House refurbishment project. Plenty of pictures.

[Steve]

Ok so we got the keys to our new house yesterday. The house is a 1950s 3 bedroom ex council house in a lovely quiet area of Swinton, Rotherham. The house was lived in by a 95 year old lady, who died last year. Sadly she lived here alone for 20 years since her husband died. Her grandchildren sold the house, we bought it for £104950. We are embarking on a full programme of refurbishment, hoping to do a lot of the work before we have to vacate our old house. Here followeth the before photos. Bear in mind everything you see has likely been here since the husband passed away 20 years ago.
lovely note they left us. Shame given they hardly ever visited her - they live in ossett, 20 miles away.
consumer unit, probably late 80s.
patio door, also serving as the only back door.
so here it gets interesting. Stop cock. Embedded in a wall. On lead pipe. Brilliant.
further along said wall, this wall divides the kitchen from the dining area. More on the interesting door in a little while...
wall again, showing hideous radiator pipework
the other side of that wall, mostly taken up by an enormous sink unit.
opposite. In the fixtures and fittings pack they ticked the cooker nd washer were included. I rather think these actually qualify as scrap metal. Ie rubbish that should have been removed . . .
kitchen down the middle. The wall will be removed at some point. It sounds like a stud wall but low down i can see some brickwork behind the cabinets. We are also having a full width extension built too, after we move in.
the door. If open, you have to squeeze through the gap.

More to follow. . .

 

[Steve]

kitchen larder, containing an assortment of cleaning products, a full tub of Hillards salt and the gas and electric supplies.
moving on to the living room. The carpet in here is really quite nice quality and we may leave this in place if we have to move in. That fire is back to back with one in the dining room, with a back boiler in between.
hideous pipework everywhere. Two radiators in here.
some of the windows are newer than others. The newest were fitted in 2009 by safestyle. No doubt that dented the inheritence. . .
this porch was also renewed by safestyle.
stairs. The hideous boxed in stair rail i believe is original as all the houses round here have this. I will investigate replacing it with a more traditional post and rail system.
funky carpet in the hallway appears to have been laid in 3ft strips and sewn together.
toilet with retrofit plastic cistern. Originally had a high cistern. Can see the marks on the wall. The wall to the left of the pot will be removed to form one bigger bathroom. It appears to just be a thermalite block wall and runs parallel with joists above and below.
quite why they needed this ugly gas heater and a radiator on the landing is beyond me.
front box room. Actually quite a nice size, but we will be knocking that cupboard out down to the bulkhed and building a bed frame over it. Much better use of the space.

 

[Steve]

front master bedroom. Ugly t12 fluorescent lamp over the bed, wired in bellwire to a plug. The plug has a second bellwire poking out of it thats been cut off. My daughter (2yo) attempted to plug this in yesterday. Ye gods. Also worth mentioning all the bedrooms only have one souble socket. A rewire is coming.
airing cupboard. Lead. Pipe. Everywhere.
interesting pipework.

So far we have stripped the back bedroom, not pictured here, of flaming woodchip (much easier once a steamer had been donated!) Removed the curtains and demolished the wardrobes and drawers in the front bedroom. Tomorrow, more stripping.

 

[Santim]

These house look fantastic taking into account history! Really, 20 years without renovation and all things is not too awfull as I can imagine!!
Good luck with your project!

 

[chappers]

some of that looks older than 20 years, as a kid I remember having that same lino put into our brand new house 1980

 

[Steve]

some of that looks older than 20 years, as a kid I remember having that same lino put into our brand new house 1980

indeed some of it is much older. I imagine the toilet pan is the same age as the house which is 1950s.

These house look fantastic taking into account history! Really, 20 years without renovation and all things is not too awfull as I can imagine!!
Good luck with your project!

indeed there are some remarkably well preserved museum pieces! More pictures to follow tonight if i get chance.

 

[Nige F]

I'm sure that 3' carpet is 1960's. Quite common to have the narrow strips in those days. £105K that's half what you'd have to pay down here. If it wasn't so cold up there we'd have moved years ago, or maybe Australia.

