Mooreland House

This week’s video is where we try to remove stones that are preventing other stones from falling. It was a great architectural feature and lasted well over 100 years but it is a little precarious taking it down. Nothing a few well placed straps can’t fix though.

We take down some of the big stones that are at an angle in this video. The original crafters made slots in the top of the stones to accept the wedges that they would have used to lift the stones. It was easy to figure out where the weight was centered since they did it for us 130 years ago. We are amazed every day at the engineering that must have gone into the whole process of building the Mooreland House.

This week’s video is about when we discovered that the south dormer had moved. We set about getting ready to dismantle the dormer before it can fall down. Kerry does some fancy Bertha driving to wedge her in between a big tree and the Mooreland House. Obviously we put the Powder Room project on hold until we get this thing down.

Gordon made a comment on our most recent video about revisiting some of our other roof temporary fixes. We did plan on checking them but not this week. Ms Mooreland had other plans. This first heavy rain proved that our fix was no longer valid. We had to stretch a tarp inside the attic to catch all the water. We have another more permanent temporary roof on the back of the Mooreland House now.

In this week’s video we show how we put another tarp on the little flat roof and we put the permanent underlayment on the back flat roof. These improvements have slowed down the water again and will give us a chance to breathe again while we get some other stuff done.

We get most of the floor knocked down into the basement. As people that follow the blog you know that this is the last rotten wood video for a while. Onto the roof we go to stop some water next week.

The boom jib extension for the 54 foot forklift just barely reached the pedestal at the top of the dormer. It made it though. We had to remove the scaffolding walkboards in order to get the pedestal down. We have to be a little more precise on where we place the forklift. We have the height but we can’t quite get far enough to raise the stones straight up. Kerry does a great job of driving Bertha so it was no problem.

We set up thirty feet of scaffolding on the front portico and tied it into the Mooreland House. Frank didn’t get an overall picture after it was done but we have a couple when it was at 20 feet. For those who are curious, Frank has to stand on the scaffolding to hook up the stones to the new boom jib. It won’t be nearly as easy as standing in the work platform and using the davit crane. Frank took a few pictures of the top stones and was able to remove the finial without Bertha’s help. The gaps between stones is the missing mortar that has been allowed to let water into the walls for years. Mortar needs to be touched up every 50 years or so. =)

We have the extension we ordered. We now have enough height to reach the front middle dormer facade. Kerry made sure to weight test it so we should be able to pick up the big stones in the dormer. Bertha has a very long reach now.

Okay, the south facing dormer facade is now weather resistant. Guess we called it Option 2. Even though it’s not perfect it will still block more water from getting in than the stone and brick did. Moving on.