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Black & White Cottages
Plasterer
Posts: 819 Forumite
If you own an oak framed building "black & white" and your pannels need repairing Please Please Please, when you ring your local builder make sure he knows what he's doing. Be armed, ask him what materials he is going to use and if he says sand and cement get rid of him. I live in Worcestershire and have seen many of these beutiful old buildings deteriorating because a lot of builders use the wrong materials. They should be using Lime (a handfull of hydrated lime in a cement mix is not the same, this is only put in the mix to make the mix easier to use!) as this helps the building to "breathe". Get a specialist in to do the works, might be more expensive initially, but will preserve your building correctly.
As a lot of these buildings currently do have sand/cement in them, you will notice a lot of the oak frames are deteriorating - very expensive job to fix. A lot of the traditional wattle and Daub pannels have disapeared due to this, so please let's try and keep these buildings upright for many years to come.
All the best.
As a lot of these buildings currently do have sand/cement in them, you will notice a lot of the oak frames are deteriorating - very expensive job to fix. A lot of the traditional wattle and Daub pannels have disapeared due to this, so please let's try and keep these buildings upright for many years to come.
All the best.
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Comments
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Good advice Plasterer, bih sin in my book to see them "Black and White", they were never meant to be painted B&W.Originally the Oakwork and panels would all have been coated with the same colour.Generally speaking earthy brown colours ..........
Its a crime really, a good friend of mine is just finishing renovating his cottage and the oak beams and studwork was painted by the previous owners with a gloss brown and thats the inside.The outside was originally weatherboard they stripped it off and put plastic over the entire cottage along with plastic doors and windows..........Shameful as the cottage dates back to 1705, but it looks a lot better now.......0 -
I myself have restored a lot old these pannels, as a very good freind of my is a thatcher, and he comes across them regularly. As you say originally these houses would have been purely clay soil etc. However no two houses are ever the same (as the materials were always sorced locally to the house and materials differ from county to county).
Every time I have repaired/replaced a pannel I ALWAYS make a record. Pictures, type of withies (ie hazel, willow, split/whole, size etc) and marry up the repair to match. On a couple of occasions I have sent a sample of the daub for analysis to be able to make up the exact match (Listed buildings generally).
You could say that these houses should by called brown and cream rather than black and white, but strictly speaking this isn't correct either as origionally the whole house would have been covered with the clay,soil aggregate INCLUDING the beams. Houses that were built with infills between the oak would have been made flush, that is to say that the pannels would not have been proud of the oak. Making the pannels proud of the oak was for asthetics and started by the victorians.
The makeup of the daub is very much open to discussion, for example cow dung? One school of thought is that making the daub was a labour intensive job, so instead of the dauber having to "work" the mix together ie clay,soil, straw, they would put it in with cows and let the cows do the hard work - therefore the cow dung was unavoidable (this is my favourite school of thought as I'm lazy :rotfl: ). Another, is that cow dung makes a great plasticiser and made the material easier to work with.
As for Lime, it is believed that lime was never used originally as it would have been an expense and not needed, however, lime has great properties. Not only does the alkalinity deter wood boring beetles it also helps with steralisation. If you look at some old farm outbuildings for cattle, you'll notice a lot of these were limewashed to keep bacteria down to a minimum for more healthy livestock. From this it is beleived that the farmers would make their labourers limewash the farmer's other buildings (including their homes) when they had some "downtime" on their hands.
Stave and Withie repairs - Preparing for Daubing in Warwickshire 20080 -
Thanks Plasterer, Ive learned something new today!0
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Your welcome.
Thanks to "susidevw" I now know how to post pics.0
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