I purchased my semi-detached property in the summer of 1999. The house, which lies just inside the border of the Birmingham suburb Sutton Coldfield, was built according to some sources in the mid 1920's, and to others in the mid 1930's. The construction is essentially a solid-brick-wall cube with a bay window and a front porch.
At the front of the house, the fabric of the building was mostly original except that a number of the vertical-hung clay tiles had been replaced with a cast concrete type. These had a rough surface texture and looked obviously out of place next to the smooth surface of the clay. Also some ugly repairs using Portland cement/brown sand had been made to spalling brick faces and movement cracks in the white-coloured pointing.
After nearly seven decades, the wooden battens and steel nails holding the vertical-hung plain tiles facing the front of the bay had begun to fail and tiles were falling off. Of greater concern was that water penetration of the bay structure occurred during heavy rain, when water would drip down the inside of the ground floor windows. In what had presumably been an effort to effect remedial repairs, someone in the past had tried the bizarre measure of applying silicone sealant to a number of the tiles. I can only assume they had wrongly diagnosed the water ingress as being due to wind-blown rain being driven vertically up and over the face of the tiling !
Not being an experienced builder and not wanting to accept immediately the expenditure involved recruiting such expertise, I decided to ponder over the situation. After a few weeks of intermittent ground level peering plus several excursions up the ladder to investigate using the well tried and tested technique of "generally poking about". I reached the conclusion that the water ingress was due to wet rot and subsequent disintegration of the softwood, first floor,
bay-window sill. Some earlier reading at the local library suggested the wall behind the plane tiles was in effect a stud partition design. Water seeping through the sill could drip straight down behind the tiles and onto the ground floor ceiling below.
At this point I decided: restoring the brick wall at ground level would involve replacement of spalling brick-faces and re-pointing ; the entire first floor window had deteriorated beyond repair ; the lead flashing, battens, nails and roofing felt behind the tiles needed renewing ; fortunately the ground floor wooden window was satisfactory both in terms of function and aesthetics. I felt discarding it would be wasteful and costly.
The inter-war construction seemed simple enough and I resolved to undertake all work bar the window replacement myself. I figured that if things got out of hand, that would be the time to call on the services of a professional.
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