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.