New (old) house renovation to have distributed AV!

[StevenG]

Welcome All,

Almost 2 years ago, myself and gemma (my wife) got married with the idea of owning our own home, After some saving and many house views & failures we stumbled upon Colegate the house we've now purchased.

Purchasing :-
We viewed this property on the 9th of January 2013, we immediately fell in love with the property and knew this was the one we had to have, the price was right & in a nicer area than other's we had viewed and could see us turning it around to be something we'd both enjoy living in.

We shortly after viewing put an offer in on the property which was quickly bettered so we put in what we thought the buyer would accept as we were told there was an equity release company involved which required the house to sell for a certain amount so that they would get back their money as well as the seller having money left over.

We waited for this offer to be accepted, the seller who had been admitted to a care home due to ill health had to accept the offer himself, the property was being sold by his daughter. this took a few weeks to accept, it was the 30th of January by this point.

After this we went back to the mortgage company who had previously authorised a mortgage for a more expensive house we had tried to purchase previously, because of the time passed between the first property purchase attempt and this one a new credit check was required, this for some unknown reason to ourselves and the mortgage advisor was declined! This was a big shock to us as the previous property which was more expensive the mortgage had been accepted.

After speaking at length with the mortgage provider we had to provide more evidence of our financial situation, we had to apply for credit reports and submit the reports to the mortgage company for manual review. These were reviewed by the head underwriter who determined that we were in fact able to have the mortgage and they couldn't understand why the credit check application had declined.

So by this time it was February 23rd and almost another 3 weeks had gone by. This was great news to us and the next step was instructing the survey, this was done almost straight away but the survey wasn't carried out until my Birthday, 8th March!

We didn't want to instruct the searches until this had come back as the previous house we tried to purchase we had done both at the same time and the survey came back with a non standard construction issue and we'd lost out almost £450 on survey and search costs.

We promptly instructed the searches after the survey came back fine, this was done and returned some weeks later. By this time it was the end of March, the next step was signing even more paperwork to do with mortgage deed's, land transfer forms, fixtures and fittings and contracts.

The sellers solicitor visited the seller in the care home to verify that he was in sound mind to sell the property and all paperwork was filled out during this meeting and we were contacted asking for payment of the deposit & for a completion date. We've requested the date as being the 22nd of April and hope that this is the date we finally get the keys, this is a total of 14 weeks after viewing, for an empty property & ourselves being a first time buyer!

 

[StevenG]

I'll start off with some pictures taken on the first visit to the property on the 9th of January. Some of the items have been removed, mainly the seating in the living room with assorted bags of rubbish.

The man who left the property was an elderly man as you can see from the decoration nothing much has been done to the property in some time!

Noted within the Survey was that the wiring would need re-done, which we knew when we viewed the property & we're happy to have this work carried out as we wanted to have the house fitted out with CAT6 Cable & Distributed HDMI to keep things looking clean.

Front View of Living Room

Rear view of Living Room (Plans for dining table here)

Front view to front door from kitchen showing Arch

Rear View of Kitchen

Stairs with Front door to right, Stairlift too!

Stairlift & Wrought Iron Rails

Separate Toilet

Separate Bath and Basin, Wall to be Removed

Bedroom 2 Ugly Wardrobes hiding a Combi Boiler

Combi Boiler, This will need hidden again, Possibly Sliding Wardrobes

So from the above you can see there is going to be a lot of work involved. We got the property at a good price, With my plans this from the inside will be a completely modern clean looking house and i plan to spend my time getting it right. On top of all the above there is space for a double drive at the front of the house which is on the last of the list of things to do but at least its available.

Thanks for Reading so far & I look forward to providing you with more Pictures as things progress!

 

[StevenG]

started out the day picking up my remote control light switched from the DPD depot (more on these later on). Went back to the house with the idea of dismantling things as neatly as possible so that there was clean flat straight pieces of wood etc for easy transport to the local tip.

I'll be taking as much to the tip as i can to avoid spend money on a skip just to remove some easy to move pieces of wood. I'll reserve the skip for the more dirty jobs of removing the bathroom wall, chasing for electrics and network.

