Chimney - and Lime plaster

[xanthe]

Hi all, sorry have been missing for a while - mainly because I've been spending my time looking to see what my walls are all made of!

Took 5 layers of woodchip off the main sitting-room wall. The wall has a vertical stud, then a panel, another stud, then a long panel that has two internal studs, another stud, final panel.

I haven't stripped the first panel yet, but the second is lime plaster over daub. Got a bit of a shock when I thought there were wall paintings (of the oh please no type shock) but the paint goes over some very modern polyfiller so that sorts that! There was a large piece of modern plaster - about 2ft square - in one section, so I broke a bit off and it's filling a hole in the daub that goes right back to the laths. The laths aren't like wattle, nor are they like the ones I've seen in lath and plaster. Very strong, straight batons basically - no worm or anything. Stuck the camera through the hole and it's the space between us and next door - few spiders, spare batons and bits of lime plaster but that was all I could see,

The end panel is fibre board. Everyone said that removing woodchip was hard, but this stuff just fell off easily.

Husband is obviously thrilled with the sitting room wall being old splodgy plaster with chunks missing and holes where chunks of polyfiller were!

I have a few pieces of lime plaster that 'came away in me 'ands doctor' that I want to reattach as they're in good nick except round the edges. Some of the lime plaster was hanging away from the daub, but I found that thoroughly soaking it with a sponge and very slightly soapy hot water seems to have reattached it and it doesn't look any different on the surface. Is there a way of sticking the bits back together?

The plan is to replace and fill all the holes and skim the whole wall with lime plaster. The hole probably needs to have new daub made. Can you buy pre-mixed daub in the way that you can but pre-mixed lime?

Also, the daub seems to be in sheets - a bit like plaster-board - rather than worked into a frame. Does this sound odd?


Then the chimbley...

I 'just happened' to be looking behind the chest of drawers in our bedroom where there is a blocked in fireplace. There is a vent set into the plaster and lots of black duck tape over it - or rather falling off it - and nasty brown marks down the wall. So, I ripped the tape off and unscrewed the vent. Then removed 2 heavy duty bags of twigs and other crap. Stuck my phone in and took a load of pictures and you can now see all the way up the chimney. The condition looks really good all the way up on all sides.

The vent is about 2ft up from the floor and it appears that the whole part under the vent is full of dust and chunks of brick and plaster. I've taken a gazillion pics up the chimney and I can't work out where the bricks could possibly have come from as it's totally smooth with no missing ones.

The front of the fireplace has a half inch of modern plaster - so I chipped a load off - and underneath are some badly done brickwork. The fireplace has a small bressumer and bricks to either side (sadly someone has knocked the faces off most of them).

I've poked about in the gunk under the bottom edge of the vent and it looks like the lovely brickwork at the back carries on down.

I'm wary that perhaps the whole fireplace is held up by the rubble at the bottom. Am I being stupid? All of it moves, the bricks just seem to be lying there on the top of the gunk.

Given how nice the brickwork is inside, I'd like to open the fireplace back up.

Is there anyway that I can find out if the stuff in the space - the back of the chimney is about a 1.5 feet from the vent, depth to floor is about 1.5ft and it's about 5ft wide. Could 1.5ft of dust with bits of brick and plaster in be holding up the whole chimney or am I being unnecessarily cautious?

Any thoughts?

 

[Zebra]

Could 1.5ft of dust with bits of brick and plaster in be holding up the whole chimney or am I being unnecessarily cautious?

I'm afraid I've only skim read your post (I'm plastering, and have allowed myself only a short break to look at PeriodProperty!) but this sentence would imply to me that the situation merits further poking, be the result good news or bad.

 

[Penners]

Xanthe - I'm afraid I'm having a little trouble visualising the bedroom fireplace from your description. However, if I understand you correctly, the front of the fireplace had been boarded over, with a vent set in the blanking off panel about 18 inches above hearth level, in the middle of a 5ft wide x 18in deep fireplace. Is that correct?

It's impossible to be certain about anything with old properties - particularly if you've never seen them! However, I would guess it's very unlikely that your pile of rubble is doing anything structural. As to an explanation for the bricks lying there, once again I can only speculate. If your photos show no apparent loss of bricks from the chimney - even from the top of the stack - then maybe some lazy builder left them there after they had fallen down before or during an earlier rebuild/patch up job on the stack.

If I were you, I would do the following:-

Remove the panel that's boarding up the fireplace. This will give you a clear view of the structure and of the pile of rubble, and (I guess) a much clearer view of the state of the chimney above the fireplace. If, as is probable, the rubble appears to be doing nothing structural, just start removing it carefully, bit-by-bit, until you're confident that everything looks clear and remains stable.

