Another window ...

... how many more, you ask?

This one went in more easily. Using an amateur like me means that you get to learn from his mistakes (hmm - some pronouns wrong there).

This, though, was better. On the first one I'd tightened a couple of screws so as to distort the frame, and one half of the window is now a little stiff to open and close. We had some difficulty hanging that side on it's hinges. But it's a bathroom window and it's unlikely to get a lot of use. On this one we were able to fix the frame in place at the top and bottom carefully, and then gradually tighten the other screws. With the result that the two leaves of the window slipped very easily onto the hinges.

This one too we drilled the screw-holes from the inside (the room side), and were able to countersink them and give a nice clean result, which we'll use wood-filler on eventually.

Fitting the handle (posed)

I was pleased to find how accurately I'd levelled the concrete sill, though there is the rather curious effect that it looks well out of true, because the room and the window frame leans distinctly to the left. I was also pleased that I had managed to get the window dimensions just right, so it was a good fit:

The finished window

The next two will have to wait a bit, as we'll have to cast the new sills, and let them harden before we can fit the window. But at least the external side of the fort has two new matching windows.

New windows

Putting in a window doesn't seem to be rocket science. The most difficult bit was measuring the size of the aperture and making sure the window was ordered the right size to fit it.

Here's the opening:



I had previously cast in place a new concrete window sill, as the old wooden one had pretty well rotted away. A small part of the old sill is in the middle of the concrete.

The windows I ordered are designed to fit within a wall, rather than applied up against a face. So the drip moulding wooden sill was a shade too long.



The window has the outside face up in these pictures.



It was a little tricky to mark and cut correctly, as the wooden frame doesn't sit square - like everything else in the fort, of course.

But after trimming the ends off the bottom part of the window, it went in quite easily.



The present safety arrangements - to stop the grandchildren falling out of the window - are quite simple. I am leaving the handle off the window, so it can't be opened. Eventually we hope to get locking handles. Or more sensible grandchildren? Hmmm ....

Anyway, the window-fitter felt quite happy with the work:

On top of the wall, at last

We put in the last two courses of blocks, and here's Mike with the tools of his trade after we'd finished.



The wall follows the contour of the chimney on the right which should give it a bit more strength, and there are reinforcing bars drilled into the wall to hold it in as well as possible.

The view from on top:



We've laid the last course of blocks upside down, and removed some of the webs inside. The idea is to fill them with concrete - and some metal rebar - to provide a good solid pad for the beams to rest on. We'll make the upper concrete level a couple of inches above the lower edge of the beams.

Balbus built a wall

and so did I.

As you can see, intense concentration is required:



but the end result is pretty good: everything pretty well level (or vertical, depending), and solidly made:



It's a 20cm thick wall. When it reaches the beams above (another two courses), it will provide some support for a new beam, and take a lot of the weight of the new hearth. As the hearth is to be roughly 3.5m by 1m and will be concrete 15 or 20cm thick, the wall needs to be quite robust. The plan is to lay the top row of blocks upside down - ie with their open faces on top - and fill them with concrete and a few reinforcing bars to tie them together.

Back to the blogosphere

After a long gap, I'm posting again. There will be a mixture of goings-on here at Lessal, and updates from Jane and Mikey's fort at Leynhac.

I've recently attacked an annoying dip in the ground in front of our farmhouse: it had such a steep centre that it wasn't possible to mow cleanly across it. So I dug up the turves and saved them carefully, and started arranging some stones:



After that it was a matter of digging out some of the material that had come from the hangar floor when I had dug out the inspection pit last year. This turned out to be heavy work as I'd picked the hottest day of the year so far - 35 C though it felt like more. After that I put down a layer of old cattle manure, also from the hangar (dug out because I felt it was too soft a foundation for the concrete floor), and then replaced the turves.



I used a lime mortar around the stones to give a reasonably secure edge, and I plan to put a few small plants into the holes between the stones. Even now it looks quite natural, though when the grass starts regrowing properly it should be better, as the grass will make a better edge on top of the stones.



It is possible to see the joins, but I'm pleased with the result, and the grass is now much flatter on top. I can't quite mow it yet, and it'll need a few days before the mortar is properly cured. I plan to hammer down the grass to get a smooth surface, but I want to avoid knocking any of the new stones apart.

And as a taster, here's a bit of the hearth at the fort going out:



It looks as if it was once a proper piece of building stone, with edges that were meabt to be seen - perhaps the side of a chimney. Another small stone from the hearth was probably a small section of a window mullion. And yes, that stone really was very heavy....but not quite as big as it looks - the camera does sometimes lie.