Feb 2018

Week 1 19/2/18

Brian outside the old house - those tiles are coming off.

Brian and Andrew testing out the chimney for birds!! We are keeping this fireplace.

Andrew at the old barn

Unfortunately the trees to the right above have to come down, they are in the way of the new extension. the new part of the house will be going here. The old cart shed at the back will have to come down too.

New Entrance
The new entrance is going in here at the other side of the house and will come up beside the end trees on the right.

Taking down the inside ceilings

Danny and Brian

The tiled room was put on the house 35 years ago (1983). The thatch was taken off and the new roof was built outside of the old wood roof that was inside of the thatch. John Joe's cousin, Willy Laffey and his son put the new roof on. There was current ceilings inside of the house so John Joe left the old roof where it was. They told Brian that life went as as normal inside the house, both James and Kate was alive at the time.

When the lads took down the ceiling inside the house, they found all the old rafters were tree branches and trunks, which would have been the normal wood to use at the that time, lots of old thatch too. Those branches and trunks of trees that made up the roof are probably more than 200 years old and are in perfect condition. Unfortunately, we cannot leave them there, they will also come down. There are a lot of branches and trees up there in the roof, the old timers knew how to build a proper house back in the day. My brother, who is a roofer said the roof was built perfectly.

This is a nice website to get information on old cottages https://cottageology.com/explore/

old rafters there since the original build, possibly 200 years old

Old tree trunks used as rafters

Thatch falling down into the room from above

Old thatch (wheel barrowed out)

Week 2 26/2/2018

The start of the renovation

The wall has been taken down between the kitchen and John Joe's old bedroom, the lads took down the wall stone by stone!! The ceilings, all the old remaining thatch and old rafters are gone.

These are the rafters of the new roof - we are keeping them

The digger has arrived

John is digging out the joining door to the sitting room at the back of the house.The new extension will come out from that entrance. Look at all the stone that came out from the wall within the house and the little bit at the back!!

The snow arrived today 28/2/18

The inside is nearly cleared out

Views down the back fields

This tree got knocked down with Storm Ophelia - now a nature reserve for the wild

What came down out of the roof

This is one of the original beams taken out of the roof, its a tree truck shaped into a rafter. The picture on the right is where the beams cross section is carved out and the joins were at the top point of the roof . That beam is over 200 years old and as good as the day it went in.

When the original roof was put on, branches like the one Brian has in his hand were tied and woven together between the larger beams/rafters in the roof to hold the thatch on. All of these were black with soot as they came out from over the fireplace.

Layers of turf (peat) were placed on top of the branches as insulation and then the thatch would have been laid over that. It would have been the top layer of turf on the bog that would be cut off and used for this, its called the SCRAW.

- no wonder the house was warm -

Digging out Floors!!

Manual labour where the mini-digging machine can't fit.