October Monthly Update
Although technically this post contains two days of September, we’re going to roll with it, because I wasn’t here on those days, so they don’t count.
Don’t worry, you can skip ahead to…
I’ll add why I wasn’t here quickly, because it’s relevant for the general mood of the Week 1 post and what’s about to follow 🫣
I headed away on the Sunday to work at an event I’d been booked to judge, teach and speak at: Click Live Lite. This was in Milton Keynes, so about 5.5 hours drive from the farm, and of course, I hadn’t even gotten off the driveway before our little car (the EV) threw a tyre warning.
I had considered ignoring it and adding some air at a petrol station on the road, but Dan came and checked anyway. Thankfully, that pesky nail was spotted, and to be safe, I switched to the truck for the drive south. That left Dan without a car until the tyre was changed. Remember that point.
With the prospect of parking a spaceship in the city centre, I headed on and got to MK in fairly good time. The event kicked off with a full day of print judging (printed photographs) on day one with entries from all over the world, then on day two, I tought a 3 hour workshop with wonderful students, then did a stage talk later in the day.
All in all, great event, but yep, I wasn’t here at the farm. I stayed for the awards presentation and headed back home the following day (we’re on Wednesday now).
That’s important context, because what happens next is a barrel of laughs…
October Week 1:
Alrighty, so I wasn’t here, but Dan was. Dan was on-off on tyre-replacement-standby as, within 1 hour of me leaving on the Sunday, the tyre was completely flat. The tyre place had tyres, then didn’t, every single day, and by the time I got home, the tyres were still not changed. Poor Dan was therefore locked at the farm with zero transport, so he kept himself as busy as he could with the tools and supplies he had available.
The meant progress was a little bit bitty. Some shelves got painted and hung in the cottage wardrobes, the clothing poles were put up, and other bits and pieces happened too. Alone, it takes about 2-3 hours a day to care for the animals, so with zero wheels, limited supplies and low time, Dan also got these bits done:
Progress bits:
It was supposed to be plastering week, but that was not meant to be (stick with me here). However, he started with finishing up the insulation in the older parts (check September update for the plan here):
Dan also did have some scrim tape and beading already on site so he finished up in the middle section:
I need to circle back a little on what happened the week before, and I probably shouldn’t go through that here, but if I don’t, our random order of events and huge delays won’t make sense.
We went through the whole headache with the archway pocket door last time, but we hadn’t fully ended ties with the contractor. We have now, and I won’t get into that in too much detail, because I’m not here for that (not in writing anyway!), but my omissions should be clear enough.
With delays and communication failings throughout, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that the lads cut one of the aluminium uprights a month or so back which meant the fairly pricey pocket door fixing kit no longer worked. Thankfully, the manufacturer, and the retailer, did us a solid and allowed me to purchase a replacement piece.
Dan did, however, fit as much as he could of the kit as he could until that upright was essential. We’ve been round the houses on sealing that cavity around this pocket system, because it’ll be an issue later on. Therefore, we’ve gone with a fire sock (is that the right term?!) on each side. The replacement upright arrived on Saturday, so we can get this ready ASAP.
The actual doors to go in here will not feature an arch at all, but they are really clean and simple, with extra little details, and they’ll get added in closer to Christmas. Because the arch won’t be an arch, we can do a retrospective door hanging ceremony, rather than have to wait. This is a mega win to the timeline given the absolute distaster this opening has been from start to finish.
I’m actually really glad to have a plan and a timeline for this, as well as some new suppliers locked in with made-to-measure doors ordered, all in 3 days on my end (Wed-Sat).
Another bit Dan tackled was the fire boarding. It needed some additional treatment, and Dan cracked on with this - it didn’t take very long at all. Because the opening is gargantuan, a single board wouldn’t do the job in the kitchen (future utility room), so a fairly haphazard method has been applied and to be fair, it’s finished up quite well! An earlier step in the process is shown here:
Undoing of progress bits:
And then, Amy came.
Storm Amy had to arrive and kill the party, didn’t she?! They could not have picked a more bizarre name for a storm that threw nearly 100mph winds at the west of Scotland, but where we were, the gusts were around 70mph. We’ve dealt with worse and to be honest, we came out unscathed. From the wind at least.
On Friday morning, after a deluge but before the worst of the storm was due to hit, Dan noticed water on the southernmost fireplaces. For a geographic reference, this is in the newer bit (later 1800s, not the middle section!), but the walls here all face the worst of the weather, and the weather was grim. Here’s a screenshot from a video.
