weekend off

i drive over dartmoor every month when i head to totnes - such an amazing place. oh, dartmoor, i have such beautiful plans for the two of us...

monkey or fish?

haddock - doing his impression of a primate

the beginning of something beautiful...

here are the new joists - looking very beautiful. next we'll add two velux windows for additional light, insulate, wire in the electrics, replace the floorboards and plaster up, baby! the thought of a lovely big bedroom is very exciting.

cabbage patch

nice view on the way to the local shop - man, this is such a refreshing change from the sunny climes that are finsbury park road...

Frosty Farm

the 'neigh'bours

These two fillies live just across the courtyard and will come in very handy to mix the cob and fertilize the garden.

onwards and upwards

the first new joist

cutting out the old joists

wood and props

so we've returned to the comfort of our little caravan that is now carefully positioned outside our front door. i found the whole move back rather disturbing, only in that i appeared to be very excited about getting back into the cardboard pod - hmmm.... i've just spent 100K on a house and i perfer the comforts of a gypsy existance - worrying, very worrying...

the move out of the house has been good though, clearing everything out let's us really crack on and get to grips with the place, without trying to live in it at the same time. me chasing simon around the house with a duster was starting to get a little annoying (he prefers it when i wield a whip ;-) ).

so the deal is that we prop up the roof, ditto the bedroom floor/lounge ceiling, remove all the old wormy joists and put in some rather lush larch replacements.

child labour

simon got in a few kids for a days work ;-) aren't children great! they'll shift big stones ALL day just on the promise of a bonfire... ahhh...

'Stuff it' said the engineer to the pikey

we had a structural engineer around to check out the roof (joists and all) and take a little look at 'those' cracks. we were in the mind that we may have to 'stitch' the cracks using cob blocks or what, but the engineer confirmed that they would be fine just being stuffed. he seemed to think that they had been there for perhaps 200 years - cob always has a tendancy to shrink when it dries out and this may just be the result.

so we took some of the material we'd previously removed from the walls (such as blown earthern plaster) took a trip up to the moor to buy some lime and got to work mixing. it's a bit like making a cake; add earth, straw, lime; mix well in a large wheel barrow; apply to crack ; leave to dry for 2 weeks!

the results are pretty great and the stuff was hard as a rock after a few days - it's good to see the back of the cracks.

Will it fall down?

blimey, so we've been hard at work, digging random holes in the backgarden and removing sooooo much cob from the walls of the bedroom is a wonder the bloody thing is still standing - shush, let's not tempt fate, i still don't have that home improvements insurance in place...

so we removed alot of the old plaster from the walls, horrid stuff that stops the cob breathing, and revealed one or two cracks that sort of took my breath away, however on the word of a structural engineer my mind is now at rest.