Our Little Durham Restoration Project...

Our Little Durham Restoration Project...

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paulrockliffe

Original Poster:

15,639 posts

226 months

Tuesday 7th May 2013
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So, after years of prating about, the missus and I have finally bought a home. It's a detached house in a small village to the West of Durham. Lounge, dining room, kitchen downstairs, 4 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, then outside we have a conservatory, toilet, coal bunker, blacksmiths (!) and a large garden and drive way. The blacksmiths has massive PH potential!

Although on first inspection it looks decent, the wiring isn't up to scratch, there's a lot of plaster that needs sorting and it generally isn't to our taste, especially the dark dingy woodwork. So we're taking the approach of fixing everything that needs fixing now before we get too comfortable and pretty much taking everything out to start from scratch. The bathroom is also tiny, so it's being moved into a bedroom to leave a superb landing that's ripe for stairs into the loft in the future.

I pretty much know what I'm doing, but I'll probably have lots of questions as we go along to make sure we're doing things right.

I just need to sort out the whole 'working in Manchester' thing and then we'll be sorted!

Anyway, obligatory pictures:

Front of house:



Garden and blacksmiths:



House and garden:



Entrance:



Living Room:



Dining Room:



Kitchen:



Landing:



Back bedroom, which will become the bathroom:



Second Bedroom:



First bedroom:



Smallest bedroom:



Bathroom:





Outside bog and coal shed:



Since completing the purchase just over two weeks ago, I've managed to get a lot of stuff done in 11 days on the project. Mostly wrecking stuff with a wrecking bar, which has been great fun! Highlight so far was demolishing the bathroom, low point was having two tonnes of wood and insulation dumped on my garden at half past 5 with no one else to help shift it! I've got the rest of the floors to remove at the weekend and then we can start putting things back together.

Pictures of the devastation:

Living room:



Dining room:



First bedroom (now cleared up):



Stud walls stripped of laths and plaster:



Second bedroom:



There was a damp patch in the kitchen, our surveyer was confident that it was being caused by condensation from a flue within an unsupported brick flue in the bedroom that is to become a bathroom. The brick flue was also hampering my bath location, so out it came and out came the flue as predicted:



New landing space:



Open-plan bathroom:



So, that's pretty much where we're up to, next phase of the project is to get a minor damp issue sorted, get first fix electrics in, get my wiring for networks, alarms, tv etc in, insulate under and fit new floor, fit door frames, fit some plasterboard and get plaster skimmed and tidied up and plumb in a new bathroom. Then we can move in and complete the rest of the work around living in the house.

Will keep the thread updated with new pics etc as things get done and will no doubt be asking loads of stuff as we progress!


hbzboy

444 posts

184 months

Tuesday 7th May 2013
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Well done mate. Good progress so far keep us up to speed and i am sure we can help wherever possible.


anonymous-user

53 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Blimey, good work. Are you putting in underfloor heating? There were some pretty bad crimes in there! Will you put back the picture rails, etc? What kind of style are you going for?
Was the house semi detached at one point? Looks from the back like a bit is missing. A wrecking bar is always a good tool. I have a small collection for different jobs wink

philmots

4,630 posts

259 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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I love that..

The Blacksmiths will make something awesome.

Griff Boy

1,563 posts

230 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Good project mate! You've certainly achieved a lot in 11 days...!

Are you going to reinstate the fireplaces?

E36GUY

5,906 posts

217 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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This looks like a great project. Love, love the blacksmiths building at the back. What a man cave that will be.

5potTurbo

12,483 posts

167 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Crikey, there's major progress already!

Look forward to following the progress - another bookmark. smile

RC1

4,096 posts

218 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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awesome!

how long you reckon before its habitable?


matc

4,714 posts

206 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Great job so far!

It's amazing how some people prepare their house for sale, the general decor alone would have put most buyers off surely; not everyone can see the potential like you have.

Looking forward to seeing the updates. smile

anonymous-user

53 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Nice place, has real potential!]

