Is this project TOO big?

[artygirlems]

I’m looking at purchasing an early C18 cob cottage. Thatched roof.

The cottage has a roof leak as the thatch is well overdue replacement. Rooms on one side of the building have water damage and have large cracks, both horizontal and vertical, variety of sizes. There is mold but this isn’t a huge concern for me. Some of the timber beams are soft and will need replacing.

I would be living in the building/on site in my caravan while the project takes place.

This will be my first period property reno and wondering if this is too much for me to take on. My plan would be new roof on Day 1, followed by drying out the walls so that electric can go back on, reheating the place and then start looking at the wall and timber damage.

I would be getting a specialist surveyor before completing, but wondered if anyone here has any opinions about whether this is as much of a daft idea as I think it is!

TLDR; Cob cottage with a leaking roof and water damage. First period reno! Am I mad?

 

[aockenden]

These things have a way of spiraling but only you can decide if it’s too much. Kids + spouse + working to pay a mortgage will add a lot to a person’s plate and can push one too far. If you’re free of some of those other life concerns then you’ll have more energy and money to put towards this.

 

[a twig]

Hopefully without sounding too patronising, a certain amount of naive enthusiasm is very useful when renovating one’s first period property.

If I’d known what I was getting into with my first at the time I almost certainly wouldn’t have done it, but with hindsight I’m glad I did.

Cob repairs are certainly DIY-able but if you aren’t into DIY then specialists are fairly hard to come by. If my memory serves me correctly @elizabeth has a cob property and might be able to share some experiences.

Thatchers are also not cheap and are usually very busy so it will likely be a long wait to get the roof seen too.

 

[Kearn]

Long time to rethatch, but it can be temp covered easily enough to stop further damage from Day1.

Walls won’t dry out quickly, and not until you’ve removed anything that shouldn’t be in them trapping the moisture in. cob is fairly straightforward BUT also very structural susceptible to catastrophic failure.

Before buying a timber frame project, I take a structural conservation framer to walk the building, if I were you, I’d be taking a cob specialist rather than a surveyor. That’s your biggest concern here and the pivotal piece of knowledge that will enable you to walk away or jump in eyes open… although there will always be unknowns, contingency, nasty surprises and budget / schedule creep!

Plan to be living in the caravan not the house, any change to that will be a benefit.

A lot of this depends on motivation and passion, plus circumstances, budget and skills.

When we got our first house, we didn’t really realise it was a project or much about old buildings. But once you pull on a thread, you realise it’s attached to everything in the building and there’s no such thing as just one small job, unless another 7 precede it!

Our current home is a building site, we haven’t lived in for the last year - we bought it with a 5mth old and 2.5 year old, plus a dog having sold our
home a few months before because it was a worthwhile project.

Whether you press go or not probably depends on your motivation! You don’t make money out of old buildings, the genuine bargains are diminishing, they’re a labour of love. Everything is of course fixable, but finding the right specialists and doing things correctly takes time and money. Often the investment plus purchase outweighs the market value. But we’re not planning on moving and I know every inch of our home and that it has a chance of standing for another few hundred years.