Hi, we're looking at buying a house with solid, ragstone walls, which have been mostly repointed with cement mortar. It also has some concrete floors and some internal cement render.
We asked a local builder to come round during our viewing and he recommended the following:
1) Leave the pointing as it would be too expensive to change. However, I'm concerned that since the stone is soft it may be damaged over time. Is it safe to leave the cement there? Or is repointing a job I could do on my own? I can give one day a week to it.
2) Use dry-lining on the walls. I guess we'd need to see what's already on the walls before we made a decision, but I'd like to know what all the options are for internal masonary walls. Plus, I thought dry-lining onto masonary was a big no-no.
3) The house is damp, but has no central heating, needs re-wiring, has leaking gutters.... I was thinking our first steps would be to repair roof and gutters and lower external ground levels. Should we dig up concrete floors as well?
Thanks for any opinions!
We asked a local builder to come round during our viewing and he recommended the following:
1) Leave the pointing as it would be too expensive to change. However, I'm concerned that since the stone is soft it may be damaged over time. Is it safe to leave the cement there? Or is repointing a job I could do on my own? I can give one day a week to it.
2) Use dry-lining on the walls. I guess we'd need to see what's already on the walls before we made a decision, but I'd like to know what all the options are for internal masonary walls. Plus, I thought dry-lining onto masonary was a big no-no.
3) The house is damp, but has no central heating, needs re-wiring, has leaking gutters.... I was thinking our first steps would be to repair roof and gutters and lower external ground levels. Should we dig up concrete floors as well?
Thanks for any opinions!