Recently we decided to have the outside of the house painted professionally, and to do a few minor repairs at the same time. In the past Cae Mawr was known locally as “Tŷ Coch” (the red house) because of the colour of the walls. Unfortunately the red pigment seemed to prevent any overpainting, with the new paint simply flaking off after a couple of months. So after much deliberation we concluded that the only permanent solution would be to remove the existing rendering on the front gable, which gets the worst of the winter weather, and to replace it with pebbledash. While pebbledash isn’t to everyone’s taste it’s certainly traditional in this part of the world, and as a bonus we won’t have to repaint it — or at least not for many years. Also these days it comes in a fairly wide range of colours, not just gravel grey. We chose yellow and cream, with white cement render.
Below you can see the original state of the paintwork on the gable, and the slate and stone construction revealed when the rendering was removed.
[Click on the thumbnail to see a larger image]
 Original rendering and paintwork |
 Slate and stone construction revealed |
Unfortunately… when we removed the render we also discovered that cracks in the render had caused a significant amount of rot in a massive wooden lintel over the bay window. This was threatening to allow the stone under the bedroom window ledge to collapse, potentially bringing down part of the wall! and in the process trashing some very expensive tiles that I had just finished installing in the front bedroom.
Rot at one end of the lintel over the bay window
At this point there was a certain amount of leaning on the garden wall, sucking teeth, muttering darkly, etc. while we all tried to work out what to do. In the end it was decided to cut away the worst of the rot, treat and pack the rest with cement and rubble (luckily the beam was very large and much of it was still sound) and then to install a new concrete lintel at the front to support the wall. This meant that a fair amount of solid wood had to be sacrificed; but on the plus side it did burn very well in our stove. I don’t know where a 2 ft x 2 ft baulk of timber came from originally, or what sort of wood it was, but it was certainly an impressive relic. I’m guessing it was Douglas Fir — but if you know better please let me know. Presumably a lump of slate that size wasn’t available at the time.
A piece of the massive wood lintel
Now that the new lintel is in place I’m hoping that this part of the house will be good for at least another 100 years.
 Cutting away the front of the old wooden lintel |
 New concrete lintel and brickwork |
After all this, the rest of the painting and pebbledashing went without a hitch. Better still, we had fortuitously chosen to get the work done during the best two weeks of the year so far, weather-wise, at the end of March. Well, we were due for a bit of luck.
And here’s the final result, including the new fence and hedge replacing a tumble-down section of stone walling that had been causing damp where it butted against the living room wall.
All finished!
We just have a bit of painting to do on the bay window itself, then it really will be all done (for this year anyway). Now that the sheep have gone to the mountain I’m hoping that the hedge will have time to establish before they get back in the autumn. I may have to put some lamb-proof wire fencing on the other side to discourage grazing though.
The building work was carried out by C&A Construction of Bangor.
