antoinette
Member
- Messages
- 18
I've been helping my sister renovate her early/mid victorian terrace. It's been messed with and we're slowly giving it back a bit of love and turning it into a nice home.
In the 1960/70s someone lovingly applied a thick sticky coat of cement render (you can see a remnant in the picture) which caused damp upstairs and downstairs as it broke down. We took the bottom half off and somebuilders have done the top.
Most of the professionals we've seen have been pretty negative, saying it' ruined :-( and want to render it. Around here people often think the best solution is to rip out, cover up, get something new, and I can see their point - it's a below average priced house and not an expensive terrace in london where I've seen some brilliant restoriations, spending 10k on a 500k house seems to make more sense than on a 150k house thats already at it's ceiling.
My sister is adamant she doesn't want to render. What should she do?
There are damaged bricks as per the photo. We've been told they're no good. Apart from rendering the most optimistic suggestion is turning them around or replacing. But are they really that bad? What would happen if they were left? Could there be a few years left in them yet?
There are obvious areas of missing loose bricks which need reseating and pointing, gaps that need filling, and there are some areas that need only repointing. The plan is to do that now as a minimum as some is urgent. But the overwhelming advice, from the one masonry guy who will take it on, is to rake out all the pointing and do the whole lot mainly I think because it will look patchy otherwise. A lot of the pointing is ok though. Apart from looks are there an benefits to the building of doing it all? I'm worried that the process itself could cause damage.
Then there's the mortar itself - he doesn't use use lime. I know the principle is to have a weaker mortar than the brick is that posible with a cement mix?
Ideally we'd want to do the job ourselves but the repairs are it's out of our league and we couldn't do them now anyway. What if we got the urgent repairs done an then came back to it later and did the pointing ourselves properly - does that seem like a mad idea? Would the cement patching cause problems later?
In the 1960/70s someone lovingly applied a thick sticky coat of cement render (you can see a remnant in the picture) which caused damp upstairs and downstairs as it broke down. We took the bottom half off and somebuilders have done the top.
Most of the professionals we've seen have been pretty negative, saying it' ruined :-( and want to render it. Around here people often think the best solution is to rip out, cover up, get something new, and I can see their point - it's a below average priced house and not an expensive terrace in london where I've seen some brilliant restoriations, spending 10k on a 500k house seems to make more sense than on a 150k house thats already at it's ceiling.
My sister is adamant she doesn't want to render. What should she do?
There are damaged bricks as per the photo. We've been told they're no good. Apart from rendering the most optimistic suggestion is turning them around or replacing. But are they really that bad? What would happen if they were left? Could there be a few years left in them yet?
There are obvious areas of missing loose bricks which need reseating and pointing, gaps that need filling, and there are some areas that need only repointing. The plan is to do that now as a minimum as some is urgent. But the overwhelming advice, from the one masonry guy who will take it on, is to rake out all the pointing and do the whole lot mainly I think because it will look patchy otherwise. A lot of the pointing is ok though. Apart from looks are there an benefits to the building of doing it all? I'm worried that the process itself could cause damage.
Then there's the mortar itself - he doesn't use use lime. I know the principle is to have a weaker mortar than the brick is that posible with a cement mix?
Ideally we'd want to do the job ourselves but the repairs are it's out of our league and we couldn't do them now anyway. What if we got the urgent repairs done an then came back to it later and did the pointing ourselves properly - does that seem like a mad idea? Would the cement patching cause problems later?
