White Cottage - pictures

[Fizzer]

We've just had our offer accepted on a 'project' house in a village near the town we live in now. Having done a little DIY before we did think that our second house could be a 'doer upper' so we could buy something nicer for our budget that we would otherwise not be able to afford.

Sooo, we've found our perfect house. A four bed detached cottage in a nice village. It's based on an old (1700's???) existing cottage and was mostly rebuilt in 1960 buy a builder who got a grant to do the work. The last owner has just moved out after 45 years and it's had no significant work since 1960 and looks it! It's not listed and has a solid looking tiled roof.

At the back of the house the bathroom is downstairs next to the kitchen which has aging units and no space for a modern cooker. The living room has an inglenook fireplace which has had a 60's chimney breast inside it (electric fire in there now) not sure if we can get the stonework back to original condition which would be a shame. There;'s a cowsh*t wall that looks great (very curvy) and the back wall is 1' 6" thick (original?) and is 4' underground outside.

The rendering has cracked on the front so the front wall is damp (rendering has been patched up but not sure how recently/effectively) some of the windows are painted shut, there's no gas, no serious heating system.

Sooo, it's a lot more work than we intended to do, we're getting the most comprehensive survey we can before we spend any money on anything else.


Jobs list:

move front door to front of house
block exising door in living room
re-render front (possibly)
get rid of/reduce damp
connect to gas main
install boiler
run radiator pipes
hang radiators
complete rewire
install bathroom upstairs
remove existing bathroom and knock down walls
remove existing kitchen
tank back wall if required
convert cupboard into downstairs loo (macerator or regular)
install underfloor heating in new kitchen diner area
remove current fireplace/chimneybreast
install multifuel burner or open fire
tile kitchen floor
install kitchen
re-plaster
redecorate


sheesh!

 

[Softus]

What are the symptoms of the problem that you wish to solve?

 

[Steve]

What are the symptoms of the problem that you wish to solve?

at a guess . . .

move front door to front of house door in wrong place
block exising door in living room too many doors in living room
re-render front (possibly) no/bad render on front of house
get rid of/reduce damp damp
connect to gas main no gas connection
install boiler no gas boiler
run radiator pipes no central heating
hang radiators ditto
complete rewire old electrics
install bathroom upstairs downstairs / no bathroom
remove existing bathroom and knock down walls too many walls
remove existing kitchen he doenst like the kitchen or cooking
tank back wall if required damp
convert cupboard into downstairs loo (macerator or regular) needs 2 bogs
install underfloor heating in new kitchen diner area kitchen too cold
remove current fireplace/chimneybreast wants more space
install multifuel burner or open fire wants to contribute to global warming
tile kitchen floor unsuitable floor covering there now
install kitchen oh maybe he does like cooking
re-plaster no plaster
redecorate no decoration

that took longer than expected!

Can i make a suggestion before you go out and get a gas connection and GCH, as gas is unsustainable, have a look online at ground source heat pumps. They run on electric and can be up to 400% efficient. This means for every 4 kilowatts of heat they emit into the house, they only consume 1 kilowatt of electric. Gas is about 90% efficient i think. Heat pumps are cheaper to run, with maybe sightly higher setup cost than a new GCH system.

 

[Fizzer]

What are the symptoms of the problem that you wish to solve?

well, in a nutshell, transform an old house that's not had much work done since 1960 into a comfortable, warm, dry house that we can live in for the next few years!!!

 

[JohnD]

Crafty, I think you have a perverted obsession with ground source heat pumps.

You can get a reputation for that kind of thing, you know

 

[Fizzer]

Can i make a suggestion before you go out and get a gas connection and GCH, as gas is unsustainable, have a look online at ground source heat pumps. They run on electric and can be up to 400% efficient. This means for every 4 kilowatts of heat they emit into the house, they only consume 1 kilowatt of electric. Gas is about 90% efficient i think. Heat pumps are cheaper to run, with maybe sightly higher setup cost than a new GCH system.

I think you've nailed the causes of our problems on the head there (although I am a fan of cooking!)

We have a ridiculously small budget and the garden isn't big enough for a GSHP system, unsustainable gas is it I'm afraid... perhaps in the next project...

 

[JohnD]

I'm told that houses like that usually lead to divorce

 

[Fizzer]

update:
Yesterday we spent 3 hours with a friendly surveyor who was happy to chat.

The damp is everywhere! and could be v expensive to sort out. He's talking about french drains on two sides, lime render outside, waterproofing the floor. This is on top of the essential wiring and GCH work.

The garden wall is falling over and slowly taking some roof tiles with it (high wall, low roof)

The nice beam n the living room deflects a lot when walking around in the room above, not sure yet if this is a problem.

We're still waiting for the detailed report, we definately need to get some specialists in to quote.

On the plus side, structurally it's all OK, the roof is OK, there is a functional kitchen and bathroom so we just need to take it one step at a time...

Cautious planning required...

Pics soon...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I'm told that houses like that usually lead to divorce

perhaps we should join a marriage guidance forum too, just in case.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Some help about boundaries and borders would be appreciated.

What worries me is that the sloping tarmac drive adjoining the left side of the house is fairly recent (probably 30 yrs old) - we're pretty sure that it's it's this that is causing some of the damp in the house

The problem we have is that we won't own the drive. As we don't own the house yet we're worried about being held to ransom if we try to sort the damp problem (french drain?). The drive is shared access for garages for 4 properties.

