The goodlife -1930 full renovation

[mattvanders]

I thought I’d start a bit of a blog of me and the misses recent house purchases and renovation (as much to get any help and advice from others that have done similar and for others to to use from our mistakes which i’m sure there will be many). More of a lurker to the forum than contributor due to never having any really interesting cars.

Me and the misses spent almost two years looking for the right house over the whole of the 2020/21 covid period with the pains of stamp duty changing/prices going up, finding the perfect house only for the owner’s future house being gedrzumped & chain fully through and putting offers on houses that we never even wanted but felt there was nothing better. In the end we saw over 65 houses in person and looked at least 500 online with 6 offers and 3 accepted in the end.

Our list of demands (which said mentioned perfect house almost ticked or could live with) included 3 double bedrooms (because we have lots of family that don’t live near by to stay), if it was 2 doubles and a box the ability to extend to make an extra room, 2 bathrooms (again for guest and when me and the misses are getting ready to go to work at the same times), side access to take muddy mountain bikes into the back garden (my main vice and why I don’t spend more on cars), a garden big enough for a man cave to store and work on said bikes, a kitchen dinner (or ability to extend to make a kitchen dinner) as we always hang out in kitchens when around friends, ideally but not a must a space to store the misses triumph herald (if it has to go it will) and a good location for train station. Everything else from decor, layout, schools, etc is up for grads.

So this all leads onto the house we found itself. With the misses working from home she was on Rightmove all the time, the advert came live and within 30 seconds she had already ran up and booked a viewing. The estate agent had so much interest that they had to turn the phones off! The ad had very little info and only 3 external photos but it was a 1930 build, less than a mile from the station and with no previous extension work leading to a blank canvas. The problem was I was working the date of the viewing so the misses had to do a FaceTime call with me physically see it. There was lots of mess, lots of bodged but everything was straight and the price was good. We put offer £10k over asking price there and then and hoped that as we where chain free this would edge us forward. We would have to wait till the next day to find out…





And we had the offer accepted. All for an hour. Someone had put in a late offer in the same chain free position. We agreed to match and thankfully everything went through and got completed in January this year. Photos to follow

[mattvanders]

From the outside

The photos below are from when we went back for me to view the property, my face says it all but I am more than happy with the purchase


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Edited by mattvanders on Friday 29th July 15:57

Edited by mattvanders on Friday 29th July 15:59

[mattvanders]

Yes that is laminate flooring on the ceiling

Edited by mattvanders on Friday 29th July 16:05

Edited by mattvanders on Friday 29th July 16:06

[mdw]

Nice one. Take it in bite size bits and you will get there. You will have a cracking house once done and as YOU want it.

[CornishRob]

Watching this with interest. We have just had an offer accepted on a 1930s probate house. Early stages for us, but it will need a full renovation if it all works out and the sale goes through.

Good luck

[Simpo Two]

Panelled doors original if not the staircase. Should have it all fixed in a couple of weeks

[mattvanders]

mdw said:

Nice one. Take it in bite size bits and you will get there. You will have a cracking house once done and as YOU want it.

Cheers, we intend to do as much as we can in one big chunk before moving in. I have never done a project house but am handy on the spanner’s being a mechanical tech by trade in petrochemical/power station background. It will be our forever home so plan to do everything right and properly (something the original owner never did, I will make a list of the best/worst bodges)

[mattvanders]

CornishRob said:

Watching this with interest. We have just had an offer accepted on a 1930s probate house. Early stages for us, but it will need a full renovation if it all works out and the sale goes through.

Good luck

Good luck with your purchase as well. Will be uploading the work so far over the next few days to present day. What’s the plans for yours?

[mattvanders]

Simpo Two said:

Panelled doors original if not the staircase. Should have it all fixed in a couple of weeks

Doors in the 1st floor are original with wooden handles (not bakerlight). Ground floor doors are 90s cheap.

Will need more than a few weeks, plan is ground floor extension to move the kitchen and dinning room in there (and convert the old kitchen into utility room/bathroom) and do loft conversion. We will be doing full rewire, underfloor heating ground floor, thermal insulation external and have been looking into heat pumps

[mike80]

Looks fine as it is tbh.

Except it could do with a bigger shower curtain!

[Promised Land]

Got lots of potential in that.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, one room at a time, rooms you live in a lot first, kitchen/ bath/ lounge and main bed and take your time and do it how you want to and the right way.

Laminate is a new one on a ceiling.

If a client asked me to fit that I’d be out the drum in a shot.

[Tango13]

mattvanders said:

Congrats on the new house.

Has that radiator been cut, bent and then welded?

[CheesecakeRunner]

Ha! I also have a 1930s house. 1928 to be exact. It’s awesome dealing with nearly 100 years of bodges. The amount of crap under the floors is amazing.

I’ve got three rooms left to do since moving in 12 years ago. Doing things right takes a while but it’s worth it.

[trixical]

Definitely some choices made there! I look forward to the updates

[mattvanders]

Promised Land said:

Got lots of potential in that.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, one room at a time, rooms you live in a lot first, kitchen/ bath/ lounge and main bed and take your time and do it how you want to and the right way.

Laminate is a new one on a ceiling.

If a client asked me to fit that I’d be out the drum in a shot.

I will get to the photos of it the laminate later on but it was there bodge to hide the holes of when spot lights were removed. It would have been easier and cheaper to actually do the job properly and plaster board & plaster. We actually got rid of it on fb for free and the person was going to put it on a wall in the man cave so it lives again in a very weird way…

[mattvanders]

Tango13 said:

Congrats on the new house.

Has that radiator been cut, bent and then welded?

Yep, that’s what they did, it’s only a single column so not great heat output. We will be getting a curved cast iron tyre rad for the bay window.

You can see the air vent in the bedroom (that should of been in a bathroom lol). Apparently when they got new windows a year ago they didn’t open any windows (due to the 2 dog noise they had) so started to get mould. So they got a hole drilled and the vent fitted even though the motor was never wired in

[mattvanders]

mike80 said:

Looks fine as it is tbh.

Except it could do with a bigger shower curtain!

I’ll hold you to you saying that, it’s definitely not fine in places but the next lot of photos will show all. The house is straight though which is the most important part

[mattvanders]

So we ended up getting the keys at the end of January this year and have been working on most weekends while sorting out planning permission. Through out the winter I had been chatting with a builder mate about the work and getting him on board (more on this later on). He had come and looked at other houses for a bit of advice and had though this was all sorted so I could concentrate on stripping and sourcing the bits for the build.

Day one picture of what we found on opening the front door…


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Progress started straight away with cleaning up piles of dog hair in the dinning room, a paste layer of mud on the floor and up the windows. We popped by the new neighbours with home made cake to apologise for the future nosies (more on that later). Got chatting away about the old owner and definitely found out a bit more about them which was interesting and worrying at the same time. They use to have a farm that they were selling up at the same time, estate agent made it sound like a animal rescue farm. Nope, it was a pig farm, that would start to explain the mud dust covering every where! They sold the farm with planing permission for £1.5 million yet lived in squalor at home

Edited by mattvanders on Saturday 30th July 06:20

[Stick Legs]

Interesting.

I love the idea of period restoration of a house, my Wife doesn’t so I’ll be living vicariously through this thread!

[kiethton]

Loads of potential in that, reminds me of our (late 20's/early 30's) place in many ways.

Look forward to seeing what you do with it!