This fireplace is upstairs, and there is no chimney for it on the roofline, but the flue is still connected to the main chimney stack. Water had come into the actual fireplace (down the flue) and we assumed that was it.
The contractors had added lead to the top of the chimney stacks with scaffolding that is still there, along with replacing some very, very, broken stone and cement on the top of the stack itself. We’d estimate that this entire wall, and specifically the chimneys, had been leaking for years, if not decades.
Alongside the stack work, the contractors were also enlisted to do repointing, which was, frankly, a disaster from start to finish. Both Dan & I, as well as the lead contractor, knew the work wasn’t right, so I don't feel that’s a secret I can’t share.
From the wrong products to incorrect application and lots of missed bits, we asked them to stop, and we’ll do it ourselves next year. That was about 4-5 weeks ago, ish?
^ That is all I’ll say about this whole part of the job (the repointing). It was started, it was a failed project, and we’re now sadly out of time to repoint properly this year.
That left us where we’re at now, which was that most of the holes were at least partially filled, or fully filled (some of them were HUGE, like 6-9 inches across huge) and although it really doesn’t look pretty, we figured we might just make it through winter.
I can confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that south west driving rain at 20mm+ an hour is too much for the repaired bits, and some missed tiny holes, to manage. This is not a surprise for either of us, because we knew Dan needed to go back round the house anyway to patch up bits, but we weren’t quite expecting what happened next…
Meet the chimney that leaked:
The SPEED the water was coming in, it was insane! This, my friends, is what you need to prepare for it you leave some little holes in your walls. Clearly this path of water entry isn’t new though, because she’d travelling through very thick stone walls at speed and there must be a fairly well-worn path of no resistance to get inside this quicky. You have no idea how fun it was to change capture vessels at warp speed 😅
Honestly though, it looks bad, but it’s no drama (we’re getting good at this now, aren’t we?!).
With the scaffolding still up, a lull in the storm gave Dan the opportunity to check the stack, the cowl and the pots. The cowl was fine, though water was going into the pot, and the flue liner was slightly tipped, giving a straight line down for water to enter there. That ticked off one entry point, which is easy enough to fix. As a temporary measure, we did bag the pot to ride out the rest of the storm, so we’ll be looking at some different cowls to help us with water ingress there.
To narrow down the source to the wall and not the roof, Dan did some more demo to see if the internal wall upstairs was damp, wet, or otherwise compromised. There was a “tide line” on the wall, but we weren’t 100% sure if it was old or new. We can confirm that the tide line and mould was old (see the red paper near the peel line), the lath and stone were bone dry.
Kind of annoying that we’ve just lopped some of that wall out to see if the roof is fine, because we were going to use the existing wall lining for now, but hey, another patch up for Dan to do, no problem.
After the cowl/pot entry for a bit of rain, the second and main entry point is also no surprise really - the poor pointing on the south gable.
With the help of a hosepipe and post-storm dryness, Dan and I blasted the gable and stack in semi-controlled sections to find the source of our tap. We can confirm that it wasn’t the roof, or the upper stack, it was some poor pointing on the gable, conveniently located in a channel of stone faces to funnel all the water running down the wall straight into the building - hence the volume, and speed, of the entry.
In the gables defence, the rain was biblical: the bottom yard flooded, the local roads flooded, the fields flooded - it all flooded - in the space of 2.5 hours.
It’s unlikely that we’ll get rain like Amy’s again any time soon, but having holes in your wall where we live is a bit of a problem. Therefore, we’ve made some project adjustments, and Dan is on repointing the major emergency bits before the frosts with plastering passed to two of the nicest people we’ve met since being up here. Yay for us.
There is the constant question of “is repointing enough” up here, and we still don’t know - we’ll have to see. We said we’d give it the winter, and we will. It’ll either be a case of it survives the weather or not. And if not, lime wash, render or similar are all options on the table, but that’s a table we can leave alone for now.
Whilst running to empty vessels and checking on our internal water feature (downstairs fireplace only this time), Dan and I kept in high spirits checking the animals and posting on Instagram. Because why not, right?!
Weirdly, although this week sucked in project Farmhouse land, we both feel oddly positive. Dan wanted me to pick a colour for the kitchen fireplace (it will be painted for now) and we both joked that bright orange would be a good idea. Given Amy, I totally forgot about this mission and therefore when Dan was in the paint shop, he needed an answer there and then.
Therefore, meet our new fireplace colour, Marmelo, by Farrow & Ball - it looks a LOT more orange in real life (swatch on the old plaster to the right). A strange harmony exists between the red sandstone and this colour though, which is kinda cool.
