I like the other thread about renovating a house so I thought I’d share my unending tales of woe, sorry exciting life enhancing opportunity. :/

We moved in with friends as we couldn’t find a house we liked and suited us (and was within budget) – we thought it’d be a few weeks but 14 months later we are still here.

Still, did manage to buy a chuffin huge house….

For West Yorks it’s pretty big, 4.5m square dining room, similar lounge, 3 decent size bedrooms, one to be used as a studio for my wife who is an illustrator by trade.

However we had to, in the end, buy it as a “fixer upper”, with no usable kitchen in it and a lot of work needing doing with no money to do it.

Come join the nightmare adventure!!!

Lounge. Not bad, needs new window, more than 2 sockets, and a radiator in the right place under the window.

And this awful fireplace removing.

At least the plastering is ok.

Dining room. Pretty much the same as the lounge!

Bedrooms ok in general, again need more sockets and rads moving and decorating and front rooms need new windows.

Bathroom not too bad but still needs replacing.

Back of house looks over woods, it’s really nice.

Rads under the windows is the most stupid design idea ever!
Not one in my house is there – all either nice tall pipes or skirting.
Nothing worse than drawing your curtains at night and paying to heat the cold air behind them.
Or worse – tucking the curtains in behind the radiator.

In my experience rads away from the windows create a warm half near the rad and cold round the window, even with decent glazing.

This^

Not if they are placed correctly rather being stuffed behind a door, etc.

Anyway, the real reason we can’t move in is this kitchen, which I honestly think some sort of horror film was set it.

It looked like it was from the 50’s, with made to measure units, but not decorated since. Looked like some chip pans fires had happened or worse. Polystyrene ceiling, all brown and stained, everything filthy and stinking.

Of course we had the “oh we will just knock through and put a new kitchen”.

Oh yes we smiled. We dreamed, we thought no problem.

Not smiling now. :/

rads only end up under windows as its usually wasted space otherwise. its not a good place for them.

i have one there in my living room – ended up fitting a big deep sill to stop the heat going up inside the curtains.as you can actually see the curtains lift in winter when the heating comes on and the airs rising.

anyway – we did the same as you in 2012.

We just this year got the plastering finished in every room bar the kitchen and bathroom which we have not yet tackled – they are servicable.

my advice – focus on the fabric of the building early on – get the heating and electrics up to date/spec early before you start organising shit or chaos will ensue ime.

Dont even rush with the kitchen till you have that sorted !

Hammy – they were all behind the doors!!

TR – this is 2 months ago, getting up to date soon.

behind doors as generally thats the shortest run of copper pipe needed.

The advent of poly pipe has made heating a dream to fit and maintain 😀

did you leave the door open Rob? …….

So I made a plan. Fail to plan, plan to fail eh? 😉

I would install all new rads and remove all the old lead pipe. I needed a plumber in to move a gas pipe anyway but if I did the rest it’d be cheaper. I’ve done central heating changes of rads before.

Electrics – need more sockets in every room, so I would chisel out for those and install back boxes ready for electrician

Repair some roof tiles

Replace windows and doors.

Biggest job was the removal of the wall between the dining room and kitchen, the one with the rad on in the pics above. I wasn’t prepared for how hard this would be. First of all to prepare for the kitchen going in I had to remove all the black lime plaster from the kitchen, remove the ceiling and the rads attached to the wall to be removed. It took most of a day to remove the existing kitchen with a friend as it was installed almost as part of the building, with wedges into the brickwork to screw the unit sections into.

Also the cost was mounting. To get permission from the leaseholder I had to pay £400, £300 for structural calcs and £200 for building control. So £900 in and nothing had changed yet!

Yeah, i once went to look at a place in the UK with a kitchen like that…….
So badly ventilated and looked after that the walls had gone spongy.

Carried on renting for another few months and bought something else!

My builder was good though and we eventually had this delivered….

So we could do this….

This is when things started to get expensive. Before the plumber came I uncovered loads more plumbing issues which meant I wasn’t sure about tackling as much myself. I decided to get the plumber to do all the work which meant 3 days removing ALL existing pipework pretty much and replacing it all with Hep2o pipe in a much better planned way. He also plumber in all the rads which I now realise would have been beyond me in all honesty. He did it all in a short period which may have taken me weeks. Most of his bill was parts too which I still would have had to buy.

The electrician was there at the same time and I found that I’d need a new consumer unit to match current regs. I wanted sockets in the workshop and one outside as well as the new ring for the kitchen with all the bells and whistles that go along with that.