Look forward to reading the updates.

megaphone

10,694 posts

250 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Hmmmm.....Please tell me you are going to re-instate the fireplaces, cornice, picture rails and skirting. They all look(ed) original.

Craikeybaby

10,369 posts

224 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Bookmarked - this looks like an interesting renovation, it sounds quite similar to mine, although I've only got coal house, bog and wooden garage outside - no blacksmiths!

Is the underfloor insulation going upstairs or downstairs, it isn't something that we have looked at yet, so it would be interesting to know how useful it would be.

K50 DEL

9,227 posts

227 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
quotequote all
megaphone said:
Hmmmm.....Please tell me you are going to re-instate the fireplaces, cornice, picture rails and skirting. They all look(ed) original.
This.... X 100

paulrockliffe

Original Poster:

15,639 posts

226 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
quotequote all
Thanks for all the comments everyone, I'll try and answer all your questions!

We're not putting in underfloor heating. I have looked at it, but the cost was too much to pay just to lose a few radiators. The central heating needs to heat the rooms quickly and be as cheap to run as possible, I'm far from convinced that the between joist systems will be anywhere near as good as the radiators in both regards. We're looking at an engineered oak floor, on top of 22mm chipboard, both of which would need to be heated before the room would get warm and both of which are decent insulators, so efficiency must be lower. Outputs are quoted at 70watts per square metre, which means it would have to be installed under every square metre to get enough heat output, which means massive expense.

We've not decided on the picture rails yet, we're going to fit the engineered oak floor, oak frames and doors, oak skirting and new coving and then see what it looks like before deciding. It's pretty easy to add later, so no rush to decide yet.

The house was never semi-detached, though I agree the 'extension' is a bit odd and it is laid out exactly as you'd expect a terraced house to be. The extension must have been added very soon after building in 1906, if it isn't original. There's no evidence in the brickwork that it was added later though, so I can't decide if it is original or not.

We're aiming to get it habitable in two to three months time, though I'll struggle to do more than 2 or 3 days a week now and we have a holiday booked that'll take out two weekends in June. Depends a lot on getting the plaster sorted out as we'll be aiming to move in with door frames, plaster, electrics, half the floors and a new bathroom in. We can easily work everything else around our stuff as there's just the two of us and plenty of storage space outside.

The house was inherited and then sold to us by an elderly couple that live 90 minutes South of the house. I presume their preference was to prioritise convenience over maximising income. Our offer was accepted £40k under asking price because we had all our ducks in a row and to take account of all the work we'd need to do. Nothing that matched our priorities as well has come on the market since, so we've been very lucky in how it's all worked out. We weren't expecting to have such a low offer accepted, so it's made it much easier to get everything sorted out now rather than having to wait.

I think that the only original woodwork was in the living room, it was original pine or similar and was covered in several coats of white gloss paint. It wouldn't really be salvageable in a way that would match the rest of the house or indeed look particularly good. it was very deep though. The rest of the woodwork is a mix of very modern pine and older hardwood, all painted a very dark red. The pictures don't really show how bad it looked unfortunately. None of it was really salvageable I don't think. Picture rails were similar, the dining room ones were a few years old, the living room were original, but painting over several times and latterly with that weird green paint.

Cornices were already missing from the dining room and we want both rooms to match in style. The main problem though is that the ceiling is lath and plaster and falling to bits. It's impossible to resolve with the cornices retained and the easiest solution is to run lats across the joists and then suspend a plaster board ceiling an inch or so below the lath and plaster. This is what's been done in the dining room and isn't compatible with saving the cornices. We haven't decided what's going back in their place yet. I am trying my best to be able to reuse the ceiling rose, but it depends if I can remove it and if it'll paint over.

Fireplaces aren't original, though they will be 50 to 80 years old. It's clear from the infill that came out that the original set up was open fires in each room, with the fireplaces going in later. The smaller fire was a much newer reproduction. We've not decided exactly what to do with the chimneys yet, but we are fitting a second woodburner in the living room. It may be that we reuse the mantle pieces from the black and white marble surrounds. Interestingly the dining room chimney that was converted to woodburner relatively recently has a massive sandstone fire surround hidden behind the plaster.