 

[Steve]

Under the 3ft strip hall carpet is 1980s newspaper. So i assume that is its age.

Anyway, no photos today, but we have almost finished stripping the bedrooms with some help from my mum, and removed the skirting boards. Apart from where the radiators are in the way. Feels like a productive day.

Back again tomorrow afternoon on my own, when i will finish stripping paper and possibly start pulling tiles in the bathroom. Ill also ring a couple of electricians to give quotes. I phoned two today, one doesnt do rewires and the other never phoned back.

 

[Steve]

Yesterday made a bit of progress. My mum and dad came to help.

cavity wall insulation under the bath. Put my foot through the tiled panel. It was the only way.
random wall light in the box room.
banana door
how we drained the heating system. I know its meant to go on bare copper but it only had to seal for 20 minutes!
the garden.
rubbish pile.
bathroom. All the plaster will need to come off, it is crumbling away like sand.
bath. The wall between the bath and toilet is being knocked down this week probably. Provided we can get the bath out. I'm hoping we can save the sink and toilet, loose the bath to maintain facilities for all on site.
accident with a radiator. My dads contribution. The rad was empty but he decided to take it off the wall and start swinging it around like tiger woods. He learnt his lesson, for the others we tighened the bleed valve and inverted the rad as we lifted it off. Some of the rad tails were just too tight so we just lifted the valve off the copper pipe instead.
socket fed with suspiciously thin cable.

 

[Steve]

picture rail just finishes above the window. Only picture rail in the master bedroom. Strange.
tanks in the loft, featuring my bodge at tying up the f&e ballcock. I added a few tiles under the batten to tighten the rope. The tank was full which i wasnt expecting. The pipe across the front is the overflor from the big tank which drains into the f&e tank. The overflow from that then goes down through the airing cpd and apparently out into the bathroom drain hopper. Strange. Oh and both pumpover pipes go into the hot water tank.
pipes to the tanks, with insulation that the mortgage surveyor implied may contain asbestos. . . Thoughts?
more cwi, a good few cuft of it pushed up some old rolls of carpet in the loft.
excellent insulation on the loft hatch. Width of my finger.

 

[Steve]

hallway stripping commenced today.
i knocked down wall no1. This was a cupboard formed by a thermalite block wall and a double door. It is above the bulkhead aboe the stairs, but we decided to open this up to make the box room feel bigger. Not that its a small room for a box room, but the bigger the better! I am a little concerned by the state of the plaster on the adjacent wall. It just seems that if i pull on it it will just fall off. It is cracked and sounds hollow. It may have to be stripped to the brick.

seriously lazy electricians decided to butcher the adjacent fixed board rather than take it up.
wednesdays victim. The dividing wall in the bathroom. Its days are numbered.

progress in the bathroom. When the wall is gone the bath will be down the middle! But we cant remove the bath as it is piped in lead to the taps.
question. Did taps used to be this way round? Both the sink and the bath are this way around. Or has someone messed up here?


Ive just found some more pictures of the demolition that i took on my partners phone. Back soon with them.

 

[Steve]

they boarded the ceiling prior to building this wall.
built onto the bulkhead, which is timber framed.
done!

 

[Steve]

Today i spent the day doing some fiddly jobs. Took out all the horrible surface mount aerial and phone wiring. Took up the carpet on the landing. Investigated the pipework to the loft. Discovered a tap between the f&e tank and the cylinder coil. Closed it in case my ballcock comes loose! Ooh err.
also took off all the architraves upstairs. I was considering taking off the door linings and renewing. But decided not to because, well, look at the bloody size of them! 2 inch thick! Lucky to get half an inch these days. Also the door linings appear to be integral to the structure of the walls. So they stay.
this was why i wanted to renew them. Only one out of 5 is level, and that one is being boarded up!!

 

[Pandora4]

Wow, good job
I'm to scared to even lift up my hallway carpet lol

 

[Gossamer]

I'm doing my place up ATM with more to do, so really interested in this. Keep the updates coming.