Ever since I bought the house the first thing I wanted to do was to remove the ghastly Pebble dash. It just made the house look so depressing, both of the neighbouring houses had the original brick still which makes my grey sad looking one stand out even more! Unfortunately as is was just a cosmetic procedure at the time it had to wait... until this year! I was randomly strolling through Instagram when I saw another East London house had had their render removed and bricks nicely cleaned up. The company (Essex Brickwork and Re-Pointing) had a banner up on the scaffolding with their details, so out of interest I thought I'd get a quote. To my delight the quote was much cheaper then quotes I had previously got when buying the house, so I just had to go ahead a book them it and it was well worth it!
The house the day we exchanged looked incredibly sorry for its self.
Even just changing the windows and doors made the front look better, but I couldn't see past the pebbledash still!
The first day was very exciting, but as they had the tarpaulin up I couldn't get a good look, but you can see a bit at the top where the pebbledash had been removed. i was slightly nervous that the bricks might look very damaged underneath, but had some reassurance in the fact that most of the other houses had brick so that would mean that the render had probably been added for the 'style'. It turns out that the brick had also been painted sometime during the past 100 years.
Day 2 and the tarpaulin was down so I could get a better look. They had also removed all the old pointing, ready for the new lime mortar. The surface of the bricks were also given a good clean to reveal their natural warm honey glow.
Once they started wight eh lime render the facade really started taking shape. I needed more mortar detail and filling around the doors and windows where over the years bits had been hacked off and the front door moved, but looking at it now it blends in seamlessly.
Once the guys had finished the job I made the most of the scaffolding and headed up with my paintbrush to given the stone areas and the roof board a lick of paint. I'm not a fan of heights, and it felt much higher then it looked from down below, so I'm glad I won't be going up any time soon!
The scaffolding is down and finally we can see the full results! Shame about the overgrown Cherry tree blocking half the view hence the angled photo. Next on my list is to sort the fan light numbers...