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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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).

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[rexehuk]

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.

 

[rexehuk]

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?

 

[rexehuk]

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

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!

 

[rexehuk]

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

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.

 

[rexehuk]

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

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.

 

[rexehuk]

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.

 

[rexehuk]

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!

 

[rexehuk]

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

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.

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

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.

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!

 

[rexehuk]

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.

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).

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.