Anyone renovating a house at the moment?

trailingspouse

Just coming to the end of our latest project - 5 1/2 years to renovate both house and outside space. Guy is coming to re-lay the drive in a couple of weeks, and that should be that (apart from...)
First house I ever did up was a tiny 300 year old cottage - young and inexperienced, made lots of mistakes.

Next was a large 300 year old house - not much money so couldn't afford to do what we really wanted to do.

Latest is a large Edwardian townhouse - much more experience, and better off financially - we've just about got it right this time!!
Biggest mistake we made was putting dark solid wood flooring down in some of the rooms - it's shrunk badly (despite being stored in the rooms it was going to be laid in for a couple of months before we laid it) and looks dreadful in places. It's fixable, but hassle, and we need to get round to doing it (might be a good job for a rainy winter weekend!!). If I had my time over again I would just carpet throughout.

SG27

Re wire first fix done! Which is great.

But we have an old 1960s airing cupboard in the kitchen which appears to have a solid square block of chimney breast in the top back. The plan was to knock the whole cupboard out but now I concerned that this block is sitting on the cupboard walls and I dont want to take away its support. So looks like we now need to re design the kitchen to fit this block and its support in. Which is right pain!

abssorb

If it's not too late, something to consider before plastering is to run computer network cabling (ethernet). A reel of top quality cable is only £50 and does wonders for your internet use, and is a desirable feature for resale.

abssorb

SG27 wrote: »

......looks like we now need to re design the kitchen to fit this block and its support in. Which is right pain!

Can you still use the chimney? How about an indoor BBQ / pizza oven.

SG27

abssorb wrote: »

Can you still use the chimney? How about an indoor BBQ / pizza oven.

Haha yeah that would be good. Unfortunately its literally just a block in the top corner of the kitchen. With a hole where the flue of an old 1960s freestanding boiler would have been fixed.

SG27

abssorb wrote: »

If it's not too late, something to consider before plastering is to run computer network cabling (ethernet). A reel of top quality cable is only £50 and does wonders for your internet use, and is a desirable feature for resale.

Someone else suggested this too. Seems a bit old fashoined to me does anyone use ethernet anymore??

abssorb

It's a big subject and would probably hijack your thread.
It's not so much that no-one uses ethernet, as everyone hates cables. WiFi is marketed like it's magic rather than science, but it has a lot of limitations and Mesh clouds it even more.

Ethernet, might come back into domestic use, as more houses are built with foil-backed plasterboard and it's discovered that "Mesh Wifi" is a bit of a sticking plaster, and all our domestic devices become smart / IoT / IFTTT.

Ethernet with multi access points will make a more powerful whole house WiFi than mesh can achieve.

Forgive the cut/paste here. For a basic setup -
Pick a central point for the cables to gather (doesn't need to be your router. Can be the airing cupboard, dist board, alarm box or anywhere it's easy to run cables because of existing pipes / cables).

Run cables from there to any known desktop places. Maybe one to the TV for streaming. If you have a NAS, that will need a cable(s) too.
Consider one each for running WiFi access points. These are little satellite WiFi transmitters, a bit like mesh but with none of the downsides.

Finally run at least one cable from the central point to the location of your router.
Then at the central point install a Network Switch.

Running the cables is cheap and easy. Adding the connectors is a bit trickier but services can be hired reasonably.

onomatopoeia99

SG27 wrote: »

Someone else suggested this too. Seems a bit old fashoined to me does anyone use ethernet anymore??

People that care about network stability, security, reliability and ultimate speed.


People that "hate cables" use wifi or powerline adapters.

mrbios

I love that i can reply to this thread, i waited years for something like this! I drilled a hole through a wall yesterday for the first time and went "Ha i made that hole, that's my hole, i wanted it there, i didn't have to ask for a landlords permission!" :P

Anyway...got the keys to my first house on the 27th of September. You know how when you look around for viewings you miss a lot of things? I missed a lot of things! I'll put that down as inexperience.
I'd already planned on new carpets etc so it wasn't the end of the world.

Anyway, over the course of the past week and a half i gutted the house, all carpets, kitchen, tiles off the walls, all fixtures and fittings and filled a skip. I now need a second one.

We sugar soaped every wall and ceiling (heavy smoker abused the place) put a coat of stain block undercoat on the two worst affected rooms, walls and ceilings, 2-3 coats of cheap white paint went in every room before we then put the colours on. Then all the new carpets went down.
Kitchen is being finished off right now, just need tiles and flooring to complete that.

Still haven't started the bathroom unfortunately, new bath, sink and toilet are all in the garage ready to be installed.

Now looking for electricians to replace the consumer unit (it has one of those really old pull out fuse boards, scares the crap out of me when you push them back in as they always seem to arc. Also looking for a builder to rebuild our gable end wall as it's leaning outwards quite a long way at the top! It has been insanely stressful, but I've been incredibly fortunate that i'm mates with a fantastic kitchen fitter who can also do plumbing, an electrician (who unfortunately is very busy, but has lots of contacts), and my dad sells kitchens for BnQ.

My to do list:
Replace consumer unit
Tiles and flooring in kitchen
Repair gable end wall
Replace majority of light fittings
Board the loft and fit a loft ladder
Replace door handles
Touch up paint where it got damaged on moving in, or where doors aren't very well fitted.
Replace bathroom suite entirely

That's just the stuff i want to get done before christmas...

EDIT: Oh i missed one bit of frustrating work off the list....the valve in the attic water tank was old and knackered, so water was always pooring out of the overflow. The previous owner was crazy (neighbours in the entire street hated her, long story) and didn't do anything to fix it. So she assumed the sound of constantly running water under the sink was just because of that. Seems that was a separate issue, once i got in there and ripped out the kitchen, even with the water off it continued to sound like it was flowing. Ripped up floorboards and there was a big hole in the main pvc pipe into the house before the stop clock, spraying away at the underside of the house. That was a fun hour trying to dig out the external stop clock that was about 6 feet down and buried under tons of dirt....