At last we can buy this house

Happiness really is exchange of contracts!  At last the buyer of our flat in London has committed herself, contracts are exchanged and completion will be on October 22nd.  We have no idea why she was prevaricating - at first we thought it was her solicitor being inefficient and uncommunicative but we realise that actually it was the vendor herself.  One would have expected to exchange a long time ago on most properties where the sale was agreed in mid-May! 

Anyway, at last we can now exchange on our purchase of this lovely house - I will certainly attack the ivy very soon, but I might even ask if we can start work on the roof as soon as we have exchanged, as the vendor is well aware of the pressing need to sort the roof before the winter.  Whilst waiting these last few weeks, I have repeatedly done several jobs in my head, assessing how to do them and what could go wrong.  It will be a joy to actually get my hands on it!

Looking after old buildings with love

Still waiting to exchange contracts, so here's a bit about my knowledge and experience of old buildings:

I once went on a one day course with the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) called "Faith in Maintenance".  This excellent course was aimed at people who were elected as churchwardens and suddenly found themselves responsible for possibly a massive 800-year old Grade I listed church, without an idea of how to look after it. 

The major lesson from the course was "control the water" which goes on/in/down roof, gutters, downpipes, drains etc.  If you do this successfully, we were told, you will do four-fifths of the job.  Essentially, prolonged exposure to water means serious damage to an old building, and a high repair cost.  The old proverb about a "stitch in time saves nine" is very relevant but understates the saving as spending £500 on roof maintenance every year may well save a capital expenditure of a thousand times that in a few years time.

The second lesson was to never use inappropriate materials; I shall probably go on about this at length in this blog, but principally do not mix modern materials (cement/gypsum plaster) with old materials (lime mortar/plaster/render) because it doesn't work!  You have to understand how the building was intended to work with dampness and go with it, not fight against it.  A modern house sits on a waterproof membrane and works on keeping all moisture out by using impermeable materials, whereas a building made with lime mortar/plaster does not expect to be bone dry all the time (but see lesson one above!).  Instead, it expects there to be draughts, and manages moisture by allowing it to evaporate through the mortar in the walls.  Replacing the lime mortar with cement means that the moisture goes though the stone or brick instead, causing damage such as delamination of the face of the stone or brick.  Covering a wall with (impervious) gypsum plaster instead of lime plaster means that moisture will be retained inside the house; it has to go somewhere so it will form on the inside of the wall or run down windows excessively, etc.

So don't mix vinyl paint, ribbon pointing or injected chemical damp-proof courses with lime walls.  Basically, if you want a modern house then buy one, don't try to convert an old one.

My experience with a 320 year old church

In a sense I was lucky as the Grade II* listed church I looked after for five years only dated from c.1685, apart from the late mediaeval tower base.  In the church I found many examples of poor repairs and maintenance:

• cast iron downpipes replaced with black plastic
• earth/leaves/twigs allowed to pile up outside a wall, causing dampness and cold inside (see right)
• gypsum plaster repairs on lime plaster walls (it really does fall off)
• modern vinyl paints used on walls and stonework
• lime plaster falling off because of prolonged flow of rainwater due to a blocked gulley on the roof
• extensive use of a cement skim (about one-eighth of an inch) over walls, window cills and stonework, presumably done in some cases to tidy up the appearance of these items
• water pouring down inside the walls of the tower due to the internal roof not draining. This was caused by excessive pigeon guano (see right, lower), which itself was there partly because a previous rector had placed nesting boxes up there!
• damaged window panes not replaced - when these were done, I discovered that one pane, which had a sheet of clear plastic over the hole, had been missing for over 20 years; the annual maintenance had been to replace the sellotape holding the plastic!
• poor workmanship by roofing contractors, who had fitted new slates and copper valleys, but had bodged the woodwork around the clerestory windows (using untreated one-inch plywood in one place)
• the many church doors had been repainted without permission or skill - the old royal blue was now covered by grey paint which looked like the stuff used to paint battleships, and it was peeling as they had not even sanded down the blue to provide a key

The same roof window, before and after. 

 The same roof dormer door, before and after.

Most of these matters were rectified in my time, together with many more, but we were very busy and some remain...  You could sum it up by saying that the church building was not loved, and old buildings need to be loved if they are to survive.

Finding Contractors

A huge part of the success or failure of a project will depend on the quality of the contractors you find.  Good contractors are often booked ahead for some time and should always be able to give you good references for jobs they have recently done.  Even if they are not booked up solidly, you need to feel that they are reliable, competent people who you can trust and work with, and a personal recommendation from someone is one of the best ways of finding someone.  In London, with hundreds to choose from, I found a great plumber by asking a friendly letting agent who they used for emergencies, but even this approach may not work when you want a contractor to do a major job for you - he can fix a leak but can he install a complete system?.

Having just moved from London, I had a problem: I knew no-one at all.  What I did find was that people in the country are far more approachable than people in the big city and, possibly because of the small size of the town, they are more concerned about their reputation.  Contractors in London know that there are always new customers who will not have heard of their past misdemeanours, but here word would get around very easily.

So I resorted to the internet and found some local roofers and builders. Then I assessed them on a number of criteria, such as whether they had their own website, how helpful they were on the phone and how responsive to what I wanted to do.  At this stage some people eliminated themselves by not being sufficiently understanding about slate, lime and other traditional materials, or by just not returning calls.  I also wanted them to understand where I was coming from, and to accept that I had some knowledge and experience which I wanted to use and enhance.  There is no point in using a contractor who will battle against your intentions the whole way.  In both cases a face-to-face on-site chat settled my mind and somehow within a few days I had both the major contractors I needed.

I had thought that I would do the applications for consents myself as it hadn't been too difficult with an extension in 1993 but, when I checked the Planning Portal, it was clear that the requirements had changed.  There is now a lot more of them, and they all seem a lot more detailed, so I thought that doing it myself might just introduce errors and delays (and hence more cost) so I also decided to engage an architect for the extension.  Then I realised that if he was going to do the extension, he might as well look after the earlier applications for listed building consent for the roof and conservation consent for the access as well, since the extra work would be small but the benefit could be large, bearing in mind the tight timescales to get the roof done.

I found him in the same way as the contractors; a young chap with a family who lives about 500 yards away, who after visiting the site gave me a quote which was about the sort of sum I expected assuming that the work required is not excessive.

All that I need now is just to actually buy the place.  My sale in London is about to exchange contracts, and I think we can exchange on "The House" in a couple of weeks.  Right now I just feel frustrated when I see the rain outside as I just want to get the roof fixed NOW but I can't!