Renovated the entire downstairs, including a new kitchen in 2022
New central heating boiler and new radiators downstairs
Complete re-wiring downstairs
Removal of old gas fires and associated gas pipes
Opened up the cellar to use as a laundry room
Renovated our nine-year-old’s bedroom with new plaster, floorboards and furniture
Re-decorated the bathroom
Added solar panels and a battery
Despite this, the house is still a work in progress. Although we have redecorated the bathroom, and made some minor changes (new taps, new bath panel, replacement shower and shower screen), we’re planning on renovating it once money allows. In particular, at present we have a shower over the bath, but would prefer a separate shower cubicle. After that, there are also our bedroom and our spare bedroom that need renovating, and the landing. But we’ve done more than half of the house now and it’s much nicer for it.
This also means that I’ve had the same address for 10 years – my longest period of stability since moving out of my parents’ home in York, back in 2002. Another eight (and a bit) years, and this will have been the place that I have lived the longest. I’ve already spent more time living in Sowerby Bridge (15 years this November) than Bradford (8 years).
We originally took out a 25 year mortgage in 2015. However, we’ve re-mortgaged a couple of times, most recently in 2022 when we took out a five year fixed deal shortly before the Truss-Kwarteng Fiscal Collapse. And changes to our payments, plus our over-payments via Sprive, should mean that next summer will be the mid-point of our mortgage repayments. So we’ve got a way to go before we’re mortgage free.
In addition to a new downstairs bathroom, we’ve also invested in a new central heating boiler for our house.
This was mainly a necessity, rather than a desirable enhancement. The existing boiler dates from 1976, making it 40 years old. This is far older than most boilers – by comparison, my parents have had their boiler replaced twice in this time. If it broke down, I doubt we would have found anyone able to fix it. In which case, we would have needed a new boiler anyway, so we might as well get a new one at a time that’s convenient for us. With Christine still on maternity leave, and the weather warming up, last week seemed like a good time to do it.
The old boiler was a so-called ‘back boiler’, located in one of the chimneys in the house and with a gas fire in front; there were also two other gas fires in the house that we had removed in the summer. We also had a large hot water tank upstairs in what will be Elizabeth’s room.
Boiler installation
The new boiler is a combination boiler that provides both heating and hot water, so the old boiler, hot water tank and gas fire were all removed as part of the works. Additionally, we had to have the boiler in a different place, as it wouldn’t have fitted in the chimney and would’ve been awkward to access even if it did fit. So it’s now in the kitchen.
As it’s a newer-style condensing boiler, it should use significantly less gas than the previous boiler. Which is good – we spent a fortune over the winter as Christine was at home all day with Elizabeth during the coldest months of the year. It’s manufactured by Worcester-Bosch – one of the better makes and comes with an 8 year guarantee. There’s also a filter, to remove impurities from the water in the system, thus pro-longing the life of the boiler – that’s the black thing on the pipes in the photo.
Cost
We got two quotes for the work. The first was our current energy supplier – a large British firm specialising in Gas, who quoted us over £6000 for the work. Thankfully a local firm quoted us less than £4000, so we went with them. They managed to do the job in two days, rather than three, and we got an interest-free credit deal for two years.
As well as the new boiler, we also got a new thermostat (more on that later), and four new radiators in the downstairs rooms. One of these, in the kitchen, replaced a hugely inefficient electric radiator; the others replaced existing radiators that were removed and stored during our earlier renovations, but haven’t worked well since they were reinstalled.
Whilst the work has been costly, I’m hoping it will pay off in terms of lower gas bills, and should mean that we’re not stuck with a broken boiler in the middle of winter.
It’s been a little while since my last update on renovating our house – January to be exact. We’ve actually been spending time working on other peoples’ houses in the meantime – my mother-in-law needed her hallway repainting and we returned a favour by helping a friend who helped us a lot last summer.
The big change is in ‘the triangle room’ – for context, see this blog post from September. We’d always intended for this to be a downstairs cloakroom with a toilet and washbasin, and, now it is. We bought the toilet, washbasin and a matching tall cupboard from a local bathroom store at a decent discount, and then got a local plumbing firm to fit it. The main aim of this is to allow my mother-in-law to visit – she’s disabled, and can’t get upstairs, so having a downstairs facility will mean that she can finally come and visit us. For this reason, we’ve bought a taller toilet.
Alas, we can’t use any of it yet. The location of our sewerage pipes means that we’ve had to have an electronic macerator fitted, and that still needs to be wired in. And when that’s done, we’ll need to be very careful about what actually gets flushed down the toilet.
