Whilst my front door is being repaired I have begun painstakingly removing layers of latex paint from the front of my Victorian Mid terrace. This includes the timber door frame, door arch and lintels.
During the process I also had a cement render plinth removed as this was going right down into the front garden soil risking bridging and trapping moisture.
Now the brick can breath again I plan to get a local lime expert to replace with a lime render plinth next spring. However, this has also caused a lot of poorly applied cement pointing to crack and break off which has exposed generous gaps between the brick and timber front door frame. This cement goes up and around the entire frame and is lining the gap between the stone arch and lintel. This is sadly the same story around all of my sash window frames aswell.
I plan to clean up the timber frame, treat, repair and finish with linseed oil paint. My question is how do I sympathetically fill this gap with the correct materials? The gap is approx 5.5cm deep and 2cm wide all the way up. This is also a south facing entrance so gets the majority of the days sun and dries out well.
I am a competent DIYer and have looked into lime mortar, burnt sand mastic and oakum as options but I have never applied these before and I'm not sure where to start! I have also considered that the weather is only going to get worse as we go into October so I don't exactly have loads of time to learn these new skills. Approaching a local mason to help with the job is also something I'm open to as I'm concerned with damaging the stone where the cement is more stubbornly stuck to the arch.
During the process I also had a cement render plinth removed as this was going right down into the front garden soil risking bridging and trapping moisture.
Now the brick can breath again I plan to get a local lime expert to replace with a lime render plinth next spring. However, this has also caused a lot of poorly applied cement pointing to crack and break off which has exposed generous gaps between the brick and timber front door frame. This cement goes up and around the entire frame and is lining the gap between the stone arch and lintel. This is sadly the same story around all of my sash window frames aswell.
I plan to clean up the timber frame, treat, repair and finish with linseed oil paint. My question is how do I sympathetically fill this gap with the correct materials? The gap is approx 5.5cm deep and 2cm wide all the way up. This is also a south facing entrance so gets the majority of the days sun and dries out well.
I am a competent DIYer and have looked into lime mortar, burnt sand mastic and oakum as options but I have never applied these before and I'm not sure where to start! I have also considered that the weather is only going to get worse as we go into October so I don't exactly have loads of time to learn these new skills. Approaching a local mason to help with the job is also something I'm open to as I'm concerned with damaging the stone where the cement is more stubbornly stuck to the arch.
