Originally Posted by Christian and Beccy
P.S. Thanks Silver, that's some good constructive advice.
I am taking heed, it's just VERY daunting. As I walk round the Bungalow, I see lots of cosmetically scary things. Even if we sort the biggies, there are still quite a few little things too.
The bungalow was built in the early 1930's using some odd kind of mortar, which is really crumbly and some parts need fairly serious re-pointing.
That is what the mortar is supposed to do.
The best analogy is disks and pads, you want the pads to go before the disks. No point wearing out disks before the pads....
The pointing is the sacrificial part of the construction. Suring the 30's they were moving away from lime mortars and moving full into modern day cements, however lots of the builders still knew what it was all about, hence your pointing is starting to fail.
Rendering is a blimmin good way of hiding up all your probs.
however, we can see that there are some other possible ways around your issues.
Check out brick tinting (maybe Google can ping up some results) for the bays, and some partial sparring for the block section at the rear, that alone will save gallons of cash.....30's buildings are normally built very well!
Silver