Thursday 14 February 2013

An Interesting Observation

Albert House Marble and Stone Pillar 1871
St. Pancras Marble and Stone Pillars c1860`s

Cast Iron Newel Post

Wooah! We are quite excited about finding something we didn`t know we had, some people may think "so what", but to me finding that we have uncovered an original intricate Victorian cast iron product under our noses is as good as it gets!
You see, during the stair paint stripping process her ladyship was working on the Newel post and was having difficulty getting it back to bare wood when it suddenly dawned on her that this post was not like the spindles, she was finding it very hard to scrape and under the paint it was very dark in colour? Further investigation revealed that the post in fact was metal! So, with angle grinder at the ready we set about with a wire brush attachment and started to remove the paint, little by little we started to uncover a beautifully intricate metal Newel post, the detail is amazing, and this has been covered up for years with layers of paint, onwards as we now need to get this back to bare metal and restore it to it`s former glory, a real beautiful piece of iron work to catch the eye as you enter the house from the front door, just as it would have been when new in 1871.
It was during this time period we loosely call the Industrial Revolution era that iron casting became a prominent style, Foundrymen had mastered the art of casting liquid iron into sand moulds in thinner, lighter shapes and designs, cast iron was relatively cheap, widely available the became the number one choice in elaborate architectural designs of the period over traditional stone carvings, iron castings were certainly much less expensive than Brass castings and modern steel had not yet been developed.
We can see all around us evidence of ironwork used at this time from ornate garden railings to the beautiful architecture of St Pancras railway station built in the same time period.
Britain pioneered the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries when new production methods led to cast iron being produced more economically and had enough manufacturing capacity and capability to allow iron to be used in more and more large scale projects such as the first cast iron bridge built during the 1770`s in Shropshire by Abraham Darby, still standing to this day.
I could waffle on for an eternity about the development of iron casting but perhaps that the subject of another blog.......



first attempt at the Newel post
 

St. Pancras station iron work

  

Wednesday 13 February 2013

One Step Forward Two Steps Back!

I thought it was time for an update on the ongoing activity on Albert House, things seem to have been a little slow during January and February and it sometimes feels like one step forward and two steps back as we seem to make an action plan then as work starts we find we need to change tact as we come up against some unforeseen event, but I suppose that can be expected really as we are carrying out a full and complete renovation and have always said we need to do this beautiful house justice and not cut corners, so if something needs doing it has to be done whatever the work commitment and cost.

A typical case in point has been the two 3rd floor rooms which will eventually be offices for the family`s business activities, this started off as a simple re-wire to move the existing side lit spot lights to central pendant type lighting, and then strip off the old white painted wallpaper and re-plaster, nice and simple upgrade you would think! well, think again, the scenario goes something like this..... work starts with paper stripping with the steamer, as the paper starts to taken off we find areas of loose and crumbling plaster, not a concern, keep stripping and we can make good any inconveniences of crumbling plasterwork, after all underneath is good solid laths. Well it would appear to be not so simple, one day I arrive at the house to be greeted with "the old plaster was worse than we originally thought so we decided to take it all off, including the laths because this would be too difficult to re-plaster, so now we are going to plaster board it and skim, ok"? Actually yes it was ok because we have now completely taken these rooms back to brickwork and exposed joists which in turn has allowed us to add two new Velux windows, which have transformed the rooms by significantly increasing the natural light, we have re-torched the roof tiles and insulated the whole room with Kingspan foam insulation which undoubtedly will reduce heating fuel consumption and improve our carbon footprint, so, as well as doing our bit for the environment we are bringing the house up to modern standards. As there is no roofing felt on these old houses we have put the insulation boards under the joists to maintain a 75mm air gap between the tiles and the ceiling to allow the roof space to "breathe", the final plaster boarding will be 12.5mm Duplex type to further reduce heat loss and avoid any cold spots.
We have also taken the opportunity to remove all the original cupboard type spaces which you find in these period properties and managed to increase the floor space by a whopping 10m2! now that was worth doing, so, here we are in February with two rooms nearly put back together and how different they will be to the original.
just like a Victorian, home from school and set to work!