This weekend we took down the ceilings and the ceiling joists in the larger cottage.  This time we got it right and are taking down the ceilings before taking out the floor!  We have made life hard work for ourselves in the cottage next door as there now is no upper floor.  We are going to have to use a scaffolding tower inside to take the upper ceiling down!

The larger cottage is essentially two cottages that have been knocked into one.  Thus, there are two separate lofts with dividing walls and a roof truss in each.  The original ceiling is tongue and groove pine, however, I don’t think this is original to the building – I reckon it was probably a later addition in Victorian times.  This pine cladding has subsequently been plasterboarded over.  In addition, above the ceiling was around 300mm of loft insulation.  We took part of the ceiling down around the access hatch by first taking down the plasterboard, then taking the loft insulation out.  We then climbed up inside the loft (yuck) and the stamped on the ceiling below to bring down the pine cladding (making sure that we didn’t come down with the ceiling).  Once the ceiling was down, it was a case of removing the old ceiling joists.  Most of the joists came out without any trouble, some of the more stubborn ones needed to be cut through with a saw first.

Both cottages have what is called a “King post truss”.  This is has a single post from the bottom beam (called a Tie beam) to the apex of the truss.  The truss in No. 10 looks exactly as you would expect.  The purlins (that run horizontally between the two end walls and the truss) are again what you would expect for a property of this age.  However, the truss in No. 9 is very different. We aren’t quite sure what has happened to the tie beam, but it certainly isn’t beefy enough to carry the weight of the roof.  Two of the purlins have been replaced with sawn timber that is bolted to the truss – again, looks like a Victorian addition.  The woodwork in No. 9 is going to need quite a bit of attention!

With the ceiling and the ceiling joists removed, you can now see the King post truss and the purlins that make up the roof.

The king post truss in No. 9. It needs some attention – the main beam isn’t really big enough and we can’t work out what has happened here. The purlins in the background show original ones to the right and new(ish) ones to the left. The new ones are sawn wood that has been bolted to the truss – they also have been set vertically rather than angled with the slope of the roof. And if that wasn’t enough, the purlin on the camera side of the roof (that you can just see through the truss on the left) has a massive crack in it.

This photo shows the detail of one of the purlins in No. 10. The ends of the purlins are pegged through the truss and the timber is very roughly sawn – often only on one side. With this purlin, you can still see the bark attached to the the timber.

Well, the snow arrived on Monday and so did Nipper and John (another John, not the same one that worked on the walls).  It was bitterly cold, but it didn’t prevent them from getting the felt on the roof and the laths installed.  The positioning of the laths depends on the height of each course of stone slates – bigger ones at the bottom, smaller ones at the top.  Each of the courses has to overlap to ensure the water doesn’t get through, so it takes a little while to sort out.  Glad it wasn’t me doing this work today!

Monday morning and the snow has arrived. Nipper has worked out the courses and this determines how far apart the lathes need to be placed. It is a cold day to be working on a roof, even if it is not 30ft up!

At the front of the property, there is an old outbuilding.  It is split into three separate rooms.  The end room is being used as a log store.  The middle room is being used as a store-room.  The other end is the original toilet for the property when it was built-in the 1700’s. 

The “waves” in the roof indicate where the internal walls are inside. There have been multiple attempts at repairing this roof, but none of them have been done correctly. We are going to remove the slates, replacing the underlying woodwork and then reslate it with the original slates (plus a few off the lean to to replace broken slates).

The main problem with the outbuilding is the roof.  This consists of stone slates (known as Yorkshire Greys) and although the outbuilding is small (8m x 3m) with a monopitch roof, there is probably something in the order of 4 tonnes of stone slates on the roof.  The sheer weight of the slates over the years has taken its toll and some of the wooden rafters had broken under the weight.  The only solution is to remove the slates and replace the woodwork.

When we removed the slates a number of them had delaminated due to the frost penetrating the stone slates.  Fortunately, the lean-to to the side of the house is going to be demolished and it has similar slates on the roof.  So, hopefully, we should be able to salvage enough slates to be able to re-roof the outbuilding.

Nipper inspecting the top part of the roof. The chimney has been dismantled and is piled up by the bottom of the ladder.

Nipper and Richard inspecting what is left of the woodwork with the slates removed.

Stone slates removed from the roof and stack according to courses.

It only took around 3 hours to remove all the slates off the two outbuildings.  The slates were stacked neatly according to the courses on the roof.  Smaller slates are used at the top of the roof and then the slates get bigger further down the slope. 

Over the weekend the existing rafters were removed.  More wood for the bonfire.  Two lengths of wood were placed on the top and bottom walls.  These make up the “wall plates” that the rafter are attached to.  By making sure that the wall plates are level and parallel, each of the rafters should be exactly the same when installed.  This makes redoing the woodwork that much quicker and easier.  The general building work here was done by Paddy and John.

The woodwork has now been removed and the top two courses of the front wall rebuilt.

The two wall plates (the timbers that the spars are going to sit on) have been installed and double checked to ensure that they are both level and parallel to each other. A template spar was cut and used to check that it fitted all along the wall plates.

The top two courses on the front wall had to be rebuilt as the stonework was loose.  We also took the opportunity to remove the old chimney that is no longer in use.  Once the outbuilding is re-roofed it will need to be re-pointed.  With the roof removed, the structure is very fragile and needs to be treated with care.