The north-east gable end

On finishing work on the south gable end of the east wing, we moved straight on to the north end. The objective was the same, to raise the wall to meet the new roofline, to allow us to slate the roof and flash it into the coping stones on the parapet. 

When we bought the property in 2014, the north gable end was in a bad way.

The retaining stones for the coping had fallen off or been removed, along with half the coping stones. We removed the survivors because there was not really anything to stop them sliding off onto us.  We removed the top few courses of stone above the upper floor window so we could replace the wooden inner lintel with concrete ones. In 2018 we repaired the stonework, installing a matching pair of retaining stones that we had acquired from the old farmhouse next door. At the same time we put the backing blockwork in above the old roofline, to fill the gap to the current trusses and sarking. 

So we had less to do: Lay stone in front of the concrete blockwork, then install the coping stones. We used the same arrangement of scaffolding, with a high platform across the middle of the wall and a lower platform that we built first one side, then moved to the other side as we completed the work. The stonework was quite quick, two and a half days work in total to build up both sides to the height of the window lintel and to lay courses above the window up to the apex. I was mindful of the problems i had with the copings on the south end and generally finished the stonework a few cm below the sarking. I only had to trim one stone, to fit a particularly deep coping stone. I did, however have to use copings from our south-west gable end to replace the missing ones, we will have a problem to sort out when we restart work on the west wing. I used both the starting stones (with the shallow end that rests in the hollow on the retaining stones) and at least one other on each side. Both sides took a days work to complete. 

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So including prep time and scraping the mortar back ready for final pointing, we got the whole thing done in six long days. We were quite happy to see the end of it and move onto other jobs. Ric is back in a few days and we need to prepare for slating and floor screeds.