Removing the rubble is quite important - particularly if the top of the flue is open to the air. Rain can soak the rubble, which then sits there permeating damp into the masonry of the chimney.

After you've cleared all the rubble you can then decide whether you want to keep the fireplace open or board it back up again. If the latter, be sure to put a vent back in the blanking off panel, to ensure that the flue remains well ventilated. If the top of the flue is open to the air, then you should also put some sort of vented cap on it, to keep the rain out.

 

[Flyfisher]

It's hard to visualise how a chimney could have been built on top of dust and old rubble, which is the implication if there are concerns about the structure. Far more likely that it's the accumulated detritus over many years, together with the odd fallen brick, mortar etc.

Some years ago I opened up a bricked-up fireplace that was sealed since at least the 1960s. From the number of wheelbarrow-loads of dust, rubble, sticks, bird skeletons, etc, I reckon the chimney musts have been nigh-on full up! I had to use drain rods with one of those 'screw prong' attachments to pull down the decades of accumulated sticks that the crows love to drop down chimneys, with each newly dislodged bit bringing down another few shovel loads of detritus. When the flue was finally cleared the actual structure was in completely sound condition. Remember that all chimneys are structurally sound when built (OK, there may be a few exceptions :wink: ) so unless they've been seriously abused then a bit of accumulated dust and rubble should not be a problem - well, not a structural one anyway.

So I agree with Penners - remove the panel and carefully remove the dust and rubble.

 

[xanthe]

I think you are correct, but in any case, to picture the fireplace...

The bressumer is about 6ft long, fireplace is about 5ft wide and has bricks to either side (one side-on, one header in each row). The vent appears to be about 18" from the back of the fireplace.

There is a half inch of gypsum plaster across the front of the fireplace with a vent set in about 18" from the floor. Under the gypsum, is a crudely built brick wall across the front of the fireplace. Sadly it wasn't just a piece of plasterboard!

If I remove the bricks from the front, then the rubble will just fall straight out onto the floor so I might be better doing it in stages. At the moment I have been bringing stuff out through the vent as I can reach either side of it.

The top of the chimney has a coping stone so rain can't go straight down, but you are right that if it does then it will just cause damp at the bottom - not good!

There is a main flue that goes from the huge inglenook and this second one from the bedroom. The top of the chimney will need rebuilding when we do the roof as the mortar on the outside needs some attention, one of the coping stones is cracked, flashing isn't great and the cement pointing needs replacing with lime. It's a massive chimney.

I'll try and load some photos.

My father was here today and I showed him some photos and some of the bricks and he said it should all be fine and to just keep removing stuff.

 

[xanthe]

Isn't it amazing what crows thing is interesting to chuck down the chimney!

Surprisingly no dead birds or skeletons, although there were a few chicken bones and cigarette butts! Heck of a lot of twigs.

 

[Zebra]

OK. I've read the whole thread now. You are clearly a woman after my own heart, and fond of poking about in grubby corners.
I have one question which may seem daft but it isn't clear to me from your description - this bedroom, with the fireplace full of gunk, it isn't upstairs, is it? That would be a lot of debris in the chimney!
Assuming I'm being daft, and it's downstairs, then I only have one intelligent(ish) thing to add, which is that I had a void here filled with rubble and bricked over in the 60s. So I started at the top, knocking off sections of brickwork and removing all the rubble, and now have a lovely broom cupboard with a nice oak door. It would seem that the builders at the time were loath to pay for skips, and so created voids in which to pour all the rubbish.
Go carefully though. My rubbish-filled void had asbestos in it.

 

[xanthe]

Yes, the fireplace is upstairs - in the main bedroom and above the inglenook.

 

[xanthe]

 

[xanthe]

This shows the back wall and left side wall. You can see the rubble at the bottom. The black thing halfway down the back wall seems to be some kind of lime plaster coating.

 

[xanthe]

Would people agree that it all looks in very good nick?

We wouldn't have an open fire up there, but I'd like to open the fireplace up, repair the broken faces of the bricks at the sides and make it look nice. Might find a nice old fire basket or something to go in it.

It draws beautifully so we'll need to get one of those chimney things to keep heat in etc - balloons or umbrella thingys.

The inglenook was an open fire until 2011, but is now a wood burning stove.

Is it better to start knocking out the bricks and do rubble as I go down the bricks?

Do I need LBC to open it up again? I had a vague chat with the CO before we bought the house when he was lamenting the broken faces. He said it would probably be a heap of ugly rubble and not worth having inside but might be worth a look. Should I ask before I take the bricks out?

Photo of room is from before we bought, so am not responsible for light-fitting or crucifix :roll: ! Please feel free to admire my floorboards

 

[skier-hughes]

If I remember right I took out 13 sacks of rubbish, mostly old nests, twigs and small rubble from our upstairs chimney.

