Days one, two and three

We collected the keys to our house on Friday. That evening was the first time to really have a good look at things. We thought that it would be a lot of work to do, and we have not been 'disappointed'. Yes, it will be a lot of work, but it will be worth it (we hope, say the slightly daunted first time buyers).



The main bits:



The damp problem in the back room also seems to affect the kitchen. Under the quarry / terracotta tiles in the kitchen is plywood. This plywood is wet in places.



Most of the outside walls are dry lined - what would we find under the lining? Is it worth ripping it out? Probably not.



The house is not earthed. There is an earth rod outside on the garden wall, but the connection seems to have been severed. We will be calling EDF first thing today.*



We cannot really foresee how things will run for the next weeks until the roofer, damp expert, electrician and plumber have come back with their quotes and reports. So to start somewhere, we have begun to remove the Artex. If we do not do it now, we will never get around to it.**



We are trying two methods.



1. Pasting the wall with wallpaper glue, and layering thin plastic foil on top to keep the moisture in. I used the cheap plastic foil you get for covering your floors when painting.



2. Spraying a very weak wallpaper glue solution, later just water, onto the Artex. I am using a garden fence spraying can. It is a very simple model for under £20 from Homebase, you fill it with water, then pump it up - and it is ready to go.



It was soaking there overnight, and I attempted to scrape it off. Once it was soaked and softened a bit, I used a Harris stripper, one with a sharp blade.



That worked like a dream.



Here are some more pictures: this is the dining room.







Sitting room.







We left the carpets in, to protect the floorboards from all the Artex bits.

Yes, and we will be wearing masks from tomorrow.



*Ed. - It turned out that the 'severed earth rod' was, in fact, the cabling duct for our Virgin Media service (we had a lot to learn at this stage). The house had probably never been earthed, but a combination of two electricians and EDF's free earthing service (they don't want valuable customers to die for the sake of a few pounds), means the house now meets the requirements of current electrical regulations. Current - geddit?



**Ed. - Anyone tackling Artex removal should not do what we did and just start. Later on we got the textured paint checked for asbestos - luckily it came out clear. If there is asbestos present, then either leave it, get it skimmed with plaster or get the professionals with white suits to get rid of it.

Day four - I think - I have already lost count...

Today was all about locating the stopcock. For the mains water, that is. It appears that previous owners blocked everything that is useful and required to maintain a house in working order under layers of dry lining.



For an hour or so, we could not even find any of the main cold water pipes. So up came the floorboards. With some further detective work, and the help of a plumber who bothered to actually take the boards up, we got lucky third time around.



I have somewhat gotten used to the fact that under the boards we tend to find 100 years of accumulated mud, dust, rubble and so on. Feels a little like our own personal excavation site - we could do with a handful of first year archaeology students to help with the digging.



Seems the pipe is too small and should be upgraded. It is also apparently made of iron. I thought the tea tasted funny.



While my other half was showing around a plumber and a roofer, I kept scraping the wallpaper in the master bedroom off.



I had been to Gibbs & Dandy - great store, very helpful, and they have all the gear. I bought something called a Paper Tiger, which did its job in scouring the wallpaper, prior to wetting it with our garden sprayer.



Also got our face masks to combat any asbestos in the Artex (three rooms and the hallway are yet to be freed of this vice).*



Wallpaper was coming off nicely after a little persistent soaking. At least one thing that seems to be fairly easy / straightforward / cheap. We could do with more of that.



I hope to be up there again tomorrow around 8-ish - I like this wallpaper business.



*Ed. - Anyone tackling Artex removal should not do what we did and just start. Before embarking on the next lot of stripping, we got the textured paint checked for asbestos - luckily it came out clear. If there is asbestos present, then either leave it, get it skimmed with plaster or get the professionals with white suits to get rid of it.

The underbelly...

Here are a few photographs of what lies beneath.



From top to bottom: the rear roof; the bathroom; the front room into the bay.

Walls! Exposed!

Kitchen works

We hadn't thought we would be doing this straight away, but because of all this damp, we are tackling the kitchen head on.



Under the terracotta tiles, which are nice in principle, but only laid up to the appliances and not fitting well at the edges, is chipboard.



The chipboard is wet in places, and totally rotten under the sink.



The damp patches we could see, even without taking the tiles off, are under where the cooker stood. They are also under the fridge, which is on the other side of the room.



























All the walls are dry-lined, and we wonder how bad the damp is behind. It also turns out that the stopcock we were looking for a couple of days ago is behind the dry lining.



We had a visit from M&S Water Services, asking them for a quote to renew the water mains. It turned out that their surveyor had been in this house about 7 years ago, before it was all dry-lined. He seemed very certain that the stopcock was next to the window in the kitchen, but now hidden behind all this plasterboard.



He has already come back with a quote and I think we will be going ahead. A new water mains should increase the water pressure in the kitchen. This also means we will have a greater choice of boiler systems we can put in.



But back to the damp - the cause appears to be water ingress from the ground level outside the kitchen, which is higher than the inner floor level. The dining room lies even lower than the kitchen, - here the difference is about 30cm.



We are in phone contact with a company in Shropshire, which advises on how to tackle this without all the Damp Proof Course non-solutions, but we yet have to schedule a visit with them.



The idea is to lift the blue pavers on the path and dig the back of the kitchen out, then put some other form of drainage in.