I started with the kitchen and demolished the units that were left behind, along the way i removed and disposed of left over things from the previous occupier.

Wood
Here is my neat collection of wood from the previously dismantled units in the kitchen, ready to be packed up in a car and taken to the tip at petrol costs instead of insane skip hire costs.

Kitchen Sink
I've left the sink in place for cuppa's when needed, (cups of tea or coffe for the non northerners)

More Wood & Doors
Here you can see the ugly wrought iron railings which used to appear on the stairs and also the demolished sideboard (glue and dowel). Had to smash it to bits so wasn't as neat as i had hoped so a few loose edges and dowels sticking out of the ends. You can also see the old sliding wardrobe doors.

Scrap metal anyone?

Bedroom 1
This was the last order of business for today, ripped out all the sliding wardrobes, all of those screw holes to fill! The keen eye here will notice that there is damp in the left corner of this shot, This area was behind the sliding wardrobes, there doesn't seem to be too much of it and removing the paper underneath seems fine, im going to put this down to being a dark area and damp clothes being stored here.

So thanks for reading, a lot to take in and if you havent guessed i love taking pictures! Expect more of the same, i'll be back on it tomorrow, more stripping and taking down the remaining drawer units and wardrobes and possibly some paper stripping too!

 

[StevenG]

Hi all,

Today was a particularly tiring and slow progress day. I did have my dad helping me but i forgot to take pics of his progress, will get these next time i'm down. My dad proceeded with stripping the Living Room, after we tried a little piece we discovered that there is easily 20+ years of paint over the same piece of paper which made it rather difficult to remove needing steaming twice and possibly still needing a spraying of water to get off the backing paper.

I continued where i had left off with dismantling 2 sets of drawers in Bedroom 1, removed the cupboard door and many many shelves inside. This was my last demolition to be done in Bedroom 1, I went to Bedroom 2 and started with the removal of those hideous built wardrobes, they were an absolute nightmare to take down, built exactly to fit and fastened together with horrid flat head screws it took ages to get down.

Some more pics, will get the Living room pictures up tomorrow to show the progress of 5 hours worth of stripping, be warned its not a lot!

Finally coming down!

More wood to get rid of!

Im still playing round ideas in my head as to which was these rooms will be laid out. i think i will be installing modern sliding wardrobes back in the places where i have removed the previous owners as it gives maximum storage and would mean we wouldn't need any additional storage within the rooms leaving them looking really Clean.

 

[StevenG]

double post

 

[StevenG]

Today i was at work but gemma was off and decided to pitch in, got a full room stripped in pretty much an hour! Must have picked the easiest room in the house, all other rooms have multiple layers of paper and are a nightmare to strip. Still havent finished the Living Room!

Stripped Bedroom 2

Boiler above the Paper.
Most of the paper came off easy Gemma said, few tough bits still on.

 

[StevenG]

wanted to get the bathroom wall down today to see what size room i have to play with when designing the bathroom. I started taking a bit of the browning off the wall to see where the blocks where to make a start.

Browning Removal
Came off easy on this side, was only a few mm thick.

Browning in the Bath
My Dad was helping me today and we decided we had to remove the bath first before we could do anything with the wall.

More Browning Removal
The bath was installed BEFORE the browning and tiles were installed, i thought the room didn't measure right. It was only just over 164cm wide with a 170cm bath installed. Yes there was that much browning and tiles thickness.

Chased Bath
Chased the Browning off and removed the bolts holding the bath in place. There was paper padding out the gaps between the bath and the wall, dates on the paper is 1985! Bath is older than me and this browning was only applied around this date.

Bath Removed
Here you can see the thing breeze block wall construction and you can just about get an idea of the thickness of the browning here.

Starting to come down
Started middle top as there was a small breeze piece there, from there we went left and right and then down the same way.

Wall Down
Here you can see most of the wall is down, i have made 4 trips to the tip to get rid of this while we went, im cheap and i dont want to pay for a skip when i have a perfectly good (crap) car that i can throw all this stuff in and drive 5 mins down the road and dispose of for free.