The rest of the room needs finishing off – there’s no paint on the walls, no floor covering and no tiling around the washbasin – but we’ll get to these jobs in time. We’re also looking at buying some more wall-mounted cupboards, so that we can carry on using the room as a storeroom – albeit, a more tidy one.
We haven’t hit any major snags but August has been a busy month for us (as evidenced by the lack of blogging) and so we haven’t progressed as much as we’d hoped. Here’s an update:
Plastering
The damp-proof plastering dried out mid-August, and so we have the first two coats of paint on the walls in the dining room. I’ve also been able to patch up some bits around plug sockets (for example) that weren’t quite finished to how we’d like.
I also mentioned last time that we needed some extra bits done – we had a builder in last week, who did these for us. So, the plastering is all done now, and we just need to wait for all of the new plaster to dry out. This means that we’ve finally had all of the holes from the old plug sockets filled in.
Bathroom
The bathroom was the one upstairs room that we planned to decorate, and also the one with the least amount of work required. However it ended up as a lower priority when we realised how much work the rooms downstairs would be. Anyway, we’ve got on with the painting in here and it’s basically done, but needs a little touching up to make it tidy with clean lines. The floor also needs a serious clean to get the paint splashes off, but otherwise, the bathroom is pretty much finished now.
Flooring
The living room, dining room and hallway all originally had the same dark blue carpet. We had to take this up as part of the re-plastering work, but we’ve decided to get rid of it. This is mainly because the new plaster is actually thinner than the old, so the dining room floor in particular now has a very slightly larger surface area – and so the carpet no longer fits correctly. We’ve instead decided to get oak laminate floor, with the same pattern across the kitchen, dining room, hallway and living room. The new flooring has been ordered and paid for, but we’re awaiting the last few bits to be delivered before it’s installed. As for the old carpet, a friend of ours took it off us for nothing for use in her house, which is great as it would have probably cost us money to dispose of.
‘The Triangle Room’
Beyond the living room is a room we’ve been calling ‘the triangle room’, as it’s roughly triangle-shaped. I assume it was originally part of what is now the living room as it’s separated by a comparatively modern stud wall. This part of the house used to be a shop, and the window in this room used to be full height. It’s been partly bricked up, but only on the outside, as we found when we took a bit of plasterboard off behind the radiator and opened up a void below the window.
I mentioned that we’ve had a builder in – he’s filled the void with insulation and covered it with some new plasterboard and plaster that is flush with the rest of the wall. We’ve also had an additional stud wall and door fitted in the room, as shown in the work in progress photo at the top, as eventually this will become a cloakroom with a toilet and washbasin. This probably won’t happen until after we’ve moved in as we’ll need to save up some more money first. It’ll also need flooring putting down, but again, after we’ve moved in.
Painting
We’ve started painting the dining room, as mentioned, and once the rest of the plaster is dry (which should be in the next couple of days) we can paint the living room as well. We’ve bought all of the paint already – the dining room is being painted green, and the living room a kind-of chocolate brown.
Exterior building work
We had two gas fires that we didn’t want, which both had external flues. Having removed these, we got the builder to fill in the holes in the external walls. He’s done a great job and it’s actually hard to see where the holes were originally. When the mortar dries, it’ll be almost impossible I reckon.
What’s next
We’ve not got many jobs left now. The flooring needs to go down, and we need to re-hang some skirting boards and lift some gripper rods that were left over from when the carpet was down. After that, it’s basically just painting, and then we can move in. Whilst this won’t be the end of the house renovation project, we’ll have done the most disruptive work before moving in. If all goes to plan, we’ll be living in the house by the end of the month.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we my last update on the house. We’re now four weeks on from having got the keys, but it’s likely to be around 6 weeks before we move in unfortunately. Here’s where we’re up to.
Plastering
The damp-proof plastering is done. We had to get this done as a condition of the mortgage, but thankfully we’ll get money back from the mortgage lender now that the job has been completed. Considering that the cost of the work was a four figure sum, this is quite welcome.
We have some more plastering to do, however. Last time, I mentioned that the existing plaster was in a poor state; fortunately it’s not universally bad. Once we got more wallpaper off the walls we found some re-plastering work had taken place more recently, and bar a few small holes it’s in good condition. But there are still some larger holes that need re-plastering, and some (presumably original) plaster that needs replacing or skimming over.