Because orange is now happening in there, and specifically THAT orange (in fairness it is still wet in the photo), I now need to find a light neutral tone to work in the darkest, coldest, green-tinted, north-facing room.
I wasn’t in the land of paint and furnishings yet, given I’ve only just ordered internal doors and picked skirting boards (loosely), but here we are. Swatch books at the ready, wish me luck!
What a weird week. I need a nap.
See you next time!
October Week 2:
Arguably, a good week! Although Dan was off of all other progress points and on project pointing, the days passed fast and it’s Friday already.
Let’s start on Monday, when I spoke with a lime expert about our situation. Because the house is a mixture of granite, whinstone and some softer shaley type stuff, and because it already has some signs of damage from years of bodged cement repointing missions, the experts said NHL 3.5 was still the right thing to use, despite the exposed location suggesting NHL 5 being the best for the weather. Never fear though, they also gave me a product that makes the lime mortar 90% less permeable to water, which should solve all our other problems.
Then, this company did the weirdest thing. They said instead of buying the lime from them, go speak to a competitor. I love that for the lime community! They directed me to Wormersly’s in West Yorkshire who were closer to us, and therefore the haulage would be cheaper. The guy there was another legend, and sorted me out with what we needed, shipped it same day and it arrived the morning after. We did have to pick a colour though, which was a bit of a stab in the dark. We have no idea what the original pointing colour was, but the render is light, the rest of the house exterior will be very dark, so we checked the existing lime that we can see, which is also quite light, and went with “chalk”.
There is no “backsies” on this decision, so it is was it is, and to be honest, we like it, so that’s what counts.
Dan started immediately, right at the very top, on the chimney stack. Fun find up here after raking out was a gigantic crater on the north side, over the ridge of the roof. This crater was covered partially with a bit of mortar, but behind there was nothing - no stone, no mortar, just a hole into the house. Here’s where Dan was, and what he found on the other side (yep, that’s the flue liner for the leaky log burner):
Thankfully, the scaffolding for some reason is still here, which helped tackle this part for sure, but after that, it was on to the ladders. Raking out was done mostly with the SDS drill because the stone is absolutely solid (except the orange ones) and the mortar is mostly cement (though not all).
Please note that raking out a section takes around 6 hours (2m high, 5m wide), pointing the same size section takes around 8 hours.
The chimney was much faster though, because the stones are uniform here, giant granite slabs in nice straight lines!
I have a nice little gallery of “progress” photos and no clear way of showing them, so we’ll just do show and tell.
Ok, so we’ve covered pointing, which is certainly ongoing. Dan isn’t going to be doing the entire house (yet), but he really wants to do this entire southern gable, and there’s no way of stopping him if he really wants to do something. Therefore, another week on pointing and the gable will be complete.
Also this week, the current kitchens fire got fitted by a local company, Fireplaces Direct. In the end we went with a new burner, the same model as the cottage living room but on taller legs to help it take up a bit more of the hearth. The hearthstone is slate sections. Please remember, this room will eventually be the utility room, a dog and boot room and it’s a very cold dark room in winter. This addition will be a game changer.
It’s very odd, seeing a “finished” bit amongst the absolute carnage of the room it sits in, but I also kinda like it. A good old juxtaposition in visual format. Of course, I have progress photos, so please do enjoy:
And look at that orange pop. The front of the hearth, the surround, will be plastered to a slightly raised finish off the main wall. The question now is:
Do we bring the orange around the front to cover the surround area, or should we leave the orange just on the inside, sticking with the planned off-white/cream (with a slight magenta tint to cancel out the green cast this north-facing room has) on the front?
Although not strictly necessary to share, I am happy that this week we booked in the underfloor heating delivery, the double doors for the pocket where the arch was (RIP to the dream of the arch), the sockets and switches also arrived, along with the normal internal doors, and some of the light fixtures.
Final note to add here for those following along:
The “finishing line” for the house is plain walls, simple light fixtures and no “flashiness”.
No panelling, no wallpaper, no feature walls, no built-ins - no sparkle.
The finishing line is simply financeable, then we’ll take a breath and plan full schemes for each room thereafter.
In terms of that finance point, because I know many are keen to know what the situation is – I can give an update. Technically, we’re pretty good right now - not great but good (the bathrooms might need a bit of work!). The thing is, the mains water isn’t connected still, which is a binding point in our deal, so the end date for our contract flexes to accommodate this. Although we do not want to drag it out any more than necessary, and the water could be piped in at any time, the pressure isn’t truly on right now (it is for me, but Dan keeps reminding me that it’s going to be ok).