1970 House Renovation - 3 floor townhouse build log

[rexehuk]

This thread will serve as a build log for a 1970 3 story town house.

The house is extremely dated, with glorious artex, woodchip walls and covered in yellow from 35+ years of a smokey couple.

I will be undertaking most of the work myself with partner.

Post Timeline
Stripping Front Room - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30684163
Stripping Main House - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30707292
Rewire Begins - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30773718
Kitchen Tear Out / Wall Removal - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30802836
Front Room Wiring / Chasing - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30844991
Ceilings Down - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30866997
Major Update - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30922238
CU Install - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/30969640
Front Room Ceilings / Plasterboarding - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/31114275
Front Room + Kitchen Design - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/31166887
Front Room Plastering / Painting / Radiator Install -https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/31269906
Front Room Final Painting + Flooring - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/31480515
New Boiler - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/31682314
Driveway - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/31684662

Completed Projects
- All walls stripped back (2017 Completed)
- Knocking through interior kitchen wall (Finished June) (2017 Completed)
- Complete Rewire (Finished July) (2017 Completed)
- New back windows (2017 Completed)
- Front room plastering (2017 Completed)
- Front room decoration (2017 Completed)
- Front room radiator (2017 Completed)
- Moving boiler and tank to garage (2018 Completed)
- New kitchen (2018 Q3)
- French doors and full height picture window in Kitchen (2018 Q2)

Current projects
- Expanding downstairs toilet room to second wet room (2018 Q1)

Future
- New upstairs wet room
- Renovating all upstairs rooms
- Renovating stairwells and staircase
- Doing something with the garden (it's very unique)

As is photos to come. Although got a bit zealous with a sledgehammer tonight.

 

[rexehuk]

The images of current state (not moved in properly yet to stuff everywhere!)

Entrance hall


Utility Room


Bedroom/Room Adjacent to Utility room


Downstairs Stairwell


Top of stairwell (This wall I will remove)


1st floor



Living Room

Kitchen (1st floor)

Upstairs bathroom

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3 (Main)
No pictures yet

Downstairs toilet room
No pictures yet

 

[Buffman]

Kitchen looks very similar to mine! 60s bungalow with a "new"ish kitchen which I'm going to rip out...

 

[rexehuk]

Kitchen looks very similar to mine! 60s bungalow with a "new"ish kitchen which I'm going to rip out...

The kitchen is honestly awful. Oven must be 30 years old, and their hob is just 2 electric hobs.

Plan is remove the wall and make the kitchen the feature of the house, as you come up the stairs it'll open up into a massive kitchen.

 

[topgun06]

Looks like you're in for a lot of fun!

 

[rexehuk]

Day 1 - Living room (Ground Zero)

Today we decided to tackle, probably the most sodden room in the house. To add more problems, it was also covered in either artex/poly or woodchip. After working with it for the day, seemed to be poly as it peeled off like rubber when heated, regardless it was a pain to get it off. Before anyone panics, we wore respirators just to be safe.

After 8 hours, the room is almost done. Need to take the radiators off, and have opted for removing two of the plasterboard walls over stripping them to make the rewiring easier (stripping the wall is really not fun).

We were treated to nicotine coming back to life as we steamed... it was pretty disgusting and something to note for anyone buying a smoker house!

Instead of stripping the staircase, opted for sledgehammer as it's cheap to replace the run of plasterboard. Now can fix some creaks in the stairs and do some other works.

 

[DXP55]

My in laws were heavy smokers but when they died the house was sold so we didn't have to strip it - I had some of the HiFi and even the inside of CD player was yellow - probably why it kept skipping - quite disgusting stuff isn't it.

 

[rexehuk]

I'm now thinking that the existing bathroom is a bodge, and not feeling confident of it's integrity.

For the last few days the shower has been tripping the CU, thought it was related to our wallpaper stripping (cable runs up wall in trunking) however it tripped this morning. The current train of thought is condensation is dripping down the cable, into the power shower. Whoever installed it was a cowboy!



The power cord, is equally bodged and not looking forward to the wall behind (think they tiled directly onto plasterboard) - water must be getting behind!



And they installed a towel warmer into the bathroom, naturally in a professional manner. Drill the tile, feed the cord in, out the other side and plug it into a socket. No sealant, so water can get into the stud wall (where the socket is too).

 

[thezappa]

Gees, sounds like you're in for some [non] surprises.
Hope you've got a good contingency

 

[rexehuk]

Gees, sounds like you're in for some [non] surprises.
Hope you've got a good contingency

Most so far not too worried about, bathroom I would have taken the ceiling and walls down anyway, purely due to age of the install and not wanting wet room to fail cause of a corner cut.

Electrics it the main worry right now, we need a new CU and might as well split house from single ring to rings by floor. Trying to find a sparky who'll let us run the cables and then just connect to CU, on agreement all the floorboards / chasing / wiring stays open which is perfectly fine. One coming tomorrow to talk through plans.

We can do a few bits in the interim like replacing back windows on all floors as that shouldn't run too much cost wise. Electrics though I think is most disruptive, as we'll have to somehow get all our stuff into loft / unused room / garage to let any chasing/underfloor work to happen. Does mean I can get my Cat6a wired in though!

