Back to work on an old friend!

Today we started work on part 2 of an old project from last year.  Many years ago on the tall East wall of the original part of the chateau there used to be a big ivy tree growing. Over the years this caused a lot of damage to the wall. The worst damage was on the lower parts where there used to be doors into the hall. Last autumn we repaired this damage where it was at its worst. A large part of this wall was rendered and we plan to remove all of this render and repoint the stone beneath it. 

There are still a couple of big cracks in the render where the ivy was so we will need to deal with these first. The cracks go all the way through the wall to the inside of the chateau. Today Michelle removed the plaster on the inside where the crack is. We wanted to see just how bad it was and start the repair from the inside before removing the cracked render on the outside. As you can see it was not too bad. The lime mortar is in poor shape but the wall is structurally pretty good. So tomorrow Mark will start removing loose stones, make repairs and re point it all.