would you re-surface a daub panel?

[robgil]

would you? you know the way daub goes after a few hundred years , bits fall out of it , it shrinks etc etc. some of the panels in the room i am working on really do need repair but some are just quite rough. where do you draw the line?

 

[Penners]

Ultimately, Rob, it has to be your decision.

What am I saying?! Of course it's Mrs Rob's decision!

But it comes down to your own tastes and what you feel you can live with. Do keep your heating bills (and the environment) in mind, though, when it comes to draughty gaps.

 

[robgil]

the gaps will be filled in for sure. what i am thinking of is covering the panels with a light skim of more slurry type daub to take the roughness off them and to blend in any repair work. what i am worried about is this will be irreversible.
what would they do if the building were listed? would this be an appropriate method of repair?

 

[Me!]

If lumps have fallen out, then I would repair them with new daub made from the garden clay or re-mix the fallen out bits with some water and maybe a bit of lime and use that. I wouldn't resurface the whole panel unless the whole old surface had fallen off. I'd go over the whole surface with a few coats of limewash to even it all out a bit and to blend in repairs.

 

[Penners]

This looks like a thread just for us Suf-folk!

But I do agree with Me! (and when I say "me" I mean "him" (or "her") of course - not confusing you am I?). A gentle touch to soften off any roughness would be better than completely skimming over the panels. If there are substantial gaps around them, maybe you could try filling these with lime.

 

[skier-hughes]

We left 99% of our lime infill panels, yes they are rough, yes they look different, but it's the newer smoother ones which stand out rather than the rougher ones, being so few of them, but hey ho, that's life. We didn't fill in the cracks either, apart from the odd one or two which were creating a draught which you could feel on a windy day!

 

[Me!]

But I do agree with Me! (and when I say "me" I mean "him" (or "her") of course - not confusing you am I?)

Yes, sorry about the name. When we switched from the old forum to this new fangled one I tried to register again with the name I used before. I tried several times and kept getting error messages when it asked me to enter my name. I was getting a bit frustrated at that point so when it asked me for my name again for the umpteenth time I just put Me!, ............ and of course that one registered fine!