1970 House Renovation - 3 floor townhouse build log

Soldato
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Yeah, it's got more flex and will probably creak in future.

As an example... For 50 square meters I have quotes of:

WBP 18mm Ply - £500 +vat
Chipboard 18mm tg - £311 +vat

Sure it's a few hundred quid, but certainly not terrible. Also because it's ply I can cut it how I want without worrying about cutting off locking joints.

That way I can lay the floor and put in access ways for pipes etc.
 
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Mini Update

The kitchen wall is now gone, and it feels so much more light and airy.



A few pictures of the kitchen cupboards... Delicious nicotine!



The top British standard "Diagonal" wiring




Original vinyl wallpaper




I had a slight panic when we took the floor tiles up, as thought we had old plastic tiles laid with asbestos bitchumen - turns out they were just glued vinyl tiles with a black backing!

I'm currently trying to lift all the tongue and groove chipboard, which is a major undertaking. I think I'm going to make a stab at the front room first and lift/reboard as I go to ensure the house remains liveable.

We've taken the decision to lay some insulation in the front room, as it sits above the garage... so think I'm going for 100mm PIR, do you think that will suit? I calculated the room PA ratio to be 0.57, so 100mm seems to cover me. The calculators seem to factor in the floor underneath to be soil though... this is 1st floor so below is asbestolux + garage.

Right now I'm going for 18mm square edged ply as my subfloor. Would you guys recommend laying it all parallel, or similar to how you do tiling sub floors, i.e. no 4 corners touching?
 
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Jesus Christ that wiring is terrifying. Sometimes I take it on faith that wires are where I expect them to be when knocking things into walls.

I'm gonna get a sensor. You've tipped me over the edge :eek:
 
Soldato
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Jesus Christ that wiring is terrifying. Sometimes I take it on faith that wires are where I expect them to be when knocking things into walls.

I'm gonna get a sensor. You've tipped me over the edge :eek:

Never assume in an old house... I will post pictures of work I done on weekend. Stripping off plasterboard from wall, luckily without metal tools.

Instead of running a cable up from plug in the cavity of wall, they ran it up and behind the plasterboard against the baton. If I had got in there with crowbar it would have gone through the ring and probably be dead... We have no RCD protection in house.

I generally scan walls with a pro find before I do anything, on this occasion I didn't... Assumed it was like every other wall I had looked at so far in the home!
 
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Found some nice diagonal wiring in our house when I stripped the (textured) wall paper. Was easy to spot as their plastering ability was a good as there wiring ability! I miss having new wiring that I know exactly where it all is! I usually use a detector in our house, they are not 100% accurate, but they have saved me (and my wiring and pipes) in the past.

Nicotine is disgusting, our kitchen ceiling wasn't the worst I have ever seen as the previous owners were vapers, but had smoked in the past. But it still looked 1000 times better for a sugar soap down and a paint.

Dave
 
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Update 03/06/2017

Hard to see progress, things generally seem so small and insignificant!

Chasing done - This will be our new 3rd floor ring, 2nd/3rd floor lighting run



Removed other walls - Thought it would be easier to just re plaster as they were covered in textured plaster and painted with gloss. I'm glad I did as the cable was pinned under the plasterboard!



Floors pretty much up - 18mm ply on the way and 50x75 batons already here to reinforce the floor and take those horrible thin bits of wood out.



Painting prep work
- With some downtime, I took to sugar soaping the highest parts of the house (3m high ceiling), also filled/sanded them with Toupret TX110

IMG_2282.jpg


Exposed the waste pipe to investigate - Whoever put it in, did it at an angle which is annoying... and explains why the boxing was so big



Soffits and Fascias - This needed doing as they were completely rotted away, next will most likely do the windows



The hidden gem -
This made my buy the house, so now you can get to see it. The garden is currently massively overgrown, but is set on essentially 3 levels. The stairs up lead to the 3rd level (I believe), and this goes back maybe 10+ meters and backs onto a conservation area (so completely private). When at the top, you can see the entire of wales and the sea... can't wait to clear it out and enjoy it.

 
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Soldato
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Wait, there is a hidden part of the garden? awesome if so. Want to see where that goes! :D

Yeah I've been up neighbours. There is about 10 meters of overgrowth going straight back!

Very excited to clear it out, but it's seriously overgrown. It's thick with thorns, torn myself to shreds getting that far... couldn't even get up the stairs last weekend!

Trying to let the significant other allow me to buy a petrol strimmer with deadly spinning blades.
 
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Soldato
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My partner would accuse me of starting too many jobs at once...

While she was showering I took the decision to remove our ceiling... Woops.

Destruction is far better than creation.
 
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So I've decided to take the ceilings down. On exploring to take off the popcorn ceiling, it transpired that they painted right onto the plasterboard and that stripping it off was going to be a bodge / would never be level. Didn't want to skim it as they are disgusting and yellow and would just lock in the nictotine.



Materials have finally arrived today, and now have 20 sheets of 18mm ply, 20 sheets of 12.5 plasterboard (arriving any minute) and 60sqm of 100mm rockwool sound insulation! I moved all of this alone... it's hard work moving ply!



Can finally crack on and just go for it. Managed to find a plasterer who will do my front room (4 walls), touch ups, cover chases and 2 ceilings for £400, and he has good reviews.

Had a guy quote via photos and he said £1500, without ceilings that was just 4 walls, shopping around is worth it!
 
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Soldato
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Feels like a major update, but so much more to do!

Over the past few weeks we've been tackling wiring, ceilings and cutting in back boxes and fitting new sub floor in front room
Ceiling down above 2nd floor stairs




Ceiling in our main bedroom - This was a bad idea

We had known there was a bee nest somewhere, as we had to get them removes before doing the soffits. We had no idea however that Bee HQ was above our heads while we were sleeping!

