www.turning-earth.co.ukfrom
a small Yorkshire garden
Learning about lintels
I tried to work out the sturdiness of the lintel that supported the roof.
I got books from the library on 'Simple garden building Projects' and
read about lintels. One particularly fascinating book, on home improvements,
covered the whole subject of lintels in depth. Too much depth really.
It's important to remember that this was in pre-"Ground Force"
days - or if it was on TV, I'd obviously been too busy reading about lintels
to watch it. It wasn't a common sight to see major building work going
on in gardens, and there were no women in gardens hitting things with
hammers. I was
bereft of role models, not very confident, and reading all about lintels
while putting off actually doing anything.
Then one day I got a big hammer and hit the wall with it.
I reasoned that if I started where the existing hole was, and took out
a brick at a time, and left the middle section of the wall in place until
I'd made sure the whole thing wouldn't collapse, it wouldn't be too serious
an endeavor.
Demolition and rebuilding
It took weeks to demolish the wall. I took out a column of brick on
one side, and took out the door, and the bricks surrounding it, on the
other side. Sometimes many bricks would come away at once, and leave me
terrified that the whole thing would collapse on top of me. Where possible
I worked from the outside, in case it did collapse, as I reasoned that
at least then I could jump out of the way. If anyone came round, I knocked
the dust from my hair and answered the door trying to look like a normal
woman and not like someone who'd just been out in the garden in the November
cold, all alone, demolishing her shed.
I left the middle section in place until I'd made sure the side columns
were stable, and that the lintel was solid and cemented in place at either
end.
The side columns I had to partly rebuild from the jagged edges of brickwork
that were left - basically slotting bricks (cemented) into the gaps. This
was a crash-course in bricklaying - or rather 'brick slotting'.
Rustic plastering, and wavy paving
