Punching Through The First Doorway

I read a lot about creating new doorways through stone barn walls- eventually enough of the reading - taking the first steps were the most important.
The wall between the new kitchen and the living room involved going through the original random rubble stone wall which was 1 metre thick.
We started using the strong boys to corbel the opening, we also put the 150mm square oak beams in on the outer face- this ended up being a mistake because the door way needed up needing to be further right!
We took 20 stones out dropping them on spare insulation to cushion the falls, and protect the concrete floor.
I did most of the job on my own with some help from James- it took about 2 weeks.
Just one more to do!
 

 Corbelling the opening using a strong boy. 

 Really big stones

 Taking out the random rubble inner skin- note the strong boy

 You can see the original beam position on the outer wall.

 Big stones still to drop- how did they put them up in the first place?

 So now you can see the the new lintels are in the wrong place with one quite big stone on the right, this was left until the clockwork piers were built.  

 Then we found big foundations stones- fortunately we managed to move the big one - then there was just one left in the way which we couldn't move.

 The big stone being moved

 Quite big

The hole foundation concreted and ready for the piers to be built

 Skill saw and a very good diamond blade ready to cut back the stone which was in the way

 Cutting under way

 not so easy so cut fingers of granite to 

 Nearly done

 It didn't look good at this stage

 Blockwork piers - outer face which will stay as feature stone ready to be stone faced

 Piers built- now need to move the lintels, stone facing completed

 Amazing the stone work held when we removed the lintel. We had to lower the stone out and then down a ladder slope

 Stone lowering

 Nearly finished - a new doorway