In which Nettie loses her corset at last....
After an easy crossing to Poole last weekend, and the first night spent sleeping in my car (so as to save money to spend on Nettie), I spent an extremely productive day at Mike Wye Associates in beautiful North Devon learning all about lime mortar and plastering techniques.
Mike specialises in traditional building and products, and at his well-run sawmill in Buckfast Filleigh you can buy everything the traditional homeowner may possibly need, as well as attend courses to learn how to use them (see his videos on YouTube too).
There were about 20 enthusiastic amateurs on my course and we all had something in common – we'd bought old wrecks to renovate and wanted to do as much of the work ourselves as possible.
Mark, our instructor for the day at Mike Wye Associates
After a short lesson on the history of lime, and hearing from Mark, our instructor, what can go wrong if you don't use it when renovating old buildings, we headed outside to try the products for ourselves kitted out with protective gloves, glasses and hi-viz jackets.
Lime mortars and plasters are made from lime putty - a blancmange like product that is created from limestone that has been "slaked" by adding water in a massive pit and left for three months.
Sand and water is then added to the putty to make mortars (or plasters) in different grades of smoothness depending on whether for inside or outside use. Colour can also be added to blend with the local vernacular architecture.
A tank of lime putty, and samples of different mortar colours available.
The rain (and snow) magically held off for the day, and a fantastic time was had by all, learning how to rake out, rebuild and repoint a stone wall using lime mortar, make bricks from local cob, render an external cob wall, and plaster an interior wall onto traditional lath using lime plasters to achieve a perfectly smooth finish.
Dan, our expert in all things lime, was at hand to answer our queries and show us how it's done – it was amazing how quickly and expertly he applied the various finishes and I gather he's also for hire although doesn't come cheap!
Here's an example of my attempts to build a traditional stone wall...
Not very neat :(
Fortified by an excellent buffet lunch provided by Mike's team, and armed with a sack-load of tools, from a special comb-like object for scratching lime render (and ideal for my hair too), and a selection of flexible trowels, a plasterer's hawk, and sponges for smoothing internal lime plaster to perfection, I headed back to Normandie and Nettie.
At various times in the past, external renders have been used on old houses to cover up a multitude of perceived sins, from exposed beams considered unfashionable, to vulnerable brick finishes or just because pebble-dash was considered attractive.
The problem with applying render to the external skin of a house is that if the walls can't breathe, then you risk damaging the fabric of the home itself and over time it will start to degrade (see the photo of the cob cottage below to see the worst that can happen).
The use of a concrete render on this Devon cob cottage allowed water to accumulate behind over time with disastrous consequences after one day of heavy rain...
This was the case with Nettie – in the post-war years in France, "crepy" or concrete external render was applied to millions of old houses, and while this may have served to protect them in the short term, in the longer term these renders have degraded visually and also caused untold damage to lovely old buildings.
I had already hacked off a tiny part of Nettie's render, as I'd hoped that her windows and door were framed by lovely local bricks, as is the tradition in this part of France. I could see what appeared to be brick, but I wasn't that confident that it would be possible to remove the render entirely, as Mike's team had told me that the brick would likely have been irreparably damaged by the render.
Brick peeps out from under Neetig's concrete crepy
I'd bought a massive (and heavy) hammer drill with a chisel attachment to remove the render, and so, with my heart in my mouth, I started work, climbing up onto the roofer's scaffold to the first floor where I hoped to expose the first brick lintel.
Guillame, the roofer, kindly showed me how to use the tool, and I was off, having first put a layer of protective plastic covering over the neighbour's lovely succulent plants) and my own protective glasses and gloves. With showers of sparks, and clouds of choking dust, little by little the lovely curved brick lintels started to reveal themselves, alongside the most beautiful stone wall!
I couldn't have been more delighted, and can't wait to hack out the old mortar, repoint and make Nettie breathe again! I've been advised that it will be best to sand-blast after all the render has been removed to achieve a perfect finish, and I've already contacted the lovely M. Voisin the mason to arrange for a proper scaffold to be erected so we can work safely around Nettie to achieve the desired result.
Hurrah!!!
You can see me working on removing the render here – trust me, it's exhausting work!
In my next blog post I'll update on the progress of the roof – Guillaume's already started putting on the grey-green slates I've chosen to blend with the neighbouring houses, and he'll also be putting up the roof decorations (or tuiles de faitage) supplied by Barfleur pottery including a stunning ceramic dove to top out the dormer roof :)
