Anyone renovating a house at the moment?

SG27

bertiewhite wrote: »

If you're paying tradesmen to do the work, is it they who are renovating or you?

Everyone needs to employ specialist tradesman, unless you are a registered NICEIC electrician, a gas safe engineer and a Fensa window fitter all in one!

Most people are a combination of project manager and labourer!

onomatopoeia99

SG27 wrote: »

Everyone needs to employ specialist tradesman, unless you are a registered NICEIC electrician, a gas safe engineer and a Fensa window fitter all in one!

Most people are a combination of project manager and labourer!

In mains electric terms, the scope of "notifiable work" has been substantially reduced so householders can just crack on with most jobs unless they want a complete new circuit or electrics near a bath / shower.

n.b. by "householders" I mean the subset of householders that don't need to come on a forum and ask how to change a ceiling light fitting because the old one had ten wires going in and the new one only has connectors for three, or change a light switch in the hallway and then discover they can no longer turn the hallway lights off :eek:. Those people should employ a registered electrician and step away from the mains wiring.

Brummie85

SG27 wrote: »

Why are you tiling before the rewire?

The Electrician asked us to move our date back a week so that he could get his work done with another customer.

I said yes, knowing obviously that we'd have to work around it. But now he's decided he doesn't want to do it. Cheers!

I'm over it this morning. Gonna get the stuff in for the bathroom and then find another sparky later.

SG27

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

In mains electric terms, the scope of "notifiable work" has been substantially reduced so householders can just crack on with most jobs unless they want a complete new circuit or electrics near a bath / shower.

n.b. by "householders" I mean the subset of householders that don't need to come on a forum and ask how to change a ceiling light fitting because the old one had ten wires going in and the new one only has connectors for three, or change a light switch in the hallway and then discover they can no longer turn the hallway lights off :eek:. Those people should employ a registered electrician and step away from the mains wiring.

Im pretty sure I could do all work myself. If you dont know how to do something then its simple enough to read up and learn. However I would be no where near up to the standard of a proffesional. So for most big jobs ill stick to using them. Plus I dont have a great deal of time. I work long hours in a physical job amd evenings are a write off which limits me to weekends only.

I do intend connecting, plastering and tiling a small utility area in the garage though, but that will be a bit of a project once the main stuff is done.

elburnzo

We are first time buyers and decided to buy a house that needed a lot of work done. Still not decided if that was a good idea! Our plan is to redecorate to get it liveable then work on a room at a time, to get it to the standard we would like hopefully. Whether it will actually work out like that or not is another matter.

phoebe1989seb

This is our eighth house and our seventh restoration project - all older properties, Victorian being the newest, Tudor the most ancient although none have been listed.

Current house is 400 years old, purchased as a repossession in February.

It had been let to tenants for a couple of years after the owner occupier became ill and - having not been maintained during their twelve years of ownership, it was in rather a state to say the least

We moved straight in having put the contents of our previous large four bedroom house into storage. This - coupled with DIY removals - ended up costing several thousands (I gave up counting when it got to £5k ) plus we had to temporarily leave all our potted plants, some of which were huge, at our last house - fortunately our buyers weren't moving in for two months so allowed us to do this!

When we moved in with our two dogs during mid Feb we had no running water, heating or flushing toilet. The cottage originally had water supplied from a well on a nearby farm, but this had been cut off - not just to our property but to the other two properties also supplied in the same way.

Our first big job (during March) was to have a borehole drilled. Meanwhile we kept warm by stripping everything out, filled skips, worked on the covered area of the courtyard and had calcs done by a structural engineer for removing walls and a chimney breast. The whole place was riddled with condensation so as soon as possible we ordered wood burners and arranged for these to be fitted. They went in during April.

Even with the borehole we didn't have running water inside till early Summer. A flushing toilet made its debut in June. The new (relocated) oil fired boiler - in an outbuilding restored by DH - went in the same month giving us hot water in the bathroom basin.....but not the bath which still needed to be filled by bucket. We also fitted reclaimed cast iron radiators on the ground floor.

First fix electrics went in once the structural alterations were done. Second fix was during September. DH has done majority of the building work, including fitting the kitchen, constructing period-style panelling, all plastering and garden hard landscaping. He also does all tiling and joinery etc. I'm the gardener, paint-stripper, painter and soft furnisher, lol!

Outside we've transformed a nasty decked courtyard into a useful vegetable garden/gravelled seating area with oak raised beds and planted around 400 plants in the main garden - although there's much more to do. A builder fitted a new slate roof to an old extension - DH was intending to do this himself but was plastering the kitchen walls and ceiling so had to concede defeat.

In the seven and a half months since moving in, we've decorated the snug, two bedrooms, hall/stairs/landing, boiler room, kitchen (almost finished!), bathroom (DH will be putting in the new bath etc after Christmas) and started the 'book room', as well as starting restoring/painting external joinery.

Phase two will be finishing the garden (including building a Victorian style greenhouse, erecting stock fencing and restoration of the outbuildings), fitting a cloakroom under the stairs and putting in an ensuite shower room.

We're not planning on moving again so our efforts will all be worth it!

