can put plasterboard directly onto them and then skim that. This is more expensive in materials but much cheaper in labour and much much quicker in time.
Curiously the other upstairs bedroom is fine and we will be able to keep the ceiling and all of the existing plaster which is great news.
Downstairs we have discovered an old window (or door we need to hack off more plaster to discover which it is) which somebody has just taken out and filled with bricks leaving the soldier courses and wooden lintel in place. The quality of the repair is shocking even to my untrained eye and we will need to put a couple of stongboys in there to prop up the house to remove the bricks and lintel and then replace them. It is not a huge job but there will be an interesting hole in the wall while it is being done. Here is a picture of the wall showing the brickwork. Stunningly poor quality. Even with a DPC this house would have been damp.
The gas supply will be capped tomorrow morning and the water system drained so we will be able to rip out everything else. The house clearance people arrive between 9:00 and 11:00 on Wednesday so all of the clearance will need to be finished by then. It will be tight but the guys seems supremely confident that they will be ready. I'll try and get some more photos Wednesday evening.
The building work started this morning or should I say the demolition work started this morning. There are two guys at it and when I popped round at lunchtime to give them a second set of keys much progress had already been made.
As you might expect there is mixed news. Upstairs the rear bedroom no longer has any ceiling or any plaster on any of the walls. Apparently the plaster wasn't "live" (a new phrase I have learned) which means it was no longer attached to the underlying wall. There is a large and rather worrying hole in one corner through which you can see outside! At some point somebody had just decided the best way to fix this problem was to plaster over it! It is difficult to know why the hole is there but obviously it is going to get filled. If it was movement in the walls then it is historic and no cause for alarm for us. There is a lot of repair work to do on all of these walls and I wasn't that impressed with the vertical crack down one wall but I am assured that this is nothing to worry about.
Here are some pictures of what it looks like now (click on any of them to enlarge, they are of reasonable quality and really show the detail). The paper like stuff stacked up on the floor is some very old fashioned loft insulation.
Once these walls have been repaired we can put plasterboard directly onto them and then skim that. This is more expensive in materials but much cheaper in labour and much much quicker in time.
Curiously the other upstairs bedroom is fine and we will be able to keep the ceiling and all of the existing plaster which is great news.
Downstairs we have discovered an old window (or door we need to hack off more plaster to discover which it is) which somebody has just taken out and filled with bricks leaving the soldier courses and wooden lintel in place. The quality of the repair is shocking even to my untrained eye and we will need to put a couple of stongboys in there to prop up the house to remove the bricks and lintel and then replace them. It is not a huge job but there will be an interesting hole in the wall while it is being done. Here is a picture of the wall showing the brickwork. Stunningly poor quality. Even with a DPC this house would have been damp.
The gas supply will be capped tomorrow morning and the water system drained so we will be able to rip out everything else. The house clearance people arrive between 9:00 and 11:00 on Wednesday so all of the clearance will need to be finished by then. It will be tight but the guys seems supremely confident that they will be ready. I'll try and get some more photos Wednesday evening.
2 comments:
Nice to see some more visual content in the form of high definition photos.
I wonder if it might be useful to get the surveyor that you used before to have a look at these cracks. The reason I say that is that some people would recommend putting mesh over those cracks and then applying a good sand and cement render. Other people might recommend dabbed plasterboard (which is your current proposal, I believe) as then the wall can, to some small extent, move under the plasterboard without it showing. You’ll need to decide on this before any first fix as the thickness of the plaster affects where the sockets go. You might also find that your dpc installer will specify the type of plaster/render you need to use to comply with their warranty.
By the way, I’d describe the best type of plaster as not being live; it’s fixed to the wall, stable, not going anywhere, dead sturdy. Bad plaster is live: moving around, lively, jumpy. You’ll find that building terminology is quite flexible....
Thank you for the obvious get out but I misheard. The plaster was "live" which is why it had to come off. That'll teach me to sound all knowledgeable!
The dpc provider has indeed specified the type of render to use but this is an upstairs room so I guess we can do what we want.
Post a Comment