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Travelog: Damage and Weirdness

Just because a building is cute, doesn’t mean it won’t have damage. Someone has done a pretty thorough job of strapping the corners of this small building in Bath, as well as installing some kind of pinning at the middle of the side wall.

It’s not clear which way the floor spans (if this was NYC, it would be a safe bet that the floor is wood joists parallel to the street facade on the left) but the mid-wall ties to the floor will brace the wall regardless of the direction.

There’s something slightly weird with the joint between the two walls. The angle is a bit more than 90 degrees, and the edge of the side street facade (to the right) on the main street side (left) is angled to be perpendicular to the side street face, so it’s not quite parallel to the plane of the main street stone adjacent. If this is simply stone veneer, we may be seeing the thickness of it between the corner and the continuous vertical joint where the two planes on the main street side meet. If there’s a gap there. It’s small, and the side wall looks pretty flat so I’m curious about what damage triggered the installation of all those ties.

In my opinion, the corner strap ties that are in line with the windows don’t do all that much. They certainly don’t hurt, but they’re not very effective at bracing either wall because of the relatively small dimensions of the window pier. The strap ties at the spandrel panel tie the walls together much better.

Finally, the entrance on the right sure looks like an extension. Its not clear if the side wall continues down behind that storefront in part or at all. If the bottom of that wall was removed for an extension, that might explain the movement…assuming there is movement that isn’t viisble.

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