Gweithdy Progress Report by Eileen Clayton
Gweithdy Working Party 4 Report – 29th Oct – 4th Nov 2018In September, before this working party, contractors removed the old roof, fitting insulation before replacing the sheets. This was a really important milestone as the old roof was leaking again on the join between the main Hall and the annex.
It was a good working party where lots of progress was made. In total there were 18 of us, some working for a day or two whilst others spent over a week with us.
Our first priority was to finish the front wall of the building, including the porch; once the old sheets were removed, quite a lot of rot was found in the door frame & the base of the frame which had to be replaced before insulation & new corrugated sheeting was fitted. The new doors, copies of the original, were delivered. We had thought that the original door frames could be reused, but this was not to be, so we have ordered new frames to match the doors.
Anth Brierley joined us for three days & without his expertise it would have taken us much longer to sort out the problems with the porch.
The new window frames, fitted in August, were glazed with laminated glass, making a huge improvement to the appearance of the building & the light coming into the hall. We intend to buy blinds, in the interim we’ve put plywood over them to prevent unwanted observers.
We managed to get a first coat of cream paint on most of the road side wall as well as primer on the newly fitted sheets. We would have done more, but the weather was against us; over the 10 days we had rain, high winds & sub-zero temperatures. Our intention is to put the first coat of paint onto the sheets of corrugated iron before the next working party when we will fit them to the Blaenau end gable wall.
Once again there was a lot of painting. We had received the wood for the barge boards & fascia boards which were given several coats of paint. We were really pleased that there was time to put up a couple of fascia boards on the roadside before rain stopped play.
On the August working party we had started to fit the new tongue & groove onto the ceiling in the annex. We have virtually completed this; the boards had had a first coat of paint & some were given a second once fitted. In the new signwriting room the old boarding was removed revealing some rot to the
framework. Rotten wood was replaced before the new t&g was fitted to three of the walls. In the new lobby, t&g boarding to three of the walls was completed & a new doorway frame was fitted to the west wall. The outside wall was then exposed & the new doorway fixed in place before the sheeting was temporarily replaced.
There were lots of additional small but important jobs done such as pressure washing the concrete base right around the Gweithdy to remove moss & rubbish. One of our volunteers also works in the Carriage Shop where he is authorised to use the machines. He spent several days machining sections of door framing & architrave to the existing sections for all the internal doors. They are now ready for assembly.
Our next working party is Monday, November 26th to Monday December 3rd. We do hope you can spare us some time; we appreciate just one day, but obviously if you can spare us longer that’s even better. There’s still a lot to be done, but the wonderful progress we have made so far is rewarding and motivating.
We also need some help to paint the corrugated sheets on Monday November 19th.
Contact: eileen@eileenclayton.net or alanfnorton@gmail.com