Dining Room Refurbishment and Extension, #1

The WC and Coal Hold were the old bath when we moved in and are now the laundry and cloakroom.  Blueprint dated 29 October 1907 courtesy Sandwell Archives.

The room we use as the dining room was originally designated the kitchen in the first houses on the street with OUR kitchen (being the scullery at that time) separated from the main house by an open air veranda with 6 feet between the two.  I’ve seen a few other ways this veranda has been sealed from the elements and incorporated into the houses along this street and ours is one of the least readily usable versions, merely enclosed across the width of the house (see the red line) then connected to it by removing the walls from old kitchen / current dining room.  We aimed to change that by

Levelling up the two floors with a breathable sub-layer
Replacing radiators with underfloor heating (UFH)
Replacing the quarry tiles with new terracotta

The saga began with the arrival of ½ tonne of natural hydraulic lime grade 5 (NHL5), “eminently hydraulic” compared to the “feebly hydraulic” NHL2.  It is used in preserving the breathability of historic buildings, essential to the damp control of — in particular — turn-of-the-last-century homes like ours.  From different vendors, I also got 500 litres of Perlite and a tonne of sharp sand.

 

This original quarry tiles were layed directly on “rammed earth” which consists of the backfill from the original construction site. This was entirely intentional for control of ground moisture and had been common practice for centuries at the time.  Not too many years after this house was built, the state-of-the-art shifted to lining the subfloor with something completely impermeable so that the moisture would be driven to the edges where a vent to atmosphere would handle the moist air.

Whilst clearing the LR flooring we found that the screed in the veranda is lined with thick and quite impervious plastic, thereby explaining the damp in the corner.

So, say you didn’t know this (or in the case of most flooring contractors, didn’t care): to put down a carpet or lino or laminates you would first lay down a sheet of polythene which would block the moisture from rising through the new floor thereby driving the damp to the walls.  Glazed ceramic tiles and porcelain tiles and most modern tile adhesive does precisely the same.  It took only hours for us to see an improvement in some of the walls after we cleared the ill-advised treatments from the otherwise breathable floors back in the spring.

The tiles removed

The quarry tiles we removed are VERY thick — 38mm or 1½ inches — but the drop to the veranda is 55mm at the south end and 45 by the door (which we assume help drain this open air interstitial area back in the Olden Times).  So there will be some excavation to do just to bring the current dining room to grade let alone to create layers for insulation, mechanical stability, and as a bed for the new quarry tiling.

For now — the cement mixer arrives Monday and I have Wed-Fri off to get started on the next steps — we tidied the de-tiled, soil floor and covered it with geotextile (which is also the first layer of the NEW subfloor, so we can put this directly on there once we dig things out).  The tiles arrive in 2½ weeks, giving us time to prep and cure the limecrete layers and enjoy having all the stuff from both chambers stacked in our living room.  Stay tuned.