SG27

phoebe1989seb wrote: »

This is our eighth house and our seventh restoration project - all older properties, Victorian being the newest, Tudor the most ancient although none have been listed.

Current house is 400 years old, purchased as a repossession in February.

It had been let to tenants for a couple of years after the owner occupier became ill and - having not been maintained during their twelve years of ownership, it was in rather a state to say the least

We moved straight in having put the contents of our previous large four bedroom house into storage. This - coupled with DIY removals - ended up costing several thousands (I gave up counting when it got to £5k ) plus we had to temporarily leave all our potted plants, some of which were huge, at our last house - fortunately our buyers weren't moving in for two months so allowed us to do this!

When we moved in with our two dogs during mid Feb we had no running water, heating or flushing toilet. The cottage originally had water supplied from a well on a nearby farm, but this had been cut off - not just to our property but to the other two properties also supplied in the same way.

Our first big job (during March) was to have a borehole drilled. Meanwhile we kept warm by stripping everything out, filled skips, worked on the covered area of the courtyard and had calcs done by a structural engineer for removing walls and a chimney breast. The whole place was riddled with condensation so as soon as possible we ordered wood burners and arranged for these to be fitted. They went in during April.

Even with the borehole we didn't have running water inside till early Summer. A flushing toilet made its debut in June. The new (relocated) oil fired boiler - in an outbuilding restored by DH - went in the same month giving us hot water in the bathroom basin.....but not the bath which still needed to be filled by bucket. We also fitted reclaimed cast iron radiators on the ground floor.

First fix electrics went in once the structural alterations were done. Second fix was during September. DH has done majority of the building work, including fitting the kitchen, constructing period-style panelling, all plastering and garden hard landscaping. He also does all tiling and joinery etc. I'm the gardener, paint-stripper, painter and soft furnisher, lol!

Outside we've transformed a nasty decked courtyard into a useful vegetable garden/gravelled seating area with oak raised beds and planted around 400 plants in the main garden - although there's much more to do. A builder fitted a new slate roof to an old extension - DH was intending to do this himself but was plastering the kitchen walls and ceiling so had to concede defeat.

In the seven and a half months since moving in, we've decorated the snug, two bedrooms, hall/stairs/landing, boiler room, kitchen (almost finished!), bathroom (DH will be putting in the new bath etc after Christmas) and started the 'book room', as well as starting restoring/painting external joinery.

Phase two will be finishing the garden (including building a Victorian style greenhouse, erecting stock fencing and restoration of the outbuildings), fitting a cloakroom under the stairs and putting in an ensuite shower room.

We're not planning on moving again so our efforts will all be worth it!

7 period property restorations! You must a glutton for punishment! Our previous house was 400 years old. A beautiful grade II listed 2 bed cottage. Fortunatly it didnt need any work other than regular maintenance.

If I had the time and money I would love to do what you are doing. Although I bet you have found a few nasty suprises in your time!

SG27

Our old radiators are coming off week after next so we can plaster. I plan on decorating myself but this will take me several weekends. I want to get the radiators back on asap now its starting to get cold. Could I just decorate the patch behind each radiator in each room first then then get the new radiators fitted?

FreeBear

SG27 wrote: »

Everyone needs to employ specialist tradesman, unless you are a registered NICEIC electrician, a gas safe engineer and a Fensa window fitter all in one!

A NICEIC electrician is not required for most jobs around the house - There are other registered bodies that can self certify notifiable works (e.g. new consumer unit, electric shower...). Likewise, FENSA is not needed to install windows, and judging by some of the bodges I've seen, best to steer clear of some of them.

The only one I would agree with with is using a Gas Safe registered engineer. For everything else, building control can be called in to check, certify, and sign off on notifiable works.

Waterlily24

We've had 6 houses 5 have been doer uppers and one brand new.

1st one we bought before we got married, took us roughly 3 years to do. We only did it evenings and weekends, other half was a shopfitter so worked away a lot. His mate who was an electrician rewired for us. Other mates helped when they could. Got very good reviews from the estate agents when we sold a few years later. Had to move because of a job change. 1930s semi

2. bungalow that needed complete refurbishment, 1920s that didn't look like it had been touched apart from a bit of decorating. We sold that in the mid 1980s it's been up for sale recently and still had the same kitchen lol.


3. Brand new nuff said lol


4. Another 1920s ex high up naval quarters. Wasn't mortgageable when we bought it but we lived in it and did it up as we went along and extended it, it was a lovely house when finished. Sold it easily that's also recently been up for sale and again it has the same kitchen with some new tiles, this was sold over 20 years ago.


5. Had to move again because of work. 1960s bungalow on a large plot.
This one had the least to be done just new kitchen and bathroom and complete redecoration.

6. the one we are in now, we lived in a mobile home on site while the extension was being done as we only had the walls left lol. We had to wait over a year to get planning permission and lived in it till then. We really only moved here because of the garden and no near neighbours.
We couldn't get planning permission for what we wanted (wanted to keep it as a bungalow but they would only let us extend the floor area by a third). We did extend by a bit more but they also let us extend upwards as a chalet bungalow.