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Roof repair part 1

When you embark on buying an old house, you have to take on a level of risk hence the reason for getting a full survey done. But as we know they are filled with disclaimers and caveats and say things like “we don’t lift floor boards and we don’t do this and that” so I have treated them as an indicator to inform you.

My two markers to watch out for and budget were damp (as this was not just cited on the report but also visible in places) but also the roof. Now the report actually gave this a generally good coverage, inspecting the visible trusses and felt condition, pointed out a number of damaged slates and a few other things but my worry was always, what if I need a new roof? as I believe they can be quite expensive. The worse I had experienced before was losing tiles and ridges on a previous property which was prone to being windswept but nothing really major.

So when it came to buying Glan Gors I always knew year 1 and moving in during the winter was going to quickly flush out any issues with the roof!

Once I had given the house a good airing and walking around inspecting in detail, a worry bead popped up at the top of the stairs and in my bedroom as signs started to appear. Blown plaster and a staining were apparent and stripping the plaster back exposed an internal long term ingress where the stone work was blackened and had moisture and adjacent to it on the ceiling was a slowly expanding discoloured ring.

Yep, that looks like a little trickle

I also had some staining in the bedroom and as it was the other side of the doorway it seemed logical to cut a small section out to see if this cast any additional light on the problem. Using a small push saw I cut out a section about the size of a standard envelope and immediately could see water ingress on the bottom of the frame which holds the roof valley. This sort of correlated with the angle of moisture when viewed from the roof line and location wise the water seemed to align with a piece of flashing which I can only assume joins part of the valley together in the lower 1/3. Popping up into the attic and locating the valley, the higher parts were dry so the lower flashing join seems to be the probable culprit.

Gotcha…….

Armed with all of this information and being relatively confident that this had been a long term issue and therefore any damage was probably already establish I was able to contact a roofer and not get too stressed as I knew I was going to have to wait until he had a free slot.

The only problem now was that whilst before I knew I had a problem but could not see the extent of it, now it was opened up, when it rained I could physically see the water dripping down the wall, and I mean dripping! My only option was to find a way to capture it and this is where I am learning to improvise. If you have a look at the picture below, the item circled is a tea towel tucked into a space between the mortar. This now collects the water and is folded in such a way that it forms a point at the end to direct the drips into a bucket on the floor. On an average night of rain I’m collecting about 1.5 litres, and to think previously that has all been soaking into the stonework and plaster!

The final bit of the preparation was to clear back the whole wall to really let it dry back so I have cut the plaster back to the skirting and then have gone to the right until I found solid dry plaster. At the same time, there was staining just above it on the ceiling so I took the opportunity to cut this back as well.

I was really expecting to see plaster board which I would cut out, giving the roofer another view of the underside so imaging my surprise when I discovered that the ceiling contours are actually made up of slate sheets nailed to the rafters!

My problem now is that I can really envisage this restored back to the stone work, repointed and having it as a feature archway at the top of the stairs!

I will keep you all updated once the roofer has been out!

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Didnt see this coming

Friday 5th:

About 4 weeks ago, I noticed a small amount of staining on some fresh paint, and it was adjacent to a wall that had badly blown wallpaper which was quite a way down on my list as it was the upstairs hallway and the decoration of this was way off.

The last week or so the mark had been bugging me, and looking at the ceiling above the wallpaper I noticed staining on this as well. I had 30 minutes spare last night so I thought I would just grab the scraper and remove the top coat of paper to at least get a feel for the state of the plaster.

True to form this turned into a voyage of discovery as the plaster was compromised and came off easy using just the scraper and unearthed the original stone structure inner wall. This (as was the plaster) has areas which were wet and blackened with mould and it was obvious this was not a recent water ingress but has been happening for a long time. Digging upwards exposed some wooden strips, I suspect from the loft cavity was rotten so stripping back a good area and having a llok in the loft was going to be the call of the day.

Amazing what you can do with just a wallpaper scraper!

I took the opportunity to have a look at the roof and noticed that if you drew a line through the marking on the picture and the one in my bedroom behind it, it followed the valley on the roof so I suspect that the valley has become compromised allowing water into the loft and then following a fall line to this point in the wall.

I am going to pop up in the loft tomorrow to take a look at any potential damage that needs to be considered in there but I am hoping that the main fix will be just to get the valley repaired or at worse replaced and then strip the inside back, let everything dry out, monitor it for a while then make good, Its better to do it now whilst I am younger and have the capital in the budget then leave it to get worse in my ageing years!

Update: following day

Luckily I had ordered a new step ladder to get into the loft and it arrived today so I was able to pop up their safely and have a look. What a voyage of discovery to see the loft layout of an old house! Anyway the good news is that the felt looks in really good condition and chatting to my neighbour he confirmed that the previous owner had the roof stripped and re-felted although he could not remember when. He also said that the previous owner had a roofing company out to fix the same area somewhere between 3 -5 years ago so I suspect the original compromised plaster was never stripped back and the fault was not treated properly.

The key things I was looking out for was any easy visible signs of long term damage caused by water ingress, any visible light and any signs of the natural water run. Whilst I was was not able to see anything serious their was signs of what could be a natural fall line for water and it did align to the valley area so hopefully when the roofer comes out next week to inspect, assess and price it up it should be relatively good news.

