Kitchen

A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation

In the West, a modern residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. Many households have amicrowave oven, a dishwasher and other electric appliances. The main function of a kitchen is cooking or preparing food but it may also be used for dining and entertaining.

Antiquity Greece homes of the wealthy had the kitchen as a separate room, usually next to a bathroom (so that both rooms could be heated by the kitchen fire), both rooms being accessible from the court. In such houses, there was often a separate small storage room in the back of the kitchen used for storing food and kitchen utensils.

In the Roman Empire, common folk in cities often had no kitchen of their own; they did their cooking in large public kitchens.

Wealthy Romans had relatively well-equipped kitchens. The kitchen was typically integrated into the main building as a separate room, set apart for practical reasons of smoke and sociological reasons of the kitchen being operated by slaves. The fireplace was typically on the floor, placed at a wall—sometimes raised a little bit—such that one had to kneel to cook. There were no chimneys.

Middle ages the kitchens were divided based on the types of food prepared in them.[1] In place of a chimney, these early buildings had a hole in the roof through which some of the smoke could escape. Besides cooking, the fire also served as a source of heat and light to the single-room building. With the advent of the chimney, the hearth moved from the center of the room to one wall, and the first brick-and-mortar hearths were built. The fire was lit on top of the construction; a vault underneath served to store wood. Pots made of iron, bronze, or copper started to replace the pottery used earlier. The temperature was controlled by hanging the pot higher or lower over the fire, or placing it on a trivet or directly on the hot ashes.

Colonial kitchens became a separate room only later. In the south, where the climate and sociological conditions differed, the kitchen was often relegated to an outhouse, separate from the mansion, for much of the same reasons as in the feudal kitchen in medieval Europe: the kitchen was operated by slaves.

Local builder in Barbican,

Repointing

With exposure to wind, rain, frost etc, the mortar holding bricks (or stone) together on an external wall will often start to crumble away and fall out.

On older properties, the pointing will actually be a harder mortar than the bonding mortar, so once this is dislodged, the softer bonding mortar will become exposed and wear away quite quickly.

This repointing process begins by removing damaged pointing to a depth equal to or slightly more than the with of the joint, or to the point where sound mortar is reached.

On very old buildings with soft materials, such as under-fired brick, removal by hand is often the most effective to avoid damage.

Hard Portland cement mortar is usually removed with a grinder or power circular masonry blade, taking care not to damage the masonry units. Vertical joints in most cases are always done by hand or with small power chisels.

Poor repointing work often raises the level of the mortar joint above the face of the masonry unit, which causes the mortar edge to feather.

Repointing materials

It is essential that the mortar used for repointing have similar performance characteristics to the original mortar used in a building.

Mortar used for re-pointing should normally be based on hydraulic lime and clean sharp sand or other appropriate aggregates. The colour and size of the sand particles determine the appearance of the mortar.

The existing older mortar should be carefully examined so that aggregates used in re-pointing can be selected to match existing mortar for texture and colour.

The strength of the mortar should reflect the strength of the stone or brickwork and the exposure to weathering.

Sandstone requires a weak mix while whinstone will allow a firmer mortar bed but not so hard as to cause cracking and capillary pathways for water. Exposed chimneys will need a more durable mortar than a sheltered area of walling.

Lime is a general term for calcium-containing inorganicmaterials, in which carbonates,oxides and hydrohides predominate.

Materials are still used in large quantities as building and engineering materials (including limestone products, concentrete and mortar) and as chemical feedstocks, among other uses.

The rocks and minerals from which these materials are derived, typically limestone or chalk, are composed primarily of calcium carbonate. They may be cut, crushed or pulverized and chemically altered.

Brickwork

Brickwork masonry is produced when a bricklayer uses bricks and mortar to build up structures such as walls, bridges and chimneys. Brickwork is also used to finish openings such as doors or windows in buildings made of other materials. Where the bricks are to remain fully visible, as opposed to being covered up by plaster or stucco, this is known as face-work.

Flemish bond, also known as Dutch bond, has historically always been considered the most decorative bond, and for this reason was used extensively for dwellings until the adoption of the cavity wall. It is created by alternately laying headers and stretchers in a single course.

The next course is laid so that a header lies in the middle of the stretcher in the course below. Again, this bond is one brick thick. It is quite difficult to lay Flemish bond properly, since for best effect all the perpendiculars (vertical mortar joints) need to be vertically aligned.

If only one face of a Flemish bond wall is exposed, one third of the bricks are not visible, and hence may be of low visual quality.

This is a better ratio than for English bond, Flemish bond's main rival for load-bearing walls. Stretcher bold

Flemish bond, with two stretchers between the headers in each row, and the headers centred over the join between the two stretchers in the row below.

Rat-trap bond, also known as Chinese bond, is a type of garden wall bond in which the stretchers and headers are laid on their sides, with the base of the stretcher facing outwards. The main advantage of this bond is economy in use of bricks, giving a wall of one brick thickness with fewer bricks than a solid bond.

Rat-trap bond was in common usage in England for building houses of fewer than 3 stories up to the turn of the 20th century and is today still used in India as an economical bond, as well for the insulation properties offered by the air cavity. Also, many brick walls surrounding kitchen gardens were designed with cavities so hot air could circulate in the winter.

Herringbone bond

A brickwork bond in which the exposed brickwork is bonded to the heart of the wall by concealed courses of bricks laid diagonally to the faces of the wall in a herringbone pattern, with the end of each brick butting against the side of the adjoining brick; a form of raking bond.

Basket pattern bond

A pattern made up of pairs of bricks placed in a square grid so that the join between each pair is perpendicular to the join of the four pairs around it.

English Bond

The English bond bricks were laid in alternate layers of headers and stretchers. while flemish bond has alternate headers and stretchers within a layer, giving good looks to the surface. english bond has high strength value while flemish bond has looks.