Middlecroft Cottage

Progress inside and out Progress is definitely being made at the cottage, although the above image does not really represent what is happening. Rich has been the main worker at the house, while I am at home on the computer - books about wrapping Christmas presents don’t translate themselves ;) I have however been able to pop over on weekends, when Rich let me have a go with his hammer and chisel.  Snow was brought in by storm Arwen and we were lucky that nothing appears to be damaged on the house. Notice that the bay window is being held down with bricks as the window surveyor realised that gravity (and a thick coat of muck) was the only thing keeping the canopy it place! The snow also gave the cottage a Christmas card appearance. Before the cold weather, Rich fixed all the pointing and the spalled bricks at the front of the house (see pervious post, which was however missing an “after” photo). It certainly looks a whole lot better now that all the smeared lumps of concrete have be...

(Warning: this is an insanely long post. It’s largely an information dump so that I don’t forget what I’ve learned, so please don’t feel obliged to read it all!) How do you solve a problem like lime mortar? With some difficulty, as it turns out... While the weather stayed unexpectedly mild in November, we decided to focus on the outside of the house. As well as painting the stonework and weeding, one of the priorities was fixing the pointing on the bricks at the front.   What's the problem? The main issue was that some absolute chimp had smeared mortar across the brickwork as though icing a cake. It looked awful and couldn't be left as it was.  The cement mortar coating the brick faces There were also sections of mortar missing, with big gaps between bricks. And the other problem was that it appeared to have been repointed at least twice before - but with cement mortar. Cement mortar sitting proud of the brick faces I didn’t realise there was such a thing as the ‘wrong ty...