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New Year 3 day binge! – day 1

Well 2021 was rang in at midnight, I watched a bit of telly till 1 then nodded off to sleep (OK I did fall asleep during the Last Leg at 10:30 pm but that was because I was tired!

My intention on the Friday (1st) was to get the gloss finished in my bedroom and then finish the Snug (gloss on the stairs, strip the walls around the door and get the coloured emulsion finished). As it was, I also ended up starting the white emulsion in the lounge and a bonus job of lifting the carpet to expose the floor boards!

The gloss in my bedroom was pretty straight forward as it was just a couple of skirting boards and door surrounds. Basically all I have left now is to make a small curtain for the back window and await the grey gloss paint for the inside of the door then its done. I will post some pictures under the Ymlacio category once those small jobs are complete. All in all a really practical transformation and has created the space for the en-suite to go in later this year. Oh and my new rug arrived yesterday which was quite nice.

New rug has arrived. The mirror doesn’t work here so its going to be moved.

Once the bedroom was done, it was time to try and finish off the Snug. This is basically the front room as you come in the front door and has an incredible decommissioned fireplace and the hallway / staircase. The main issue as well as a paint refresh was that the structural report highlighted some high level of damp by the doorway and this was evident by an amount of lifting wallpaper. My plan is to refresh the area with a new colour on top of the existing paper but where it has lifted take that paper off and lay down two coats of white then two of colour then leave it 12 months to monitor the damp. I’m hoping with better heating and air circulation it does not reoccur but if it does at least I have a starting point for treatment.

Stripping the paper and laying down the two layers of white emulsion took longer than anticipated but at least I go into tomorrow with it all prepped to finish it off.

By the front door has been stripped and sanded. Now two coats of white then two of colour will be left for 12 months to assess any potential damp issues

So as it was getting to the end of the day but I had an hour left to kill, and I had a white emulsion brush in my hand and a few easy access walls it made sense to end off with an easy white coat. If only it was that easy!

The problem started with the small wall just under the curtain…

The problem hit when I got to the second wall which had no skirting to so the emulsion did touch the blue carpet no matter what I did. Luckily this was going to be behind the sofa and the carpet would be replaced at some point but I would know about it, so the only “illogical” thing to do was to rip the carpet up!

I say illogical as it was now 5pm and I had been going since about 09:30 and I genuinely did not know the state of the floor underneath. I knew it was floorboards as it is the floor above the cellar but it could have been in any state! So bread knife in hand to cut it into sections and watched as the foam backing disintegrated in front my eyes (I can not estimate how old this carpet was), an hour later I was presented with a fantastic starting point of a new floor for the lounge.

The slow and messy process of removing the old carpet

Once swept and vacuumed, what I have been left with is a solid set of boards but with two new sections. My decision now is whether I sand it all back and re-stain it or keep the original board patina and try and color match stain the two small sections.

We will see…..

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Ymlacio part 1 (refresh)

Named “Relax”, this room was always going to be mine. If I want to develop the home as a possible Air BnB type place in the future, I needed to make the main bathroom available to guests and have an en-suite for myself. This was really the only room that offered the most efficient plumbing routes to the soil pipe and being double ended was actually ideal.

The only downside was that the space to put a double bed was limited to the alcove by the front window and was only 120 cm wide which is a standard UK small double. Whilst the mattress would fit OK, trying to find a frame that was exactly 120cm was a struggle as most had a 5 – 9 cm extra width over the mattress width. Luckily I was able to find one but more on that a bit later.

My intention (hence the room name Relax) was that this would be an “occasional” room for myself, A small double, TV, extra working desk and en-suite would give me the flexibility of a room which I could use for work, writing, lazing in bed on a Sunday morning with the telly on etc when I was not using the master bedroom at the back of the house with the 4 poster bed (which I really love as a room and intended to be my main sleeping place when guests were not staying). Also by putting an open plan Ikea wardrobe it would basically become a dressing / ironing room as well!

I say intention but actually the final decision has ended up shaping the room as two things happened. Firstly my daughter came to stay for Christmas and took up occupancy of the room… yep she liked it that much she has assured me that she will be staying here much more with her partner and their dog to “help me decorate”. So I think the “Cariad” room is definitely going to be hit with guests if not my kids!

The second thing was after starting to use my room and also getting the paint down it is actually turning into a nice multifunctional room. The desk allows me to just leave my laptop on the desk in writing mode so if I wake up in the night (as I sometimes do) and can’t get back to sleep I can work on a few paragraphs. The TV allows me to retire early and just crash on the bed instead of sitting in the lounge and the open plan wardrobes gives a great “dressing room feel about it”. The colour scheme has come together and I can start to visualise the open plan en-suite in the space left so I suspect my visits to the “Cariad” room when I have no guests will be few and far between…

Goodhome Frejus Silk and skirting part completed. Door panel is going to be light grey

Now I did say earlier on that I struggled with the bed and to be honest it was a challenge at first as the space was a dead 120 cm. Luckily I was able to find a low bed frame on Wayfair. The item was called the Cheyanne Platform Bed, was a reasonable price and as it slots into the alcove which forms a natural headboard and container for the pillows, once dressed it works a treat.

The next step is to complete the gloss on the skirting and doors and then wait for the replacement runner to arrive. After that the final step of this stage is to make a curtain for the small window and basically this room is done.

Obviously until we start adding the en-suite but that’s another story!