We're insulating the floor downstairs only. It makes sense to do downstairs as the engineered oak floor over chipboard will leak quite a lot of heat. It's not mega bucks to do it and should make a big difference. It doesn't make sense to do upstairs as well because we want the heat from the fires downstairs to soak through the ceiling and keep upstairs warmer too. Upstairs will be carpeted too so wouldn't have the same issue. Most of the heat that ends up upstairs will get there via the stairs anyway I think.

Because of the new flooring we're having all of the electrics runs in the ceilings, so there'll be no chance the floor downstairs ever has to come up.

Cheers!

CharlesdeGaulle

26,099 posts

179 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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Bags of potential there, and lots of good work done already. Good effort, and good luck!

Craikeybaby

10,369 posts

224 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
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paulrockliffe said:
We're insulating the floor downstairs only. It makes sense to do downstairs as the engineered oak floor over chipboard will leak quite a lot of heat. It's not mega bucks to do it and should make a big difference. It doesn't make sense to do upstairs as well because we want the heat from the fires downstairs to soak through the ceiling and keep upstairs warmer too. Upstairs will be carpeted too so wouldn't have the same issue. Most of the heat that ends up upstairs will get there via the stairs anyway I think.

Because of the new flooring we're having all of the electrics runs in the ceilings, so there'll be no chance the floor downstairs ever has to come up.

Cheers!
Thanks, that makes sense, our downstairs is half concrete and half floorboards over a void, so I think insulation may have to go down under the floorboards.

paulrockliffe

Original Poster:

15,639 posts

226 months

Wednesday 8th May 2013
quotequote all
Craikeybaby said:
paulrockliffe said:
We're insulating the floor downstairs only. It makes sense to do downstairs as the engineered oak floor over chipboard will leak quite a lot of heat. It's not mega bucks to do it and should make a big difference. It doesn't make sense to do upstairs as well because we want the heat from the fires downstairs to soak through the ceiling and keep upstairs warmer too. Upstairs will be carpeted too so wouldn't have the same issue. Most of the heat that ends up upstairs will get there via the stairs anyway I think.

Because of the new flooring we're having all of the electrics runs in the ceilings, so there'll be no chance the floor downstairs ever has to come up.

Cheers!
Thanks, that makes sense, our downstairs is half concrete and half floorboards over a void, so I think insulation may have to go down under the floorboards.
I've just got a small concrete slab in the entrance hall, not sure why, but I'm not going to mess with that to insulate it. You can insulate over the concrete as some of the insulation is solid enough to float a floor on top of, but more than likely it'll mess up your floor levels too much.

I'm putting 100mm of PIR between the joists, vapour barrier over the top, 22mm chipboard then the engineered wood floor. Should be very solid and a lot warmer, though as I've not experienced the floor without the insulation I won't really know how much better.

Only other consideration is airflow underneath. I'm having my surveyor come back to have a look at a couple of issues with the joists and airbricks while the floor is up, but given that all the airbricks have been blocked for years and there's only minor rot in the joists where they've been entirely encased in powdered brick/mortar/dust, I can't see there being an air-flow issue if I fit new airbricks that go through both cavity walls and will stay unblocked.

CSJXX

291 posts

191 months

Thursday 9th May 2013
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Looks like it could be a little gem.

Your up my neck of the woods so if you need any help I've been slowly putting together a good team of individual trades as I've been renovating my place for 2 years now! Plasterers are cracking on to hide all my mistakes! Haha!



paulrockliffe

Original Poster:

15,639 posts

226 months

Tuesday 14th May 2013
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Will hopefully get an update from the weekend up tomorrow, but in the mean time, here's a quick question:

Where would you put the front light(s) on here:



Ta!

anonymous-user

53 months

Wednesday 15th May 2013
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Can't tell from the image but is there enough depth above the door to set them in - bit like downlights? If not, I'd put one on the left of the front door (as you look at it from street)