Do we have a legal right to install drainage/damp proofing if the damp is a threat to our property?

Is this the sort of thing our solicitor needs to know before we go any further?

Here's a plan of the site:
Red= 4' ground height over floor level (Floor = white)
Blue = damp around floor level
Purple = damp higher up the wall (over 1m)

_______________________________________
lynda, moderator

please see forum rules, general information item g

 

[Fizzer]

I've started a blog so you can all share our experiences with the house (if you like!)

http://www.fizzer.co.uk/abode-overload/

I'll try to keep it up to date as much as possible, this really is a steep learning curve for us.

 

[Fizzer]

Hi all, it's a been a while
I thought I'd give an update on what happened to our little house in the last 5 years as the blog I wrote broke and died a while ago...

Soon after that last post in July 2007 I saw a specialist for an existing heart complaint, something I've lived with since birth. Only this time she said 'something needs to be done'. Something turned out to be open heart surgery to replace a valve and do some 'tweaking' here and there (let's call it a cardiac 'nip and tuck')

So, having only spent a few short months in the house, we had been flooded, no heating, damp everywhere and a 3 month recovery from heart surgery - in winter.

Fortunately my amazing father spent all summer in 2007 painstakingly removing all the 60's cement and block work filling up the inglenook. He completely restored it and discovered a bread oven while he was at it. We installed a log burner as soon as we could. It was all installed just in time, a week before surgery. (phew)

After I recovered we started work on the house. We decided to treat the damp sympathetically by removing as much of the source as possible and allowing the house to breathe. 7 large skips of garden were removed from the back wall of the house and all the render was removed from the inside of the downstairs walls. All the ancient wooden lintels were very damp and soft.

We did go for gas central heating in the end, we got the meter fitted then got a plumber to install the boiler and connect it up to a solitary tap in the kitchen. Over the next few months I ripped the house to bits to install all the pipe runs for the radiators, it's really hard with 4" joists, there's not a lot of room! After pressure testing the system I filled it up, the switch on was a really big moment, the first time we'd had a properly warm house since we moved here! While we were at it (floors up/render off walls) we rewired the house, I assisted while my electrician friend directed. We got a new board in and all the switches in the right places, very satisfying.

We removed the downstairs bathroom and migrated it to the upstairs back room, the new drainage pipe trench round the back of the house also acts as a small soakaway (luck, not design). It was a bugger to lay as we had to dig through solid chalk. Where the bathroom was we had a steel put in to support the ceiling, we had it covered with a hollowed out oak beam to match the one in the front room - I can't tell you how good it felt to have our first 'nice' thing in the house. Great craftsmanship.

The garden looked like the Somme for a couple of years, just dirt in a pile. I bought 60 French African azobe (not treated) railway sleepers and terraced the garden with them, those things are heavy! (90KG) I have to admit that at one point when my perfectly aligned sleepers all fell over in a heap after weeks of effort digging trenches and standing them all on end, actually left me in tears...

For 4 years we had a Frankenstein kitchen made up of bits of the original kitchen, odd floor levels, no plasterboard on the ceiling, it was cold and damp and hard to cook in and keep clean. Late 2011 we took up the old tiles and laid some insulation board down and put a thin screed with electric underfloor heating mats. It was my first screeding job and was very satisfying to do, it all went well and was very level. The underfloor heating is expensive to run but very comfy. We tried a massive radiator at one point but it just heated the wrong end of the room and our feet were freezing, out it came.

All this time we were living with dust old soft brick walls which were impossible to clean after we had removed the render. After thinking about it for a while we chose to lime render the inside walls. It's breathable, looks nice and in keeping with the age of the cottage.

Outside, I re roofed the carport (not a fan of asbestos) and built a small utility room on the back of it. I have some amazingly talented friends who helped a lot with bricks and wood the freezer and washing machine along with most of my tools all live out there.

After that it was 'simple' things to get the house closer to finished (never really finished I suppose) - New kitchen, Carpets upstairs, plastering ceilings, wood floor downstairs (not buckled or spread apart yet)! Sorting the garden out (Bags of earth, seeding the lawn, making a veg patch)

A year and a half ago we had a little girl we had got most stuff done by that time, my wife was still painting a few days before our daughter was born, a real trooper!

Since then we've just sorted out a few bits and bobs. We're really enjoying our little place. The lane we live in is amazing and our neighbours, friends and family have been very supportive.

The house is DRY probably drier than it's ever been, it also works as a small family home. Writing all this stuff down makes me remember how hard it has been but also how rewarding it is to have achieved this. We really hope that what we've done will see the test of time and that future generations (whoever they are) love as much as we have.

If you've got this far, thank you for reading. If there's one piece of advice I can give anyone stuck in a project, it's this:

No matter how hard things seem, or how cold it's getting; through the arguments, despair and spiralling and unexpected costs - remember the vision you had at the start; the end result is worth it

 

[boxoftickytacky]

You're my new inspiration...been in our crap pile of bricks for a year this week...still married (hehehehe), very skint, but we are over the hump...ended up bed ridden for a month, and crippled for a further 4 months, had to have back surgery right in the middle of it all too, digging the trench for the damp proof was what got me. It's been tough, but your story and serious health issues have been just what I needed to get back on it.

Glad you kept it up when everything was chaotic.

Sit back and enjoy your hard work with your new family.

E.