I have been waiting for such a long time to be able to bring this bewitching old pearl back to lustre. Finally, the time came to focus on the most intriguing part of the project: renovation of the beautiful stone walls.
I was filled with high hopes and expectations we can rescue the walls in their entirety, reverse the wary time and usage inflicted upon them. Before we began a dark thought fluttered by: were my expectancies too high and not all of the walls can be brought back to life as I imagined it? As I was about to find out, true skills crack the hardest restoration nuts.
Old structures are an asylum for stories and myths. So many tales lie written in the dust of those walls. As people pass on, only substance remains to pass on the story it beholds. If only walls could talk. And in our case, they do.
Today I have an interesting story the whispering stones wanted me to share with you.
It is a fable about a person being hidden in the house while the WWII army was sweeping the premises. Was he really stashed underneath the floor behind the bed? We didn’t find any holes in the floor, but there was a big round swelling behind the bed on the bottom of the west wall. Big enough to hide a human being back in the time of need? I’m not sure about that, but definitely big enough to need reconstruction.
How do you replace a part of a load bearing wall weighted with all the load of the stones piled upon it?
Step 1: get the best possible restoration team experienced in making rocks fly 🙂
Step 2: create a self supporting arch in stone hammering conical wood parts in the joints amongst the stones
Step 3: support the weight with a wooden beam resting on 2 jack posts (one on each side of the wall)
Step 4: hammer in some more wood to brace the arch
Step 5: remove the stones underneath the arch (meaning: fabricate a gigantic hole in the load bearing wall!)
Step 6: make sure to extract the human being hiding in the hole before filling it up with cement and stones; after all, this isn’t Italy (any more)
Step 7: dig up the earth and make foundations underneath the wall where needed
Step 8: fill in the hole building a typical stone supporting wall with mortar filling the joints and wait a week or so for the mortar to dry
Step 9: remove the supporting construction and admire in awe.