Before moving on, we found an issue when removing some of the bricks, they were built into the adjoining wall, we pulled out what we could and split the bricks where we could but it was moving the door frame, we soon realised that it was in fact the same wall continued round.

Removed the Wall
So i was going to batten and board this area anyway but this has made my life a bit easier, the wall came down in 20 minutes as it wasn't attached to anything, these walls were installed AFTER the ceiling, doorways and flooring had been installed, not supporting anything and so over the top when a few pieces of wood and some board would have done the same job.

The browning around the full room is going to be chased off and i'll either dot and dab or batten, board over and then apply my tiles 1/2 way up and paint the rest. Not sure what to do with the ceiling yet, each room has a different thickness of skim applied so might have to remove the board and re-do it.

Open Plan
You can start to see the size of the bathroom now and i'm quite pleased with the size and just need to figure out which way im going to have things, the door im going to keep is the one that is directly infront of the toilet, with the wall coming down i can really choose where i want the door so there is something to think about here.

Left over Rubble
My job tomorrow is to clear this lot, another 3 trips to the tip i think will be needed, its about a 20 minute round trip so its not that long to drive and its saving me the costs of a skip.

Not going to be doing much other than this tomorrow, might do a little more stripping as i have also removed all the radiators to allow access to untouched areas.

 

[StevenG]

My mam came round today and finished off what my nanna started yesterday with the Kitchen.

My Office Stripped
This previously known as "wasted space" is now going to be my office after a few suggestions of blocking in the archway and turning it into a useful room, i liked this idea and i've ran with it.

Office / Kitchen
Here you can see behind where the radiator was, pipes form the old back boiler are sticking out of the wall so these will have to be moved and plastered over.

The stairway used to have a ceiling here, it was Glossed!! i removed it to reveal the lovely floral paper, i'll just be re-boarding and painting.

 

[StevenG]

Hi All, i went to the house today just for a few hours with the idea of getting all the browning off in the bathroom, i got the majority of it off bar what if left behind the toilet and the sink. I then wanted to remove the old door frames to make way for the new stud wall / frame that will be going up next week.

Stripped
Here you can see i have stripped all the browning off the walls and its looking good.

Big Window
Here is the area above the big window, in the survey on this house it mentioned that if the window will be replaced then lintels need to be added to re-enforce the openings, downstairs on the rear window in the sitting room there is a noticeable crack off the house dropping slightly under pressure.

Small Window
Im having thoughts about having all the windows replaced before we do any other work, its a pretty costly process but it seems pointless going ahead with all works and then having to re-do it all once the windows are re-done.

I removed the frames from the old doors for the bathroom and thought i was done for the day, i went into Bedroom 2 to find that where i had pulled the frame from the wall the wall had actually moved and cracked and taken off the browning on the other side as seen below.

Broken Wall
You could actually see through this crack, on the other side the builders had filled a gap with about 2x4" of plaster to hold this in place and fill the gap, once i had removed the door frame the wall lost all its strength.

Broken in 2 Points
I looked at this and there was also a crack in the middle of the wall too, i decided to give the wall a little push to see how stable it was, it Wasn't! it moved a good few mm just pushing on it softly.

Plaster & Wood
The only points this wall was actually tied to anything was with these pieces of wood slotted between the bricks, i decided that this was too un-safe to leave in place and i would have to take this wall down as well and re-build with a wooden frame as i was to do with the bathroom.

Wall Down
I had to do this quickly and carefully making sure that the wall didn't fall down and crash through the floor, i started at the top breaking a few bricks into pieces and then propped up both sides with the left over door frames i had from the bathroom and then removed the bricks as quickly as i could without having the wall fall down.

I confirmed that there were only 2 breeze blocks into the outside wall tying this wall in and the slotted pieces of wood between at the other side where the frames were nailed in. obviously when i removed the frame from the bathroom side it removed a lot of the support this wall had, im surprised that these walls were built this way in the first place as the ceilings were actually boarded Before the wall's were installed meaning that there not supporting anything and there not tied in at the top or bottom.

