Re-rendering over gap between houses

[jsmac]

Hello again,

Our house in its earliest incarnation was a small 1830s detached cottage on its own at the top of a hill in Cliftonville, Margate. It was later expanded by tacking a second timber framed house at the rear of the property. When the terraces next door were built they left a 20mm gap between the two brick walls. It sure would have been preferable if they hadn't butted the houses up so close to each other but this is what we're now dealing with.

As you can see from the first photo the houses were rendered and the builders of the day simply rendered over the gap. Unsurprisingly, over time a crack the full height of the house developed. The render was a form of Roman Cement Stucco which was manufactured locally back in the day. I've now taken the render off that strip from the roof to the ground and I'm planning on replacing the render with Lime Green's version of Roman Stucco render.

However, I am struggling to come up with a solution for how to deal with the 20mm gap between the two properties. It has been suggested that I could use a movement bead and hope that after decorating the flexible section between the two stop beads isn't too visible. Or I could use stop beads on either side and a flexible mastic of sorts to bridge the gap before decorating.

Thoughts and advice of how I could proceed would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Scott

 

[Cubist]

Just a 'bump' to maybe get some further input but.... what happens at the roof line of these houses?

 

[jsmac]

Thank you for the bump. And a good question. I don't have a photo of the roofline but the roof of the top of the bay window looks much like shown in the photo. I'm not sure what the sections that stick out from either side are called.

At the top there is lead flashing dressed under coping stones that cap a short wall and a box gutter. I hope that makes sense. So the render will stop under the timber of the bay window like it will under the sticking out sections of bottom half of the bay. I will take a photo when I am next up the scaffolding. Fortunately, the weather has become more accommodating in recent days

Unfortunately, when they built the two terraces next door they added an extra storey at the front - as well as not properly tying the buildings together... This is not related to my original question but is mentioned only to say that the house we bought sure was cobbled together in a quirky and seemingly improvised way. And this charming and pretty quirkiness has caused us an apparent endless number of issues...

 

[malcolm]

I've got a join like that between two build phases. The walls are uncovered brick and I've just filled the gap with lime mortar. There is a little crack after 10 years but it doesn't really matter. Won't be a lot of water falling on the gap because it is shaded by guttering, and any that gets in will just evaporate away again.

For a rendered finish you would want a breathable finish - lime render and limewash would be great. Probably you'll get a little crack but it won't be noticeable as the water evaporating won't push the render and paint off like it did in the first photo..

 

[jsmac]

As way of an update we have decided to repair and repoint where needed rather than patching/replacing the render. The original roman stucco render was just too far gone in some places and once we started removing the hollow sounding sections we realised that the brickwork and pointing underneath was in remarkably good condition. And there were just too many cracks and perished sections to keep the original render. The plan was to re-render the wall again but once we stepped back for a moment we started wondering about keeping the bricks. It was not how we drew it up but I guess it is all part of the journey...

We'll probably end up replacing a couple dozen bricks but fortunately we have plenty original yellow stocks left over from the chimney rebuild. The various cracks and more serious looking structural problems have been fixed with a reassuringly large amount of helical bars. Fortunately, a reliable and competent team of brick layers is the one trade we have been able to find in this corner of the southeast!

And I've started filling the gap between the two houses with a lime mortar as suggested by Malcolm. I'm trying to fill it at least 50mm in the hope that it doesn't crack too badly over time. It's slow going but it is at least the kind of work that I can undertake myself and leave the more complicated work to the pros.