Daleside Diaries

Two months have flown by and my time has largely been dedicated to the external re-render at Daleside.

I’m really happy with how work has progressed on this grade II listed building and I’m aiming to complete next month.

All the old render was first removed, then a dubbing out coat of lime mortar was applied. After which, a scratch coat of lime render has been applied to all four elevations.

The client here has actually worked as a builder his whole career and owned a construction company for a lot of years, so his experience and machinery (his JCB) has proved invaluable. He has helped out with all aspects of the job including removal of the old render and application of the new. Needless to say, this has sped the project up.

This week the scratch coat was completed on the final elevation and this first section of the finished top coat render was applied. It felt very good to have the wood float out, I even managed to do some of my signature curved window reveals, shown above.

The final job of the week was to repair some of the stone headers above the windows as years of weathering had led to some deterioration of the stone. This was necessary work before the finished coat is applied in these areas as I need to finish my plaster to them. See below for some of the before and afters.

The plan for the next few weeks is to complete the finished coat and to apply multiple coats of lime wash to all elevations.

I’m loving how this job is going and can’t wait to show you the end result.