Wallpaper
Most of the old wallpaper is now gone. In some areas, it was four layers thick – three layers of backing paper and then a thick outer layer – so it’s been a challenge. Several walls had some hideous woodchip wallpaper, which is also an absolute pain to remove. Others had wallpaper over the top of a thin layer of polystyrene, which, whilst insulative, is also a bit of a fire hazard. Especially behind radiators. Thankfully this was easily removed.
We reckon we’ll have the last of the wallpaper off this week.
Painting
We started painting the bathroom some time ago, but other jobs got in the way. We’ll be picking up on this once the downstairs is further on. The damp-proof plaster can’t be painted at all for at least another four and a half weeks, and the additional plaster that we’ll have done soon will also need time to dry before we can paint it. So we might as well crack on with the bathroom in the meantime.
Cleaning
Obviously all of the work that we’ve been doing has created a lot of mess, so we spent much of Saturday cleaning the kitchen – with friends and parents to help. The kitchen didn’t need any urgent work doing to it, barring the installation of extra plug sockets – those are now in, so the kitchen is basically ‘done’ for now and we can use it. We will need to do some tiling at some point soon but it’s a job that could be done after we’ve moved in if needed.
We’re slowly moving forward with the house. The offers of help that we’ve had from friends and relatives have been most welcome, and it’s stopped the project from getting too overwhelming. Still, I’m very much looking forward to it all being finished, and for us to be able to live there.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we got the keys for our new house, and we’ve been rather busy with it. Things haven’t quite gone to plan, however…
Plaster
I mentioned last time that, as we started removing the wallpaper from the walls, that the plaster appeared to be in a poor state. This turned out to be something of an understatement, as we were able to pull off huge chunks of plaster from the walls with little more than our bare hands. Consequently, the dining room is now being completely re-plastered from floor to ceiling, using damp-resistant plaster.
Elsewhere, in the living room, we’re just having the first metre from the floor re-plastered, as part of the damp-proofing works that we’re required to do as a condition of the mortgage. We’re also having the skirting boards replaced as part of this, mainly because the original ones came off in pieces.
Plumbing
It was Neil, in the dining room, with the lead pipe. I suppose it was inevitable that there would be lead water pipes in a house that is over 100 years old, but we didn’t expect them to be still in use. Whilst most of the lead piping was redundant and disconnected, there were several metres that fed our main drinking water supply. As the EPA explains, this is not a good thing and so we’ve had these replaced with copper pipes. In doing so, we’ve also ended up with better water pressure, which is nice.
Electrics
I mentioned that the plug sockets were old and in weird places. But rather than simply have the existing sockets moved to sensible places, we’ve had a whole new ring main fitted downstairs. This is partly because the wiring for the old sockets was poor, but also because we wanted more sockets in different places. So now the dining room has 5 sockets rather than 4, and the living room has 7 rather than 3. Plus, we’ve been able to add a socket in the hallway which previously didn’t have one at all, an additional socket in the basement which will be useful if we decide to buy a tumble dryer, and several extra sockets in the kitchen, which only had 3 in nonsensical places.
However, as the remaining wiring isn’t great, we’re strongly considering having the rest of the house re-wired too, especially as one of the bedrooms only has one working plug socket.
Gas
When the house was built in the 19th Century, it would have been heated using open fireplaces. Whilst most of the chimney breasts remain, the fireplaces have been bricked up, and a series of gas fires installed. Later, probably in the 1980s, central heating was then fitted with radiators, but three of the gas fires remain.
One is upstairs and therefore not a priority for us. One is in the dining room and attached directly to the boiler, so we need to keep that for now, but there was a free-standing gas fire in the living room. We’ve got rid of it, and had the gas pipe connecting it capped off.
Bathroom
We started re-painting the bathroom, but haven’t progressed beyond a coat of white primer on the ceiling (which was varnished wood panels). We’ll get on and finish it eventually.
All in all, the house is, unfortunately, turning out to be more work than we’d originally anticipated. It wasn’t our intention to buy a house to do up – we’d hoped that it would just require a few jobs doing and then we could move in. We’re fortunate that we’re able to carry on renting our current flat for the time being, although we do need to move sooner rather than later. We’re paying rent, a mortgage and two lots of utility bills, which will cost a lot of money. But we have also been very lucky that a couple of friends have been able to do the electrical and plumbing work for us, rather than requiring us to pay an electrician, which has been very much appreciated.
I imagine that we’ll be able to move over in August, provided the house doesn’t throw up any more surprises.
