Living Room: Repair WorkThe first stage of the repair work was to strip all of the linings from the walls to expose the rendered and plastered brick work. This was relatively easy and involved removing various combinations of hardboard, plastic sheeting and plaster board. Behind most of the linings we found rendered brick walls as expected.
The next stage was to chip off all of the cement based renders to allow the walls to breathe and dry out. We also had to remove some areas of older plaster that had been so badly damaged that the slightest touch caused it to fall from the wall! As with everything about the house there were some interesting surprises, some good, some bad and many requiring more work than we had initially expected: The old front doorUpon removing the linings around the old front door we discovered two major things. The first was that the door has been blocked up with breeze blocks. The second was that behind the breeze blocks was part of the original timber frame which also acted as the door surround. The timbers were a bit damp, so we decided to remove the breeze blocks to let timbers dry out and to expose the old door.
Once the breeze blocks were removed we were left with a very old entrance door surrounded by some substantial timber framing. Also, in the letter box opening of the door was one of the original keys. I rushed down to the local key cutting shop and they were able to make me a copy of the key. Returning home I tried it in the lock and with a small amount of working the lock it turned and the door came open! A bit of oil later and the lock works fine.
Timber frame and wattle and daubThe area either side of the chimney breast was also lined with hardboard. They also had fitted cupboards. Removing the cupboards and the hardboard led to a really significant find. Hidden behind were the original timbers from the frame and filling the space between the timber were panels of wattle and daub. These probably date from the original construction of the cottage in approximately 1540.
The panels are in a slightly poor state and have suffered from significant shrinkage. The surrounding timber frame has also been painted, papered and treated quite badly. The next stage is to repare and restore these to as close to original as possible without damaging any of this historic material. Other TimbersAs we started to expose some of the internal walls we descovered that these also contain some timber. This is not part of the main framing as the timbers are too small and not joined in a load bearing way. We suspect that when the ground floor timber frame was replaced with brick walls, that they added some timbers into the walls to try and give some form of authenticity.
Concrete FloorsAs we exposed some of the wall bases we found some more plastic sheeting leading down into the concrete floor. Following it down and chipping up some of the concrete we found that the whole concrete floor to be layed on sheets of plastic to create a tanking effect (tanking involves building an inner shell that stops damp getting in, but damages the structure of old buildings by making the walls very wet). Below this was another layer of concrete covered in a bitumen paint to create another tanking effect.
Underneath all of the layers of concrete and plastic we found an old Vicrotian brick floor. We applied for additional Listed Building Consent to take up the concrete floors and we are now taking these up. Interestingly, underneath the concrete is an original brick floor. This is quite damp and in varying condition. Once it has been fully exposed we will decide on its future viability.
FireplaceWe also obtained permission to remove the modern marble fireplace and expose the original opening. This has now been done and we have a very interesting feature in the room. We are now exploring the history of fireplaces to determine what the original contents of the fireplace would have been.
THe Full ExtentThe two photos below show the full extent of the work on the living room. These were taken in the summer of 2002 when we had stripped out all the cement and damp damage and were just waiting for everything to dry out.
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