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Progress Report #7: Getting Jameswood Structurally Sound and Re-framing Our Home

3/12/2021

23 Comments

 

​When we first arrived at Jameswood and slowly started to peel back her crumbling, waterlogged plaster walls, we uncovered a devastating amount of wood rot inside our home. 
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A dangerously rotten floor engulfed a chair left in our derelict home.
We were careful to save as much timber as we could, but the majority of the original structure was unsalvageable. The lengths that could be kept still needed to be cut at the ends, and with such a small number of full length timbers left to reuse, we decided not to put them back into Jameswood. Almost all the timbers in the house had been affected by, or in close proximity to wet and dry rot. We didn’t want to run the risk of bringing these destructive fungi back into our home.

Jameswood’s old timbers won’t go to waste. The most rotten bits will be used for fire-wood, while salvageable pieces will build our outdoor kitchen shelter, our workshop and planters for our garden.

Though we’ve had to replace all the structural timbers in this building, we have luckily been able to save many of the original doors, architraves and skirting boards, which had been protected from water damage by countless layers of paint. From the outside, we can enjoy Jameswood’s characterful stone walls, and inside, she will get a brand new structure, before reinstating some of the original Victorian features we have saved.  

​Bringing Jameswood back to its bare bones has also given us a unique opportunity to add moisture barriers, breathable membranes and robust insulation to our building. Our goal is to make Jameswood look like a home that was built 120 years ago, while having modern features that provide a comfortable, efficient home for life in the 21st century. 

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Salvaged timber from our home, ready to build our workshop.
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An overwhelming pile of timber that was pulled out of our home. Later sorted into burn and salvage piles.

With nearly the whole house cleared and back to its bare bones, the upper floor was the final element that needed to be removed from the building. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.
The upper floor is an important structural element in a two-storey stone building. The big, heavy floor joists are embedded in the front and back walls of the building, and help provide “lateral support”. Without this support, the external walls of the building run the risk of bellying outwards, or in extreme cases, collapsing.

Thankfully, our structural engineer was quite certain that we could use our wrap-around scaffolding as a temporary brace for our home. Once we had braced the front and back walls, we embarked on the nerve-wracking task of carefully removing the 8m long timbers that hung 3m above our heads. 
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Cal briefing our rag-tag building team before we took down our first floor joist.
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Claire wielding the reciprocating saw, to cut down a floor joist.

This was a hard-hat-at-all-times kind of task. We propped up the timbers, cut them down the middle, and one at a time carefully lowered them to the ground.

I’d like to say the whole process went smoothly, and without a hitch, but honestly, it was a dangerous task with near misses. Once you had taken most of the floor away, props would come loose and become hazards rather than safety devices. Thankfully, we came away from the experience in one piece, but I can safely say I would sooner re-roof another house, than take down an entire upper floor of a building… and I’m afraid of heights!

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Very pleased with progress! It was fun to see the roof structure from down at ground level.

With that out of the way, I really believed that we must be passed the most nerve wracking pieces of this restoration. Over the past year, we had managed to literally lift our roof off of Jameswood’s walls AND play a giant game of Jenga with our bay window. Surely we had to be on to normal, low-risk building work!

Of course, I was wrong.

Before we could frame the house, we also had some lintels and a bressummer beam to replace.

For those of you who, like myself, had never heard of a lintel before the restoration of Jameswood, it’s a structural element that holds up the wall above a window or door opening. My question was, what’s supposed to hold up the wall when you take the lintel out, to put the new one in?
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Cal and our friend Gab replacing a lintel above the back door.
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Thankfully, there’s a tool for that! Cal was able to replace all of the lintels with relative ease, and after seeing him do the first one, I was left with less worry as well.​
A bressummer beam is a structural element that spans across a bay window, and supports the upper floor of a house. With our upper floor removed, it seemed like a good time to replace our beam, which had severe rot at one end. The problem is, this beam is nearly half a meter thick, and went nearly a meter into the wall in either direction. The sheer size of the beam meant that it had become a huge component of our front wall, and we really didn’t know how we were going to safely get this thing down. 
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Cal inspecting the bressumer beam and thinking up a solution for removing it safely.
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He was not impressed with the level of rot. "Can we just leave it" was not an option.

