Our Restoration Plans

The structure of the house is part ashlar and part random stone construction with quoins, with lots of land around it. It has high ceilings, spacious rooms, old sash windows and red and black floor tiles, plus a late Victorian extension at the back which we intend to demolish and replace with a stone-built extension of slightly greater size.

Our plan for the house is to restore it largely as it used to be, using appropriate materials (i.e. lime not cement etc).  The only constraint here is that Jane does not want the interior to remind her of the sort of house that her grandparents lived in when she was young!  Hence if we aim for Late Georgian/early Victorian rather than late Victorian, I should be OK.  

What's wrong with the house?

Issues with the house are:

• The leaking roof
• The ivy (on roof and walls)
• The dampness, principally on the walls and upstairs ceilings
• The brick extension
• The lack of a gas supply
• The lack of any form of central heating

I also anticipate that the entire electrical and plumbing systems will need to be replaced, and that the joists and rafters may be suffering from dry rot/woodworm/other.  Apart from that, it's great!

The current single-storey extension is in danger of self-demolishing as it is only of single brick construction and the end wall is bowing to a considerable degree.  Also, the extension's door and window frames are rotten, the roof leaks, the floor is damp and overall there aren't many good things to be said for it.

Fixing the roof and guttering etc will address the major cause of dampness.  The work to be done will be to remove all ivy and slates, repair the roof structure as required, fit a waterproof membrane, fit new battens, repair soffits and fascia, fit new cast-iron gutters and downpipes and replace lead flashing and slates.  The photo on the right shows one of the downpipes with a fairly obvious major fracture which had clearly been there for some years, judging from the damage to the pointing lower down.

So there will also be pointing to be repaired as required with lime mortar (NOT with cement - I'll talk about that separately), windows to be repaired, and various matters to be addressed at ground level where the ground has risen up.  In some places the soil is against the wall at a level ABOVE the floor inside, which causes dampness; elsewhere someone has used concrete to fill in gaps (for instance) between the stone step and the wall outside the front door, thereby raising the ground level again and causing dampness.  The photo on the left shows a wonderful bit of cementing which traps two inches of rain water against the wall, between the drain and the edging.  It's hardly surprising that there is a lot of dampness!

There's also a small crack above the front door (photo right), but I'm not yet sure if this is a structural item or just a decorative surround.

Urgent repairs, and consents

Those who have never bought a property probably have not experienced the frustration of having to wait while faceless people (i.e. solicitors) follow a process which is fairly commonplace but just takes ages...  They are confident in the knowledge that they will get paid anyway so what's the rush?

Urgent roof repairs needed

In my case I want to get on and get the roof fixed before winter.  Every time it rains I want to get up there and fix the holes but I can't because it isn't mine yet, so I just worry about the damage being caused.  All I can do is plan and try not to worry.  The impending onset of winter was in fact one reason why our offer was found acceptable, because the vendor could see that the property would suffer further if not repaired in some way so either he had to pay out for some work or else sell it quickly.  The worst case for him would have been still to own it during winter and watch it suffer, and then he can only sell it for less than now, or even worse the council serve him with an enforcement notice to repair the listed building. This photo doesn't do justice to the poor quality of the roof, but it really does have three holes in it!

So, I need to find a roofing contractor (see separate entry coming soon)

And an architect...

I also need to tackle the questions about the permissions to do the work and I have realised that the services of an architect might be a good idea; although I could do drawings and complete the forms myself, I would probably introduce delay due to my unfamiliarity with the system.  Also, I feel that a professional approach is more likely to get the council's blessing, and an architect will also be required anyway when we do the extension next year.

Consents required

The permissions required look daunting: apart from the normal planning permission and building regulations, we are in a conservation area and the building is listed.  The issue is that each of these may or may not apply to what you want to do.  Apart from engaging an architect, I think the trick is to get to know people at the council before you actually start work or even before you make an application - they like you more if you speak to them and try to follow the rules!  Locally they are very helpful and have a pragmatic view of things. For instance, before making the offer I spoke to a conservation officer who enlightened me about some things:

• If I repair EXACTLY like for like, I do not need listed building consent or any other consent, but even to remove someone's bodge and restore the building to its original state DOES need consent.  (We have a couple of ridge tiles missing and lead flashing has been used instead and strictly even this replacement will need permission to change.)
• Repair is always their preferred option, rather than complete replacement (especially do not re-point complete walls).
• "A house has to earn its keep" - they are realistic in their outlook on what you want to do, but it helps if your requests are reasonable as well!
• They like to see lime used on old buildings and hate to see cement ribbon pointing, UPVC doors/windows, plastic guttering etc being used on old buildings.
• Hence my proposed stone extension in lime met with immediate agreement as to being a good idea, despite the increase in ground area.
• There is a popular belief which is that only certain parts of a building are actually affected by listing.  This is NOT true - although it may be the case that only certain parts were the original reason for listing, once it is listed then the entire building, inside and out, and its entire plot including boundary walls, is all subject to control.
• If I want to make an access through a low wall, I won't need conservation approval as the wall is so low (I don't know the critical height) but I would need listed building consent as the wall was there when the building was listed.

