Marianne Suhr: Reviving a period home

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Old buildings expert Marianne Suhr drops in on a project to return the period character to Alan and Sarah Tierney’s 500-year old cottage, which is gradually giving up its secrets.

The project: Picketts Cottage, a Grade II listed, 16th-century house needing some detective work
The challenge: To remove modern black paint on beams, reinstate breathable plaster finishes and conserve a historic wall painting

Alan Tierney and I met several years ago when he was studying for a Masters degree in building conservation. When we got chatting, he invited me to visit the house he was meticulously repairing and conserving with his wife Sarah. When they first saw it 10 years ago, they thought it was fantastic: a timber-framed house with the exposed beams painted black and the plaster painted white. It fitted their pre-conception of what a timber-framed house is supposed to be like.

Over a period of time, Alan and Sarah began to realise the house they had fallen in love with was very different now to how it would have looked historically. The black and white image was merely a fashion imposed from the 19th century onwards; originally the timbers and panels would have been limewashed in earth pigment, never painted in black gloop and white emulsion.

Their first exposure to understanding historic buildings was a SPAB homeowners’ course back in 2000. It was then that they were introduced to the ideas of walls being able to breathe and to the use of traditional materials. So when they returned home, they saw the house differently.

They tackled the sitting room first and used standard Nitromors paint stripper to get the black paint off the beams. Alan remembers it as a horrendous job, but not nearly as bad as cutting 1,600 short lengths of lath and fixing them between the joists for plastering. Little did he know at that point, his quest to repair the house was to send him on a complete career change.

After two years of spending every spare evening and weekend working on the house, Alan began to realise that this was what he wanted to do. At the time he was driving 100,000 miles a year in a job he no longer found inspiring. One life-changing morning, a flyer landed on his doormat advertising a Masters degree in building conservation at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum and Alan had a Damascene moment.

By the time Alan and Sarah embarked upon the dining room at Picketts Cottage, Alan had acquired two degrees and several years’ experience working with historic buildings. But also a whole raft of new eco materials had come on to the market that were entirely compatible with the concept of ‘breathability’ and ideal for use on old buildings – such as the German product, Claytec clay plaster for walls, and Pavatherm insulating wood fibre board for ceilings.

Stripping ceiling beams

ABOVE (clockwise): The dining room ceiling, after stripping black paint from the timbers; Alan fixing Pavatherm board for extra insulation; the finished ceiling; the plastering in progress.

Voyage of discovery
Needless to say, he now took a very different approach to the work. The biggest revelation was the use of the alkali-based, poultice style product, Kling-Strip, to remove black paint from the timbers. It comes in a paste form and is spread thickly on, covered with thin polythene – clingfilm or a bin bag will do – to keep it moist. Left for several hours or days, depending on the thickness of the paint, Kling-Strip dissolves the paint so it can be washed off. Gradually they worked through the whole house removing the black paint and white emulsion from the plaster panels.

The most exciting discovery of the project was revealed one Sunday afternoon after Alan and Sarah had been stripping back wallpaper and modern gypsum plaster. A fragment of orange paint was apparent under the build up of modern layers that Alan immediately recognised, thanks to his studies, as belonging to an early wall painting.The scraping was stopped and a wall painting conservator from Cliveden Conservation called in. After three days of painstaking removal of the surface layers with a scalpel, the conservator revealed the remains of a wall painting dating to the 1530s. The painting was finally consolidated with lime grout. Alan still winces at the missing bit of decorative border they inadvertently lost before they realised what was there.

Uncovering the wall painting

ABOVE (left-right): Paula Rosser from Cliveden Conservation removes layers from the wall painting; following conservation, the wall painting has been edged with lime grout.

Hidden archaeology

When stripping back paint, bear in mind you lose critical archaeological evidence. If your house has its original lime plaster, etc, it also has a record of every paint colour, collected in layers. If you have a house from the 17th century or earlier, it may retain original painted decorative schemes under the modern layers. Houses of any quality in the 16th century would almost certainly have had wall paintings. If in doubt, consult a wall painting conservator for an initial analysis.

Reno expertise: Plastering between joists

Having removed a modern ceiling and revealed the oak timbers, Alan has this advice for producing a breathable finish:

If the joists have been painted, Kling-Strip is a good product to try to remove it.

For unpainted joists, a warm water wash with a soft scrubbing brush is enough.

Cut your Pavatherm wood fibre board to fit the space between the joists, leaving gaps of no more than 5mm around the edges.

Fix the board screws – every 35cm, around edges and up the middle – and penny washers underneath the floorboards.

Apply 3-5mm of base coat Claytec clay plaster with a steel trowel.

For an open textured finish, a single coat is all that is needed, finished with a wooden or plastic float. For a smooth surface, apply a second coat of clay finishing plaster.