Anyway, we are taking out the kitchen. My other half started hacking the tiles off, and I took out the bottom units of the fitted kitchen, which was built around the chimney breast. The wall under that bit looked surprisingly sound!

Nice damp pictures

We are digging deeper to get to the bottom of things.



Here some pictures of the side return outside, by the kitchen:





























Here some pictures of the inside of the kitchen wall. We have knocked through the dry lining, which was easy enough to do. The wall on this picture is wet to the touch, the plasterboard at the bottom was soaked.













This is under / next to the sink. Under the tiles is chipboard, the chipboard is nailed onto 1/2 inch battens, under the battens is a clear plastic foil, below that there is about half an inch of a screed (cement?), below that is a sand / soil / lime / mud mix. That is it. We have not dug deeper, but my gut feeling says that that is all there is. On the outside, behind the wall, there is the drain you can see on the outside pictures. The wood here was so rotten, it could be removed by hand. The sink above had a leak, which probably did not help with the damp. Kind of a 'double damp whammy'.

















The wall in this picture appears fairly dry, but the 1/2 inch screed is wet. The foot of the wall is patched up with cement, which probably does not help either.

We do requests... for garden pictures!

A man and his dog - or how chaos turned into a project

On Tuesday we finally had a visit from the damp guru from Shropshire.



It turned out to be all that we could hope for. I felt like a Rose of Jericho plant that was finally dropped into a bucket of water. With plenty of coffee and some improvised sarnies, we worked our way through the whole house.



We now know just about everything about how to tackle the project, and we are a good stretch further into developing a plan.

Peter (from Heritage House Building and Restoration) and Soot (the dog) stayed until about 10pm, and left us with lots of drawings and a good idea about the main jobs.



























KITCHEN: Digging out the old limecrete floor and laying a concrete floor.

Ripping out all plasterboard and possibly insulating the outside walls.

Knocking the fireplace open and raising the height of its lintel.





DINING ROOM:

Digging the builders' rubble out from under the floor joists to ensure good airflow.

Replacing the joist ends with treated timber, using stainless steel bolts.



PIPEWORK



GROUND:



Digging up the clay pipework at the back and replacing it.

Lowering the ground levels, building in a few steps, creating a sort of lower tier.

Adding a gully to which all ground close to the house will drain to.



SIDE RETURN WALL:

Remove redundant bit of waste pipe, possibly use the cast iron to replace other bits.

Re-design the pipes so that grey water and rain water are not mixed any more. This includes leading the waste water from bathroom and kitchen directly into the soil stack.

Remove cast iron rain water hopper (may be used to replace the plastic one at front of house) and run the rainwater in a closed system, straight into the underground pipes.



BATHROOM UPSTAIRS:

Run the sink and bath tub pipes directly into the toilet waste pipe; sink pipe can be run partly BELOW the floorboards.



GUTTERS:

Replace guttering at back with cast aluminium guttering.



FRONT ELEVATION:

Remove the blue masonry paint from all stone lintels (should be done before next winter), to allow stone to breathe.

Re-point whole front elevation in lime (at some point, ideally this year).



INTERNAL WALLS:





Fill cracks with ready-made lime putty.

Clean ceilings as much as possible.

Paint with silicate paint.



FLOORS :

Insulate the upper bedrooms with sheep wool insulation between the joists.



CHIMNEYS:

These will eventually need to be rebuilt. It may take a strong wind storm, or simply five or ten years, so we decided to wait until they fall. Approximate cost of rebuilding them, including scaffolding, ca. 5K.



GARDEN:

Create woodland area at the top of garden (remove paving slabs and plant trees).

Remove all the concrete stone effect rubbish.

Create several terraces and generally a more rounded, fluid feel.



LEAN-TO:

Drain rain water runoff through a carving in the stairs into lower drainage system.

Possibly whitewash back wall or put a brick wall in front of it.

Digging, digging, digging

Just a quick digging picture. It also shows the 'joist problem'.

Wednesday at 7am in Luton...

Now we have a skip... with cones and lights!



Ed. - As we were the first delivery of the day, Holywell could guarantee the time too. Nice.

Water, more water!

On Monday, we got our new water main.

It runs along the path of the old pipe, but the new one is:-

a) plastic

b) bigger in diameter.



The effect is great - 'proper' water pressure in the kitchen, which should allow us to get a modern boiler fitted (if we can find the funds, that is).







From the main road (the black square on the ground between the bins is the water meter, where the mains pipe to our house starts)...

...to the front garden...

...into the house(*)...

...through the front room and dining room...

...into the kitchen...

...and under the sink!

The guys left a long bit sticking out, so we still have some flexibility where to put the stopcock, once we get a new floor in (and new walls, and new everything).

 

 

* Ed. - M&S Water Services somehow had to get the pipe under our two-brick high foundations, without damaging the front wall, so they used a mole. No, not a real mole, a hydraulic one.



Joists go - and with them the damp smell...

We've cut out six joists. The smell was pretty bad, but now that they are out, the air has cleared already. New treated timber is being delivered on Tuesday. We are still not totally sure how to fit it. We might get a carpenter in to help.

I have also taken out the dry lining in the dining room. There will be quite some replastering to do.

Tyrannosaurus Rex Fireplaciensis

Have a look at our excavations.



This would have been one of the cast iron fireplaces in the house...