• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Jimmy S stone renovation

J

jimmy s

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Dunfermline area
Hi Beckman

Must be a lockdown thing, I've been doing something similar but a pitched slated roof.

I've not managed to get the external walls finished though :oops: I ran out of time with the weather.

I made a timber kit with and welded up a steel portal frame with a steel ridge beam and have been building a sandstone outer leaf. I'm ok with bricks and blocks but I've found working with sandstone to be a much slower affair. That's my excuse anyway.
 
jimmy s":3guyhu64 said:
......I've found working with sandstone to be a much slower affair. That's my excuse anyway.
Click to expand...

It is. Or at lest, if it isn't, you're doing something wrong! :) It's worth the trouble. Are you using lime mortar?
 
Yes

Using lime from masons mortar with sharp sand.

I'm finding the coursed stone as slow to work with as random ruble, I thought it would be faster but unfortunately not.

The stone has been cut with a 100mm bed with a split face but even with that its slow going, a lot of time getting the courses right and cutting etc.

Ive been dressing the cornerstones etc with a broached finish, which gets tedius after a few. Its not a large area of stone but its painfully slow to lay, plus I just I really could do with a pan mixer for mixing the lime mortar and also for mixing screed, both of which I have been mixing in my wee Belle mixer which is not the best.

I need to get faster as the next job is stripping some grey split face fyfestone off god awful extension, re-roofing it in slate and refinishing in sandstone.
 
jimmy s":1w6k31pl said:
Yes

Using lime from masons mortar with sharp sand.

I'm finding the coursed stone as slow to work with as random ruble, I thought it would be faster but unfortunately not.

The stone has been cut with a 100mm bed with a split face but even with that its slow going, a lot of time getting the courses right and cutting etc.

Ive been dressing the cornerstones etc with a broached finish, which gets tedius after a few. Its not a large area of stone but its painfully slow to lay, plus I just I really could do with a pan mixer for mixing the lime mortar and also for mixing screed, both of which I have been mixing in my wee Belle mixer which is not the best.

I need to get faster as the next job is stripping some grey split face fyfestone off god awful extension, re-roofing it in slate and refinishing in sandstone.
Click to expand...

That's what I call a 'Proper Job''. Did you consider mixing goats hair in?
 
Roger,

No - hadn't come across the goats hair in mortar. I have heard of hair in the lime plaster for application to timber laths - which I am not doing! - I spoke to a guy on site doing that and it looked too hard for me. I can just about plaster a wall with Thistle Multifinish but I know my limits - having tried ceiling (not my finest hour). I will not be plastering any more ceilings. Its an art and a physical workout.

We were on a site there where the old lath and plaster was getting sent for analysis by a bloke in full PPE (Porton Down we were told - whether thats true I don't know) apparantly there had been traces of Anthrax found in some of the old lime plaster somewhere, presumably the animal hairs. I hadn't come across this before.
 
Any chance of some photos, Jimmy. I'd be very interested and I'm sure so would others. I could move the posts relating to your project into a new thread.
 
I can try and post some Roger, it's nearly finished internally but not so much externally. Progress was also slowed with the famine of building materials. Not sure if it was the same in England but we had major problems getting cement/ plasterboard/ rough sawn timber (I had to wait weeks for sarking and then ran out of 2x2, went to the merchants for a couple of lengths and was told they were waiting on a delivery - expected in 3 weeks!)
 
+1 for photos Jimmy!
I find all the wet trade work and masonry a marvel, it not being my usual dusty habitat!
 
jimmy s":1ahy0x2s said:
......Not sure if it was the same in England but we had major problems getting cement/ plasterboard/ rough sawn timber......
Click to expand...

In the first lock down, cement was OKish, plasterboard (and all plaster) dried up completely, and timber was no problem. This time there don't seem to be any major issues so far, as far as I've heard.
 
I've had to try and do the majority of the stonework myself and have also had a go at some repairs etc as the costs were going to be prohibitive.

Some brightspark decided that one of the chimneys would be an ideal spot to bolt the TV aeriel and over the years they have had at least 3 brackets on it. I had to partially dismantle it last year to make it safe and re-bed the copes and fit a new pot whilst installing a stove. Some of the lower stones have been badly damaged by the expansion of the mild steel fixings as they have corroded and the stones have cracked. I got stone repair epoxy and have repaired some of these cracks using a bloody grat syringe I got from the internet. I still need to get a roof ladder up and deal with the cracks on the south facing side, Ive got the bracets off at least. After that I will try and cover the damage with stone repair mortar which I got with dye to match the two main sandstone colours we have. I'm hoping its ok as option B is not terribly appealing - would need to get a saddle scaffold up and take the chimney down and replace most of the sandstone, which will run to a few thousand and will need to be done my a stonemason. I'm having to work on my own and some of these sandstone blocks are too heavy for one man to lift. I measured some of the larger ones and worked out they weigh over 100kg. I dont fancy trying to work with them on my own.

When I pulled down the old lean to conservatory the flashing had been done rather poorly, clearly they made an @rse of the first cut with the stihl saw and had to cut another chase about 11/4 inches higher which left me with 2 dirty tram line cuts to repair. Ive done most of the stone repairs with this mortar and its been ok. I still have to re-point etc.

Ill try and find some pictures that I took along the way - mainly to show my father how it was getting on. I havent got a lot of detail I'm afraid.

I've been quite impressed with the stone repair mortar. The other invaluable tools have been a stihlsaw and a small angle grinder with a flush cutting diamond blade, plus an assortment of masonary chisels ofcourse!

I will post a picture of the extension which needs dealt with in phase 2 of the external renovations/ turd polishing exercise to give everyone a laugh. I should say that we bought the property as its got a big(ish) garden at just under 2 acres mainly but knowing the house needed a lot of work, however its needing more than I had anticipated at the outset.
 
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