Cal decided there was no way we had enough man-power to lower the beam down as a whole. His solution:

We would prop the walls at either end of the beam, and pull out the stones around it to separate the beam from the wall. We would put two props at the centre of the beam and then CHAINSAW the beam in half. The two halves would then balance on either props, until Cal and Gab pulled them out of the walls and lowered them to the floor.

We didn’t know if the boys could lift even half a bressummer beam, and a balancing act that involved a chainsaw (at heights) sounded like a terrible idea. I strongly objected, but with no other idea to offer the group, Cal’s idea prevailed.
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Cal's plan in action...just as described. I was behind the camera...very unwilling to involve myself in chainsawing at heights.

Before the work commenced, I asked our friend Carrie, who was on hand to help, whether she thought the plan would work. She simply shrugged and said, “Today might be the day that this house finally comes crashing to the ground,” before calmly taking her place at the centre of the action, holding the prop in place for the bressummer beam to balance on.

It all went surprisingly well.

The beam balanced, the chainsaw only cut wood, the chunky pieces of timber were slowly lowered to the ground, and the surrounding wall stayed in its place!

By the end of the day, a new steel beam spanned across the bay window, and we were all celebrating Jameswood’s (and our own) survival.
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A very happy Cal testing out the new bressumer beam and showing off all his in-tact limbs.

The visual progress that ensued was so satisfying.

Cal, a framer by trade, was finally able to use his skills, and a new upper floor was thrown up in less than a day. Cal set a sheet of OSB down on the joists, and for the first time, I excitedly twirled on my 2.88 sqm dance-floor, in our future living room.
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Left: Gab and Fi helping us put up our fresh new floor joists. Right: Myself happily showing off our brans new upper floor.

I pretended to sit in our bathtub and walk around our bed as we carefully mapped out the final dimensions of our home.
 
After teaching me how to make a stud wall, we found a beautiful rhythm, cutting, *pop-popping and wrapping walls. In a matter of weeks, a real-life house – with rooms and hallways, appeared around us.
*I have nicknamed our first fix nail gun the pop-pop and the second-fix gun the pip-pop
​

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We were very happy to see walls spring up and rooms come together inside our home.

I joked that the place was starting to look too normal now, and as visitors were given a tour of the place, I found myself pulling out my phone to show them how messed up the room they were standing in used to be.

It was a nice feeling. Restoring Jameswood was starting to feel like less of a pipe-dream and more of a reality, but as walls appear, new challenges face us. Clearing out and shoring up an old building is tough, time consuming work, but it doesn’t cost much money.

In order to carry on with the project, we would have to get Jameswood wind and water-tight once and for all – which would require one of the largest investments in our restoration: windows!
And our goal was to get them in before Christmas!
 
 
Thank you for joining us as we restore Jameswood Villa!
Sincerely,
Claire (and Cal)

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What Have We Dunoon Blog by Claire Segeren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at whathavewedunoon.weebly.com.
23 Comments
Evelyn Davis
3/13/2021 02:49:58 am

Wow. You guys have come so far. Your home is taking shape and you must be rightly proud. It’s been a pleasure to see your amazing progress. Thanks for sharing. Cheers Evelyn Auckland NZ

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Lorna Tomes
3/13/2021 05:18:28 am

Wow what a huge job! You guys are amazing! Congratulations, it must be very satisfying to have the rooms take shape!

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Rebecca Swan
3/18/2021 04:47:50 am

Fantastic work, you've taken some risks and come through them well. Good luck with the onward journey, I shall look forward to the next post.

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Sara Hubner
3/18/2021 07:39:42 am

You two are AMAZING. I envy your energy and determination. I bought a fixer-upper almost 21 years ago and am still fixing--most of it structural, so it doesn't show. When you're done, I'll pay your airfare and you can come work on my house in Maine! LOL

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Frank Jenkins link
3/19/2021 07:39:16 am

"I wonder what's been happening with the Two Dunooner's?" I thought to myself this morn... so I scrolled to my saved tab and was pleasantly surprised with a new story of great achievements! Bravo and looks like you're well on the way to a lovely new old home now...! Just had a satisfying weekend of clearing out the old 16x14 foot garage completely to perform an Amish barn lifting maneuver so as to be able to pour a new floor and foundation and electrify it and you all have been inspiration indeed! Keep up the good work and we look forward to the next post on the warm sun shining brightly through new glass windows!