Money matters

When you are made redundant at 58, you have to consider whether you really want another similar job and also whether you are likely to get one anyway.  If the answer to both these is "no" then you are effectively retired.  It has taken me some time to get used to that idea - well, just about three days actually!  There then arise two further questions: firstly, can you survive on what you have; secondly, how will you keep yourself from getting bored?  The answer to the first of these meant that we would have to leave our posh flat overlooking the Thames in London in order to forsake mortgage and service charges, in order to buy a place without a mortgage "somewhere in the country".  The second question indicated that a refurbishment project might be just the thing for me.  So we sold our flat and moved to a rented house in the heart of England in order to look for that elusive property which I would know when I saw it.

After seeing the house, I did some budgetary sums on a Post-It note.  Overall, I reckoned that it would need around £100,000 to fix this (famous last words!) and so with our own sale agreed we needed those proceeds to pay for this purchase and the refurbishment.  The asking price was obviously OTT, so we made an offer about £50k less on the afternoon of the day we looked at the house.  This was rejected but the agent played it well and a second offer was accepted.  She called to tell us but we had gone out, but we made the deduction from the tone of her voice-mail, and went to bed rejoicing.  The next morning the website showed "Sold STC" so we were quite sure (well, I was anyway) that it was ours.  Then the agent called to say that yes, our offer had been accepted BUT someone else had gone in a few minutes ago and made a higher offer, which they would have to put to the vendor.  So our hopes seemed to be cruelly dashed, and we spent the next two hours realising just how much we had actually wanted this house, and how disappointed we were not to get it.  Back to the drawing board.

Then, another phone call.  The house is (will be) ours, as the vendor had been persuaded that our position with a house already sold (STC) meant that our offer was a better one.  Great rejoicing.

Now we just have to get our previous place exchanged and completed, rather than drifting as it has for over 16 weeks (don't get me started on solicitors!).

It's all in the name

Why the "House in the Enchanted Forest"?  Wanting some early advice, I described the house to the Council's Conservation Officer: "it's the one which is set back from the road, opposite the church in the town centre, the left hand of a pair of Victorian semis".  Her immediate response was "ah, the one in the enchanted forest!"

The house as we first saw it

It was quite an appropriate description really; the right hand half of the two-storey house looks lived-in, well-maintained and loved, but the left hand half, which had attracted my interest, was anything but.  The front left hand corner of the house was covered by ivy which extended over a good deal of the front roof, but the vendors had just chopped a foot or so out of the base of this greenery, revealing stems as thick as my arms, and leaves were just starting to yellow and fall.  The front garden on the left was full of impenetrable shrubbery and trees, including laurel, fir and ash.  This extended back past the side of the house where, surprisingly, the garden widened across what should have been next door's garden.  This area was so densely covered that the far wall was not even visible, but it appeared to be perhaps 10m away from the house.  Holly, apple, pear, blackberry, buddleia and elder all mixed with vicious hawthorn and, in the distance, some species probably unknown to man.  In order to display the house to "advantage", the vendor had paid someone to go along the side of the house with a chainsaw, rather like an explorer hacking his way through the African jungle, thus permitting access to the back.

After finding this "opportunity" on a property website on a Monday evening, I tried Google maps but the aerial photo just showed a roof and lots of greenery, while Streetview did not have a discernible house at all! The next morning I looked around the outside, guessing that there was no-one resident. Externally there was evidence of poor maintenance and much damp, if that is the right word for actual holes in the slate roof. One downpipe was fractured and rainwater had been pouring down the wall; the other downpipe was intended for a water butt which had been replaced by an old and corroded galvanized cold water tank, and the water just went straight out again. Peering through the original (?) sash windows, however, showed an attractive hall and dining room with red and black floor tiles and high ceilings.

Suitably encouraged, I walked up to the market place to find the agents for more details. Before I had really grasped what I was doing, I had booked to view inside. Come Thursday morning, we were pleased to find that the interior was actually better than we had guessed. Upstairs, there's a lot of falling plaster but the floorboards seemed to be in good condition (OK, I know the joists might prove to be a disappointment); there were three good-sized bedrooms and a small bathroom as well. It was also true that you could see the sky through at least two holes in one bedroom ceiling!, but the missing plaster did show some nice riven laths, probably chestnut.

Our dream house?

Other than being listed and not detached, the house was everything that I had ever dreamed of as an old property project; we wanted somewhere stone-built in the centre of an attractive village, but with space to the side and set back from the road as we wanted off-street parking. We didn't fancy front doors opening directly into the living space - Jane likes a good hall as an entrance - nor were we too keen on small rooms with low ceilings in the typical cottage. We also wanted decent transport links, and Jane still has to travel often to London, and she likes having good shops readily available. Here we were minutes from the shops in the town centre with the station for trains to London not much further.

It was time to make up our minds and put our money where our dreams were taking us.