Luckily for us, the bees had moved out, otherwise this could have been a bit hairy



Huge nests - Probably about 5+ the size of footballs

IMG_2310.jpg





Beginning the sub floor!

Cut and terminated the radiators in the front room - Have a new single vertical radiator on the way



I chose to use 100mm rockwool sound blocks to insulate/prevent noise - Will be doing the same in every floor of the house, and ceiling on top floor potentially



Firstly had to get up the remaining chipboard floor, because all the pipes were dealt with, circular saw up the middle of each one made light work of it





We also stripped the remaining textured plaster off the walls, and discovered a ton of it was blown, so I stripped it back to stable plaster and we'll get this sorted



Got some floor down just to work and plan out the attack - Under is the new insulation with all cabling resting on top to ensure it's not affected




I decided to lay 100mm framing around the edges - Meaning I could take up the sub floor without disrupting skirting once the room is finalised (this however makes installation a bit more time consuming...)



First edge down (2.4 x 0.10) - Gorilla glued and double screwed with gold screws




Second edge down to allow first board
- Because of the edging occupying the joist, I'm having to build a sturdy support for the ply. Each baton is 50x75, gorilla glued to tight fit and double/triple screwed with 5x80mm (5x50mm into blind joist as can't get behind). Where doing the horizontals, I chose to stick a support baton under the baton to allow me to be sure it will never sink as it's a main support corner.



MG_2333.jpg


Mmm oozing gorilla glue! Awesome stuff.




Opposite end support



The very messy work site!



Finished opposing end - I hope this will be extremely sturdy... it should be very well supported. The joists are pretty hard to work with, some of them are quite knotted.





In terms of screwing down the ply to the framing, I'll be using special SPAX 4.5x60 which should prevent any sqeaking going forward.

Rewiring

Chase cut for 4 gang light switch on 2nd floor - This will be the open plan kitchen you come up to from upstairs



Tagged all old cable with red ties to pull it out once we cut over

IMG_2346.jpg


New socket location (plasterboard)



New Socket (Solid Wall)



New Socket (Plasterboard)



New Socket (Solid Wall) - Start of our 3rd floor ring



New Socket (Plasterboard) - Mismeasured this one... so fashioned a bit of plasterboard and used evostick to fix it... seems pretty secure



We were lucky enough to have a friend lend us this - http://www.screwfix.com/p/armeg-ebs-back-box-wall-chasing-installation-kit-7-pcs/67733 - made cutting all the back boxes a breeze!

Kitchen ceiling
Not really tidied cables yet, but done a few fire clips to keep it up there as it's an escape route.


MG_2345.jpg


Wiring everywhere! Had to cut a few rings and rejoin (hence terminal blocks) which is just temporary... and no real load going through these before people panic.



Next steps, will be getting sparky in to most likely flip our CU over and might also get him to do the 4 gang switch as it's switching all 3 floors so mind is melting at the wiring for it!
 
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Finally... the rewire in my mind is done. We still have the ground floor to do, but this is not a major issue... just boiler / washing machine and our 4th bedroom which is just a storage area right now. To do the ground floor it's going to need multiple floor to ceiling chases as the floor is all concrete, so this can be done later.

Got the consumer unit in today, all my wiring passed with flying colours - Very happy given it was my first time! Used wago to do all my connections and they're super simple to use and make things look nice and neat. Saved about £5200 by doing it myself.

IMG_2354.jpg



Mid floor light switch... only complicated one in the house (thank god)



Ready to be clipped now and plastered



New 18mm ply flooring with batons and using SPAX 300 4.5x60 (and a bundle of old cable from the 1st floor).


IMG_2358.jpg


Ceiling started - The joists are a bit drunk so doing my best to correct them (offcut of ply worked perfect), before the fix it was visibly bowed. All the cabling is excessive because they will be my downlights (going for 9 or 12 in the front room) aiming to get the boards up, plastered and then cut holes and pull cable down to connect up swiftly.



Things should I hope now move pretty swiftly... nothing but time is now required and have all the bits to finish the house to hand.

Once we're in the front room I'll be tearing up the kitchen, laying new flooring, running 2x6mm and 1x10mm feed and running a new 2.5mm feed for ground floor so it's there in the ceiling and can finish the kitchen.
 
Soldato
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Monumental amount of work there! Sounds like you know what you're doing, or are you learning as you go along?

First house. I'd like to think I'm quite logical so enjoy this work to be honest, completely different to my day to day. It's kind of an escape from work!

Wow a lot of work there! Are you living there whilst you do this? Don't think I could fit that many sub floors, ceilings etc!

Yes living in with partner. It's an interesting project to manage, kind of living in kitchen right now and trying to get this front room done minus final flooring. I actually like having no ceilings, makes whole place seem nice and airy!

Hardest thing for us is living without a proper kitchen as we love to cook, pretty much living off easy meals or ready to cook chicken and so forth.
 
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Keeping tabs on this thread - very interesting, you are doing a great job!

Cheers!

We've had our steel calculations back and been consulting with builders.

We want a full 5.2m span of steel and at the moment access is the main issue. Had an ig50 lintel specified and runs into around £1200 for lintel alone. Because of access issues we'd need a crane to lift the steel in and lifts so that idea is probably now dead.

What we're now exploring is a split span of 2.4 with bi-folds and 2m of solid glass in single sheet. Gone back to the drawing board with the steel and will try do a column with two horizontals.

On the plus side we now have double glazing finished in our bedroom which has made it much more liveable.
 
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