Hoathwaite Farmhouse: Initial works summer-autumn 2015

We were working towards a refurbishment and liaising with planners, historic building surveyors, archaeologists, curator and conservators and whilst all this background research and discussions are going on we realise that we will not get the works complete before the end of the year in fact it is unlikely to start until 2016 and so we need to get some external repairs carried out to make the shell wind and water tight.
This meant working up a pre-refurbishment external repairs work list and getting a local contractor involved to carry this out before winter. The works generally involved the repair of the lime render to the east rear gable and roof and chimney repairs as there was water getting in following rainfall to the east and north roofs.

House martins making nests on the west wall, luckily this did not impact on the works (as working on east elevation), but could have done, so be prepared for nature to call.

As this involves lime work the works needed to be done before the cold winter weather and so were planed to start in summer once we had negotiated with a local contractor who had experience of lime work of this nature.
SCC Ltd of Windermere were instructed and commenced with scaffold and protection works. We looked at the chimneys and also the lime detail so that we could try and copy the render finish. Once we had scaffold up and started to look more closely this was harder than first thought as there were a number of repairs, patches and the render varied all over the building. The eastern gable being particularly poor, whilst most of the other render was acceptable, except for a section to the top of the gable to the west elevation. We also took the opportunity to re-point and render the chimneys and sort the pots, flue liners and top rolls whilst we had scaffold access to the roof.

Rear east elevation, being in the worse condition

Chimney stack cracked render

Old oak window with leaded lights in attic east elevation, protected by slate externally then render.

Leaded pane in oak window

Close up of leaded glass

Hidden window found during repairs, recorded and left in place.

Generally the window lintels were good, but there was one to the rear first floor which needed replacing and some stone work repaired. Also whilst re-pointing and repairing old render we discovered an older leaded window, so this was recorded and details sent to update the VBS (vernacular building survey).
One of the issues with the render and trying to match the finish was that the stones appeared to be pebbles, possibly from Coniston water and these varied in size, we were not going to take lake pebbles and so finished using a slightly larger aggregate and brushing up to bring out the finish.
Here are a few photos to show elements of the house;