Day job

It could be argued that your entrance roof has some redundancy with both the ironwork on top and wood braces on the underside.
I am sure the iron work with its bolt fixings could easily handle the load of the roof suggesting the underside wood braces are perhaps more architectural than structural.

Our substantial front door porch is also lead covered but relies on big underside wood braces.
 
 Although the base of each brace is mounted on a brick "ledge" built into the wall, the ends of the horizontal beams were originally simply slotted into the outer skin of the cavity wall  brickwork and relied on friction to resist the outward forces generated by the braces under the weight of the roof.
When we moved in I noticed the beams had moved slightly outward resulting in the lead no longer meeting the wall and allowing some rain penetration.
Much of the wood arch structure under the lead was rotten so the whole 3 piece lead sheet was lifted off to enable the structure to be rebuilt.
Although the main horizontal beams were sound I made sure they they would stay in place by bolting them through to the inner wall each retained by a nut and large washer. Fortunately the internal plaster throughout the house is over 1" thick so it was possible hide the nuts and washers once the plaster was made good.
In principle if the porch moves now it will pull out the wall! but so far after 25 years nothing has moved.
The right hand window is boarded up as we are having its stained glass panels rebuilt and re leaded.   

                     

The break in hot weather and a return to water running down the windows reminded me that there are 'day jobs' more urgent than the Vintage Model Co Super Cub Balsa Basics kit box sitting in the corner.  

My partner's office is essentially in the same state as the week after we moved into this house in Swansea. E.g. stacked up boxes, crumbling plaster under her desk, power sockets so close to the floor nothing can plug into them, janky wall shelves and a remembrance of how much time it takes for the room to warm up in cold weather.  

So in mid-August a decanting of stuff into the spare bedroom and I set about figuring out whether the crumbling plaster was indeed part of an active leak and whether there was a viable option for improving comfort in the room.  After getting seriously burnt the last time we hired supposed professionals I have decided that I will do the work.  It will be slower.  I don't mind relearning skills and picking up newish skills.

The day job thread is here for day jobs and so a few photos ever few days. 

So first the digging back in time and finding what was underneath....

 

And what I found.  Almost certain that in a place more than a century old some of the walls will have been re-skimmed. But they didn't do above the picture rail so the thickness of plaster was different above and below so I removed the picture rail so that I could bring them level. In retrospect extra work. But what I found when I was steaming off the wallpaper was patches of that re-skim simply fell off, came off with almost no encouragement or on one wall simply turned to mud. Yes there was some plaster over old wall paper but melting like chocolate and slumping to the floor  steamer was a new experience.  

 

 

Looks to be rising damp from the ground Jon, probably best to get a damp specialist in to asses it and deal with it otherwise you will be doing it forever a couple of years apart, good firms will give you a guarantee for the work, my son has spent 6 months this year working for a firm the dose it, they chop the plaster off a minimum of 1M up the wall inject the wall the fit a damp proof membrane and replaster the walls

We had some rising damp found in the kitchen work and that was drilled and treated and that seems to have worked thus far.  However, the photos I uploaded is a room on the 2nd level of the house. Some faults near a chimney that was capped off some time ago so, looking at it from the roof space it might have been rather ancient. A camera dropped down the chimney did not find damp.  The cavity wall does turn into a solid wall just at the corner.  I found a couple of minor faults in the render and sealed those so we shall see.

Here is the 2nd tranche of photos of process. After removing the failed bits of plaster I did a PVA coat and then filled in a base coat and a top coat to get a surface to work over.  I choose a 4mm thick thermal lining product that came on a 15m roll (ended up getting two of them) along with 10 litres of adhesive (it goes on really thick).  Some test corners and I sorted out how to cut it.  Let it dry for a day and then after testing that a 2nd layer could stick I repeated with a 2nd layer of liner.

 

 

The thermal liner is not nearly as good as a cavity fill would be, but this normally wet-windy corner of Wales is not really suited to cavity fill.  The liner is very vapour permeable so if there does turn out to be some later water through the masonry it will not be hidden.

 

Last set of photos from the room work.  Fun job of removing more than a century of accummulated paint off the woodwork...

After these were taken I painted of two of the walls with an accent colour (the paint sample was way less eye blinding than the real thing but it took four coats to get an even colour).  I put the radiator back in place ready for the move-back-in.  Of course who knows how long that might take as there is an unspecified need for some wall shelves of some type, some place...

 

Family where would we be without them.
Me i would be a MILLIONAIR 
My son bought a ford van last year i think it was from a ford dealer all very nice, except this year its gone tits up, he took it in for a service and it was found to have brake problems big problems as it turned out to the tune of £1500, so being what i am i gave him 700 towards it, all good
5 months ago the engine went bang, an expensive bang to the tune of £3000, so being what i am i paid for it, all good
2 weeks ago when he takes me to Tesco to do my food shopping he said the van has no power so i sat feeling how it was going, i cant hear bugger all, i said its the brake binding get it looked at or they will start burning, so yesterday we went to Tesco and to me it seemed worse so i asked him have you booked it in somewhere to have a look at it, NO think hes to busy playing game and his phone 
So today they have been out somewhere and the bloody van has caught fire or the brakes have
So now im wondering whats going to happen 

My son tells me its the ABS thats gone tits up on his van
ABS sounds expensive 

ABS - Automatic Braking System?
There are so many acronyms being bandied about that most people don't have a clue what anyone is talking about!

ABS = Anti-lock Braking System