Anyway i've removed 3 walls all which were made from heavy breeze and will next week be replaced with a nice new wooden frame, i intend to board the bathroom side only and leave the rest open for access and for extra beams to be installed when the sink & towel rail are installed.

Tomorrow i have the gas guy coming to remove the fire and i'll be spending a fair amount of time cleaning up the mess from taking down that unexpected wall which is a bit of a set back. Watch this space to see what i can actually get done tomorrow.

 

[StevenG]

Today as i expected was mostly spent taking car of the rubble from the wall coming down yesterday. Thanks goes out to Ian who helped me move this to the tip with his land rover. This saved me multiple trips to the tip myself.

I stil made 3 trips to the tip to get rid of all of the remaining rubble, tiles, wall paper strippings etc, the only thing i have now to get rid of is the doors which i'll get cut up and taken the next time im at the house.

The gas man came today from Taylor Made and did a great job of removing the old fire, i had forgotten that i had a gas pipe that the council must have installed below the ceiling, it was ugly! I asked if he would also move this for me and he did, so he removed the gas to the fire at the source and re-did the whole pipe to the boiler upstairs for me. Top Job!

Old Back Boiler
Out came the old heating / boiler thing, it was covered with about 5" of sut and stuff before it was removed.

Nice Hole
Fire and Fire Place out, this is going to be blocked up as my AV unit will be placed here and my tv on the wall.

Upstairs
My open plan upstairs area, ready to be sectioned off, i have the wood on order, going to be left un-boarded so that the electricians can do their thing.

Pipe Moved
Here is the gas pipe in its new location, it used to sit about 10cm lower than it currently is as can be seen in the picture below, top left.

Pipe Top Left
At work again now till wednesday, not sure what the plans are for that day but i think the frame might go up for the bathroom and some stripping of the staircase or the old door frames which are staying in place.

I've had another 2 electricians visit the property and i eagerly await their quotes, i have had one so far but i didn't really get on with the guy and he wouldn't be doing everything i wanted. One guy came from a company that does specialist installs so im hoping that i can use him and come to some arrangement on the price as his knowledge was fantastic.

This is where i am up to currently, i'll now be posting updates as they happen, all of the above has been done on days off from work between the 19th of april till friday gone.

thanks for reading!

 

[Ma'am]

That's quite a project you've taken on there!

I love threads like this and am looking forward to the updates.

 

[Richie]

Love reading things like this... Top work so far

 

[haaammit]

Subbed - great stuff

 

[GinG]

Love these threads, keep up the good work!

 

[GW1970]

Takes me back to when I did my house up - so much fun and pain taking the house back to a blank canvas.

Whatever number of power and connection points you are thinking of installing I would double it and put in each room a power point at waist height.

I'm looking forward to seeing the next update.

 

[Nightglow]

Whatever number of power and connection points you are thinking of installing I would double it and put in each room a power point at waist height.

Good advice.

Don't skimp on sockets especially the kitchen, & get the boss to confirm socket locations in the kitchen.

Done several jobs where you finish the tiling, & the customer then decides she needs a extra socket here or there, or that socket is wrong position.
And don't skimped on network outlets, I'm putting doubles in most rooms here, & two triples for living room for tv, av amp, blue ray, sky, etc.

Shame you couldn't use the space above stairwell as a cupboard accessed from adjoining room.
Would also replace that timer next to boiler with a digital one.

 

[StevenG]

Ive decided on loads of sockets anyway going for 7 in the sitting room doubles. 5 doubles in the kitchen (not for fixed appliances, these will be on fused spurs).

I think i've covered each variation of the room layout with sockets but i've had some electricians come to quote for the re-wire which is needed and before this goes ahead i'll be sitting down and confirming location and number one last time.

Thanks for the comments, its exciting and i find my self thinking of things i could be doing whilst im at work.

 

[Nightglow]

I always try to keep fixed connections on the ring main, & avoid having spurs if possible. Just on of my quirks I have.

Excellent thread, keep the updates coming.

 

[theleg]

why would you ever get rid of brick effect wallpaper? its awesome....

look forward to seeing the thread progress.

 

[Bigpig]

Subed