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Helen
3/26/2021 08:07:08 am

Amazing! You both are to be commended on your attitude and achievements to date.

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John
3/27/2021 08:21:36 am

Great work. Keep at it.

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JANET MILBURN
3/29/2021 03:29:16 am

WOW, Just wow, what an amazing couple you are, and what you have, and will go on to achieve is truly stunning. I love seeing your progress x

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James Rutherford
3/29/2021 04:52:56 am

The amazing work and the results you have achieved (despite the advice to knock it down), is worthy of a documentary. You two and your helpers are inspiring in these tough times. Keep up the fantastic work!

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Donna Uskoski
3/29/2021 02:06:07 pm

I check your site at least once a day. Am waiting for a shot of the front of the house showing the new installed old door from a bit of a distance. Washington State

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Morgan Stewart link
3/30/2021 06:20:39 am

I've been following with great interest, please keep posting.

As Jameswood Villa is in Sandbank, I wonder if you are aware of the "Dimsie" books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce? I discovered them at age 12 while living in London in 1961 and absolutely love them to this day, and read them over and over (I'm 71 now). I have first or early editions of all nine of them, with original illustrations.They describe the school days of Daphne Isabel "Dimsie" Maitland, a Scottish girl, between 1919 when she enters a boarding school in Kent through her last year there as Head Girl, and then take her into adulthood after her father's sudden death forces her to drop out of medical school due to lack of money. She then becomes a self-taught herbalist and marries a doctor.

Sandbank plays a major role in two of the books, "Dimsie Grows Up" and "Dimsie Carries On", which are set in "Lochside" (Sandbank) on "Loch Shee" (the Holy Loch). I think Bruce cheated a bit with the spelling of "Shee" but maybe figured her readers wouldn't be able to pronounce it in the Gaelic spelling, sidhe. The books are available used on AbeBooks and Alibris. Watch out for the ones published in the 1980s, they are greatly Bowdlerized and modernized, not worth reading.

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Peter SEGEREN
6/14/2021 03:36:01 pm

Claire's mother is looking up the books. Sandy is keen to read the books, looking on Good Reads. Will look at getting some of the older versions of the book especially the books set in Sandbank.

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Morgan Stewart
8/29/2021 10:58:22 am

I had another thought about the Dimsie books. The early editions can be expensive but sites like abebooks.com and alibris.com have many reprints that are reasonably priced. The "good" publishers are Oxford University Press (editions from roughly 1930 - 1950) and Spring Books (early 1960s) - these all contain the original text. The Bowdlerized editions to avoid are from John Goodchild (1980s). Unfortunately the books two set in Sandbank (Dimsie Grows Up and Dimsie Carries On) seem to be rarer than the earlier ones and consequently more expensive.

Dee Dimsdale
4/2/2021 07:32:28 pm

I am totally blown away by your amazing well-power and determination to rebuild this amazing house. I can’t wait to see it complete and to see it decorated inside! You both are truly inspiring, and you have taught all of us that we can do the impossible if we believe in ourselves enough. I believe in you both so much! Thank you for sharing this incredible journey with all of us!

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Ian Whitlock
4/21/2021 10:29:19 am

Well done. great story. This will be such a wonderful place to live in.

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Jeanette Cothren
5/9/2021 05:35:53 pm

I can no longer get your instagram posts,which have been a great joy. Was it something I said? (I do say a lot🙂) i miss you guys!!

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Greenway Exteriors link
12/12/2024 06:23:39 am


It's exciting to see the progress you've made on Jameswood, and the careful consideration you're giving to preserving its character while adding modern features. The challenge of removing and replacing structural elements, like the bressummer beam, is no small feat. At Greenway Exteriors, we understand the importance of maintaining both the integrity and efficiency of your home during such renovations.

When it comes to securing your home against the elements, proper window installation is crucial. Our team of window contractors in Wichita, KS, specializes in providing high-quality window services that ensure your home remains weather-tight while enhancing energy efficiency. We can help with everything from selecting the right style of windows to expert installation, ensuring they blend seamlessly with your home’s aesthetics. If you need assistance getting your windows installed before your goal of Christmas, we'd be happy to assist.

Best of luck with the final stages of your restoration—Jameswood is looking great!

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