 

[MatthewC]

Hi Xanthe

Clearly the lovely chimney is far more interesting as no one seems to have answered your first question about filling holes in lime plaster. My view is that there's no way you could re-attach lime plaster so you need to build up layers of new lime plaster (starting with some haired), making sure that you wet the old edges thoroughly. I must say that I wondered about some patch repairs but then realised that the entire lath wall needed to be re-plastered as it was all loose to some degree. Your difficulty will be to cut back to a good bit of lime plaster without loosening it, and so the hole becomes bigger... Good luck!

Matthew

 

[Penners]

Matthew's right - we've all got fixated on your chimney!

I agree with him that trying to get old plaster to re-adhere is likely to be difficult. Even if you manage to get the surface looking halfway decent there's likely to be very little key holding it at the back, so you risk cracking and failure at some not-too-distant point.

I think you'd save yourself a lot of hassle if you knock off any other patches of loose plaster, then apply new plaster to those areas. It may take you a bit more time right now, but will probably save you a lot in the future.

 

[xanthe]

The hole is the bit I'm going to fill with new daub - once I've taken the rest of the big bit of plaster out.

Here's a picture of the whole wall. Hole at the bottom, the bits of plaster fit in the bit towards the top. The rest of the plaster is in pretty good nick in most places. The parts where it was loose, I soaked with lots of warm soapy water and it just stuck back on - 3 weeks on, it hasn't budged,

The white thing that looks like it's covering a wall stud actually isn't - half the stud is and half isn't, but it's the same size which is a bit bizzare! The radiator is going!

Any thoughts on those black lines and the red paint?

Extra work is no problem - I spent nearly 2 weeks just on this one wall already! I'm trying hard not to wreck anything historic so it's slow going. I reckoned that even if bits can't be salvaged, at least I can take some nice photos for posterity

 

[Penners]

The white thing that looks like it's covering a wall stud actually isn't - half the stud is and half isn't, but it's the same size which is a bit bizzare!

I don't quite understand those comments, xanthe. Are you saying that the white stud-like thing is covering part of an old stud, or that there is no stud there at all - just a block of masonry/daub/plaster?

If the latter, then I suggest that it may well have been inserted when a stud was removed - possibly because it had failed/rotted away. If you decide to remove the stud-like block you may find mortices in the top and bottom plates to confirm or refute that theory.

 

[xanthe]

Oops missed this one.

The white section that looks like it might be covering a stud is only covering half of it. It's the exact same size as the stud, but it starts half way across which is a bit weird.

Bit of an update...

I've done the 3rd panel in the room. Halfway down, I suddenly found a piece of wallpaper pasted onto the lime plaster but below several layers of paint and woodchip paper. Next to it was a fragment from a calendar - not much of it, but fortunately it was Easter week and I could trace the only Easters on the 25th March to either 1883 or 1894 which looks about right for the wallpaper.

Spent the next 3 hours with a scalpel salvaging every scrap I could. Hopefully I've got enough to work out the whole pattern.

Few pics...

The loveliness that is my wall... :roll:

 

[xanthe]

The wallpaper I first spotted...



And the bit of calendar:



The final haul of bits. Eventually I'm thinking of drawing up the design, painting it and intercutting the original pieces - a bit like the Knossos restorations.

 

[xanthe]

One other thing...

Since I'm having so much fun demolishing bits of nasty gypsum while retaining old stuff, I'm planning on doing as much of that part as possible rather than including it as an item to get quotes on.

Husband has asked me if I'd like to go on some lime plastering and pointing courses as a birthday present.

Things like plumbing, electrics, joinery etc are most definitely not my cup of tea and I have no interest in going near them, but if I could do daub repairs and lime plaster then it would save us a lot of money and also mean we could split the work into smaller tranches which would be a happier situation cash flow wise.

I'm good with my hands and have a lot of patience but the nearest I've ever come to plastering is a bit of polyfiller. Downsides are that I'd need to do things in small areas and I'm a terrible perfectionist.

Is lime plaster/pointing best left to experienced builders or is it worth my having a go? Hemp plaster/hempcrete is another one that we may be considering for areas that currently just have bare brick.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Yes, have a go. I learned through reading old books and experimenting. I'm not sure about courses, I think you may as well just buy some materials and give it a go. If it ends up a mess, take it off and do it again!!!! One thing that I can't recommend highly enough is a sponge float, they are a godsend. Once you have the lime on the wall, it can be flattened very effectively with a sponge float which does a great job of moving the plaster about without draggiing it off the wall. It can then be rubbed up with a wood or hard foam float if it is a render coat then scratched up with a float with nails in, or troweled smooth if a top coat, or left if you like the rough finish with the sand showing.