Brick on earth floor renovation

[Liz Kershaw]

Dear all - and hello, I'm a newcomer to the site,

We've just moved to a c.1600 timber frame/brick cottage with bricks laid on earth in two rooms downstairs. I'd really value the opinion/experience of forum users on the following questions:
1. Cat smell - the previous owner had 17 cats and they were allowed to urinate freely in these two rooms. Porous brick plus gaps between them equals a very unpleasant and lingering smell. Has anyone any ideas of how I could eliminate the smell without either ruining the brick surface or substituting another one (by using Jeyes, for example)?
2. Lime/mineral deposits on the surface - are these ominous and how can we best remove them?
3. In a couple of places the floor has dipped into a fairly substantial hollow. How can I build this up to be level with the rest?
4. And finally, how should I clean their surfaces generally? They're grubby with ingrained dirt where the traffic has been heaviest but some of the less soiled ones have a nice patina which would be good to replicate or keep.

Thanks for reading and any help would be really appreciated.

Brilliant site, by the way. So glad I found it!

Liz

 

[LadyArowana]

Just bumping this up, ( Liz, new posters need to be moderated and so things only show up later and end up down the page and can be missed )

I replied on your other topic re smells. My guess is the advice you will receive re the uneven floor is to embrace it as any attempt to lift/ relay will do a lot of damage. Whatever you decide I would try and live with it ( not the smell but the wonky aspect ) for a while and not make any rash decisions right now. People often find that their ideas change and that if they rush into things that are irreversible at the start they regret it later. Welcome again.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Completely agree with the good advice from LadyA, wonky is very nice and I don't see how it can be remedied in an old house. Our floors are exactly the same with great dips and hollows. If you lifted and attempted to create a level foundation and relaid you would create a massive job for yourself with the risk of damaging the old bricks as you lift them.

 

[JoceAndChris]

PS if there are gaps to be filled don't use anything cement based - use a lime filler.

 

[Liz Kershaw]

Hi, and thanks so much for this - and replies on my other post (I haven't got a goldfish memory - I thought the first post hadn't been submitted and so did one again - newbie incompetence) ...

Anyway, they're really helpful suggestions and as the weather has turned today I'll come in from The Lost Gardens of Whitbourne and get going on it. Fingers crossed. The good news from our point of view is that quite a few viewers didn't get past the front door of the house because of the smell (according to a neighbour), so at least the cats helped us get our lovely home.

Thanks again
Liz

 

[88v8]

Hello and welcome.

We have a C17 cottage, one room has quarries on earth. Whether you can level your bricks a bit depends what they're bedded on - might be earth, or cinders, or scalpings, or lime - and how wide the joints are, if any. The hard part is getting the first one up without loosening or mangling others, after that you have a space to work.
If you can post a pic - easiest with Photobucket or other photosharing site- copy/paste the IMG code - then someone may be better able to suggest whether it's feasible.
As a generality, beware of embarking on fixing this and levelling up that... it's all to easy to destroy the quirks and originality that attracted you to the house in the first place.

Mineral deposits may indicate past or present damp. Are they loose, can you remove them with a stiff brush, like flocculation on a brick wall?

Cleaning, I think just mild soap n water and a scrubbing brush, then open the doors and let the wind blow through.

For cat pee, I've seen Natures Miracle recommended in a few places.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=natures+miracle&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=34724233908&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15707448221257253665&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7wjjp9xd7z_b

Ivor

 

[Liz Kershaw]

Thank you for the good advice - I think I'm going to clean the floor up and then make a judgement on whether the dips are anywhere which might cause someone to trip, and if not, I'll leave them. I'm going to try the cat pee stuff (items for brick sealing/waxing ordered now as per previous advice posts) and have also ordered some natty looking odour absorbers from Lakeland which had fantastic reviews for getting rid of anything, smell-wise.

Feeling positive

Liz

PS - need to investigate photo uploading but not very techie.

 

[fluffytail10]

My floor is very wavy, with quite a trench between the front and back doors, and leading to the old stairs. As these are still the main routes that we walk, they cause us no problems at all. I would hate to think they'd be removed as they've taken a few hundred years to produce. We also have a hole in the pamment at the bottom of the old stairs. It is shaped just like a dip you make when walking on sand on tiptoe. When I tried to walk up the old stairs I found that this is the exact place where you would need to put your foot to step up - wonderful! Well I think so anyway.

Once gone - gone for good.

 

[Liz Kershaw]

Yes, that's a good point. I like the fact that generations have made their mark upon the house and that the evolution of its quirks should be respected. We've had an eight year gap from renovations/period house ownership (needed the 'holiday'!) and I'm gradually inching back into the automatically conservation way of thinking. When we were house-hunting we saw too many cottages that looked like the Next directory had been superimposed onto them and they just ended up looking wrong (nothing against Next, fine clothing, but you know what I mean!)

Liz

 

[dans]

PS if there are gaps to be filled don't use anything cement based - use a lime filler.

Just interested; what is a "Lime Filler "? Is it just a tub of ready-mixed putty , re-labelled and (dare I say it !) re-priced accordingly??

 

[JoceAndChris]

I posted a thread asking this very question and several kind forum members posted a recipe of what they've made up themselves to fill cracks between flags.

Must confess that I haven't had the courage to do it, the gaps are so large in places here I don't believe it would hold and that I could achieve a colour match ( yellow), I think it would be better to have a stonemason make thin fillets of matching stone but have now just got used to cracks.