Edit: Shower is 10.5KW and wired on 6mm to 45 AMP breaker with 32 AMP fuse... How do people even get qualified if they do jobs like that :|

 

[rexehuk]

Easter Update!

- Sparky now lined up with agreement to sign off works
- Meter being moved end of month (lays open ability to rewire)
- Started stripping 1st stairwell (ordered work platform due to 3m high ceiling on both stairwells)
- Finished stripping 2nd stairwell (minus area above) + removed handrail
- Fully stripped upstairs landing
- Fully stripped living room + ceiling

The walls stripped so far are in fantastic condition, and don't see any plastering right now needed - which is good because costs have come in from other surprises!

What I thought would be the easiest walls (wallpaper) have turned out to be textured wallpaper, sat on top of vinyl wallpaper that must be close to 50 years old - This makes removal very painful but certainly prefer this over glossed polyripple!

By end of Easter, should have most of the house walls back to wall - then we'll get the skip on order for gutting the 1st floor ready for rewire.

 

[dark-knight]

Subbed.

Love to see the development of older properties, lots of issues but pretty much solidly built. I love doing DIY and property development myself, I just do not have the time now which is a shame. Hope no more surprises in-store but more likely there will be several.

 

[clubb699]

Thanks for sharing cant wait to see this change

 

[Sparx]

I enjoy build logs like this, subbed!

What's the budget on this then? Is the aim to live-in or sell & profit after?

Going to be expensive either way.

 

[rexehuk]

I enjoy build logs like this, subbed!

What's the budget on this then? Is the aim to live-in or sell & profit after?

Going to be expensive either way.

Live in for a few years most likely as cannot move now.

Budget wise, not set explicitly, just want a good finish. Most likely 6-10k on kitchen, will fit myself, and 6k or so on bathroom, again diy so hopefully can attain a good finish for price.

I don't see the rest of the house being too expensive, given it'll all be DIY, just a lot of hard work. I want stuff done properly however, hence going back to brick where possible and ensuring things like ceilings are stripped, not just skimmed with plaster.

Will have an estate agent over this week to gauge what it'll fetch when done, to ensure we don't go over.

It will be a long project, ideally I want finishing touches like a rock door and wood clad the staircase with glass... This is a long way away though.

The garden alone is a major project, as its set into a solid rock face on three levels.

 

[rexehuk]

Build log will go quiet for a while, we are now ready to rewire! Meeting with electrician next weekend to run through the plans, CU and responsibilities

We have the kitchen all measured out, and will be powering through a 3 hour design appointment on the weekend.

The kitchen is going to be something special if all goes to plan, think... 5 meters of glass. Currently in consultation with a structured engineer to finalise the specification of steels.

 

[rexehuk]

So, a fair bit has happened and the renovations in my eyes have finally kicked off.

- Structural engineer is currently specifying steel for the back wall, this will take about 3-4 weeks and then we'll know viability of it as it's a 5.2M span so a single steel might not work.
- Kitchen is designed and prepped to order via DiyKitchens
- Confirmed with SE that the internal walls are all removeable which is a nice freedom to have if we re-plan (roof contains huge perlins resting on party walls)

Stripped the highest ceiling stairwell (over 3 meters)

Before

After



Rewire has begun

- Found that the property had a major leak, seen this all over the house. The good news is this seems to have been resolved before, and we have a mixture of old and new chipboard t&g
- As a result, I'm most likely going to redo all sub floors in 18mm plywood, talking to a few timber merchants at the moment to ask what they'd recommend for sub floors. Could cheap it out with chipboard... but chipboard is crap.

Identified the start of house ring


Here you can see the old/new chipboard


Water damage evidence


Start of new front room ring


Found very dodgy wiring


New Socket 1


New Socket 2


Existing socket, wiring prepped


Found our garage roof is lined with Asbestolux (won't be touching that)



Next plan, is to take out the kitchen wall to begin the open plan renovation. Once this is done, the kitchen will come out and flooring up leaving the entire 1st floor ready for downstairs lighting circuit to go in, and route all cables for the new kitchen circuit / CCU / FCUs and island unit.

 

[Buffman]

What's wrong with chipboard/mdf for floor? All my subfloors are currently timber but I'll need to replace one at some point. A do able diy job you think?

 

[rexehuk]

What's wrong with chipboard/mdf for floor? All my subfloors are currently timber but I'll need to replace one at some point. A do able diy job you think?

It's mainly cause my floor is all tongue and groove. It'll be pretty much destroyed taking it up as they've screwed and nailed it.

Chipboard is well known to squeak over time, so few a few quid more pSqm I can use much firmer plywood. While it's up I'll stick a few extra batons in too.

Yes it's definitely a DIY job. However depends on house construction. Our house obviously had flooring laid then partition walls built on top, so makes taking some panels out harder.

It's pretty destructive though, you'll need skirting boards off and most likely some replastering.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

As I understand it chipboard bends a lot more than timber, in our old new-build flat all the tiled surfaces cracked over time due to the floor lifting.