Making the front look pretty

We obviously wanted to clad the front wall with stone to try and match the right hand side and fit in with the old terrace of cottages to the left. 
There was a slight problem in that the block wall was about 25cms “in” at the bottom on the right and only about 10 at the top. 
We decided that it didn’t matter if the new bit stood a bit proud as we had placed the drain pipe so that it would disguise that when fitted properly.
We dug in some concrete footings just as a precaution and then installed the first wooden upright. Although we would have preferred to do it all in stone because of the thinness of some parts, we decided to put in some wooden uprights to act as beam /lintel supports.



Once the footings had gone off Mrs B set about building up the wall. 
When it was up to a level that we could put the beam on the following sequence shows how it was done. 
(May I suggest at this stage if you don’t own a chain block and you are about to start a major project like this then buy one. About 75 quid for a 1 ton block) 









Once the beam was in place it was simply a case of building up on it. 



Once it reached a level where Mrs B spent more time hanging onto the scaffold than concentrating on the stones I took over and finished it off the higher bits.





This summer (2011) we will be pointing right across the front which will bring it all up to the same sort of colour and over a year or two the frost and rain will remove any discoloration caused by the lime as it has at the back.
From an exterior point of view we completed the work in September 2010 and that is the outside pretty much as it is today (July 2011) as we are now concentrating on the interior.