Renovation Blog

2 September 2006 - Something for the weekend

We are travelling up each weekend to plan the renovations and do some preparatory work.

So what have we let ourselves in for?

The house is Georgian, Listed Grade II and about 250 years old. It has been through various changes in its history, including being completely abandoned in the 1970s and put on the "Buildings at Risk Register", but was rescued in the mid-1980s by an elderly couple, who did some basic repairs but failed to complete the task. When they moved in the front portion of the roof was missing, dry rot had caused the first and second floors on one side to collapse completely, and there was a tree growing in the front room.

Now the back of the roof needs replacing, we want to install central heating (rather than a couple of ancient creaking radiators, which is all we currently have) and completely renovate the interior of the house. There is a lot of work to do.

9 September - What have we let ourselves in for?


The roof and brickwork are in a very poor state of repair, as you can see from the pictures above.

In order to do anything though, we must get Listed Building Consent. If you are not familiar with this process it involves drawing detailed plans of the house from all possible angles, taking photographs and filling in long forms and then photocopying them all six times, before sending to the local council, who reject them because of some minor infringement (e.g. envelope addressed in blue ink instead of black. Well yes of course I'm joking but they still expect you to jump through a lot of hoops, when you are trying to do the best you can for the building). After you finally get the plans accepted for their review you can then expect to wait a good couple of months before you can start the work while they decide if you can do it or not.

This is a shame but means we'll have to look for alternative avenues for our exertions...

16 September - The ivy

One side of the house is totally covered in ivy, eating into the brickwork and otherwise causing problems so we decide to remove it. This proves harder than we imagined but eventually it comes down and you can almost hear the building breathe a sigh of relief.

23 September - The buckets

It transpires that the previous owners seemed to think that buckets placed around the house in various strategic positions were all that was required to solve a multitude of problems, including leaking roofs, dripping pipes and taps, etc. In addition hidden in a cupboard in one bedroom I found a huge stash of old paint tins, presumably reserved for future drips...