Patching Aunty Nellie's Room

If evidence be needed, this blog entry illustrates how the restoration of Balintore Castle, is preserving as much original fabric as possible. The two photograph below of current work in Aunty Nellie's bedroom show how we are patching-in the missing sections of lath-and-plaster with plasterboard. 

patching around the fireplace

patching round the window and, er,  Glen

The circular WC room in the corner of Aunty Nellie's room was in a far worse state than I had feared. As the bedroom proper had had its flooring taken out, we had been too busy balancing on the beams to pay attention to the turret room, which had a random pile of floor boards lying on the ground. When we lifted the floor boards, this is what we saw:

the adjoining turret room before

Glen had been standing in this small room. We are not sure what was holding him up as what was remaining of the beams, was totally rotten. Anyhow, here is the "after":

the adjoining turret room after

The floor beams were reconstructed, and indeed we used old original Balintore flooring. If you look very carefully, you can see the transition between the modern flooring in the bedroom proper (foreground) and the reclaimed original flooring in the turret room (background). We do not have much original flooring surviving from Balintore, and certainly not enough to do a whole room, but we can use it in small areas and ensure that we are recycling and preserving the spirit and material of the castle.