This was a low point, my mate pictured here helping me thank goodness as this part nearly broke me, spending 14hrs a day doing hard labour in the kitchen.

The biggest problem, and one I would use as a warning to others, is that when you’re ripping a place apart you finish the day every day with a house that looks worse than when you started which is really disheartening. I at least made sure everything was cleared and tidied and swept up each day even if it was going to get mucky again. Don’t underestimate how hard this bit can be on your outlook about a project.

Old doorway being bricked up.

Coool!

While I had a skip I thought I would remove both of the awful fireplaces downstairs. Thankfully there was a lintel in place above both of them but it was AMAZING how much rubble came out of such a small thing. I honestly don’t know how it all got in there and if I hadn’t have pulled it out myself I would not have believed it.

Lounge

Dining room

So eventually the first fix electric was done in the kitchen (done by me but supervised by electrician), then a friend came round and helped me plasterboard the HORRENDOUS walls which were all over the shop.

Looking a little better but slightly like a CSI murder scene.

Seems a shame to have boxed in the chimney in the kitchen. Couldn’t you have fitted a nice oven in it?

Thought long and hard about it to be honest. It wasn’t deep enough to put an appliance in it, so it would have stuck out a fair bit and we would have to have a bodge of cupboards around it. I would have had to raise the lintel too. Other option was to remove completely but that would have been very costly due to previous changes above the fireplace and even if we had done that we would have only gained 40cm of worktop either side of the kitchen as you see it in the photos.

Had the discussion with my builder and sparky and family and friends and no-one could come up with a solution that worked any better which wasn’t very expensive.

We are only having wall cupboards in the wall facing the window, going to keep it nice and open along the window wall.

Nice little project you have going on there. Interested to see how things progress over the winter.

Any man who bricks up a door way with actual bricks is a man who has time on his hands 😉

Radiators should be under the windows because they are convectors and they then circulate the warm air near the ceiling across the room and back to the radiator. Put them away from the window and you will be pulling the cold air across the floor.
As has been mentioned usually dead space too, and you also don’t get convection staining under the window.
As for curtains pulled in front, or tucked behind then I’m sure that is a form over function argument. Or get blinds or the right length curtains?

wrightyson – we had hundreds of bricks from taking the wall down between the dining room and kitchen – why buy wood or blocks brand new and throw more bricks in the skip? Best recycling!

Bear – that’s what I always understood.

I am really wanting to make a trail from the back garden over the wall at the end of the garden and into the woods round he back of the house. But everyone says having somewhere to cook and wash is more important…. bah. 😉

So all the rads in bar one, need to get the bath in so it can be tiled, so this was me in the bedroom putting the bath together at 11pm one night!

This room has been prepped completely so we were trying out colours to see what works hence the patchwork wall.

Old 70’s reinforced concrete fireplace in lounge was removed a couple of weeks ago by me and and a friend, time to make good before the plasterer arrives.

Halfway through installing the HardieBacker board.

Finished and filled in!!

Spent one evening putting electrics in the workshop….

Not an exciting picture, sorry.

Update!

Lounge is done. New windows fitted – they look amazing and even though they have more vertical bars in them the room feels so much lighter. And quieter.

Fireplace all ready for a wood burner but we can’t afford one right now. New rad and electric sockets, all original wood restored in doors and window surround and skirting. Carpet in too!

This is an ace thread. Please keep this going.

I like the colour in the lounge too.

Great work!

I’ve just bought a 3 bed doer upper 3 weeks ago.

Same early stages here for me uncovering problems I hadn’t accounted for! Such as a water leak under the ground floor floor boards coming from a cracked drain outside, meaning lots of digging to install a new manhole and change the run…. I hate digging.

Good job. Its made me realise how much work i’m going to have to do with the one i’m hopefully getting the keys for on Friday.

This is the main bedroom, now got carpets and curtains (not shown) in now.
4.5m2 – pretty big

The windows at the back of the house like this one were ok, just needed a cleaning and resealing.

Lovely view out over the woods.

We want lounge, 1 bedroom and bathroom done before we move in and we are nearly there!!

Bathroom is nearly finished. Went for an Edwardian style which matches the house age. Inset Bristan shower and taps etc. Went for dark grey grout (which looks black and the tiler HATES dark grout!) and it looks ace.

Floor now down and new column radiator in. I love a nice warm bathroom so this one is a bit big for the room but it looks ace, got it for £150 new but online they are £400 at their cheapest so a bit of a bargain.