keeping records.

[robgil]

just wondering if anyone keeps records of works done to your homes? replacing doors for instance or any changes done to the house?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Um, Chris has had to increase computer capacity several times over, I've taken about a thousand photos so far of befores, durings, afters. All the paperwork for every single little thing is kept and the old stuff I have on the cottage lovingly preserved and backed up on my own computer and in the cloud.

I have around 3 huge boxes of ever increasing numbers of samples, none of which I can bear to throw away even if they aren't used. And there's a planned book too.

 

[Flyfisher]

Yep, I photograph everything - before, during and after.

My original plan was to compile them into a 'photobook', one for each 'mini-project', but the problem, I've found, is that I've not yet actually finished anything to the point that a photobook would be appropriate, i.e. the final decorated result. So I'm now planning to compile them into a yearly photobook. However, so far I've only made one photobook showing the house as it was when we took it on, but I must have taken a few thousand photos since then.

Mrs FF has loads of bits of historical research that also need compiling into something more coherent than the currrent boxes of cuttings and GBytes of scanned documents and old photos. And that's before spending any time in the Norwich archives. So much to do, so little time.
We've no plans for a book, but now that Joce has mentioned it . . . .

 

[JoceAndChris]

Phew, glad I'm not the only house-archiving obsessive!

This thread may be of some interest to you rob http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10107&hilit=stories+how+to+preserve&start=30

 

[MdB]

Take lots of pictures with the best put onto flickr. I am sure it bores my friends to death but they don't have to look at them if they don't want to and it seems to be a fairly good place to keep a record.

 

[robgil]

cheers for the link , quite interesting.
i think i will go down the paper road , its a much nicer format than on a computer screen i reckon. saying that though it will all be on my pc which is all backed up to hard disc anyway.

edit - now do you date your alterations? like inscribing the date and description into an unexposed part of a replaced beam for instance?

 

[robgil]

sorry to double post but if you type clipper cottage into google i was quite surprised to see our house is the second picture from the top left.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=clipper%20cottage&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

the site also gives a brief history to the cottage as well , which was really nice to see.

 

[Flyfisher]

i think i will go down the paper road , its a much nicer format than on a computer screen i reckon.

I don't regard this as an either/or choice; do both. I regularly print my photos, and much prefer looking through a printed photobook than using a PC screen, but I regard the computer files as the originals. Data is so much easier to protect for the future as it can be copied perfectly onto whatever new storage format becomes the flavour of the day. Printed photos and other documents are prone to fading or being damaged. They also can't be perfectly copied for backup purposes.

 

[robgil]

this is very true , so a series of discs put away securely should also be done then. its going to be interesting in 20 years time looking through all this stuff.

 

[JoceAndChris]

sorry to double post but if you type clipper cottage into google i was quite surprised to see our house is the second picture from the top left.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=clipper%20cottage&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

the site also gives a brief history to the cottage as well , which was really nice to see.

I'm sure I've seen that link on this forum before.

Anyway, it's lovely to be able to find things out about your property, and my curiosity has been set ablaze by the different names your house has had "Cooks and Coppelowes" and also "Clipper Cottage" - interesting to speculate about this. I find two meanings of the word "coppel" in the origins of modern English, Old English is "rocking"or "unsteady" and Middle English "cop/ coppel" is the comb of a cockerel.

From which I deduce that your house was occupied on one side by a cook and on the other by an unsteady drunk with a liking for cock-fighting. Latterly it was occupied by people who had a strong belief that all its timbers came from a ship and so they called it Clipper Cottage. :wink:

With regard to actually inscribing work in the house, it's been done here. Some have left grievances, some have left bones, and some have left dates. Needless to say I leave entire essays - what's written beneath the wallpaper in the bedroom is epic!

 

[Flyfisher]

so a series of discs put away securely should also be done then

Without wanting to start a computing thread, I would caution against 'putting away discs' for the future because of media longevity and format issues. I prefer to just keep everything 'on line' on my PC, with multiple copies for backup purposes - not archiving, which is a whole different ball game.

Current hard drives are so big that entire collections can be stored on single PC. The key thing to accept, I think, is that any storage device can fail at any time; in fact, it's a good idea to assume that it will fail at some time. Think about that for a moment - your hard drive could fail and you could lose everything on it. Right now! And anyone worried about such a thought has not got an adequate backup regime.

Based on this, the only safe way to protect your precious data is to make multiple copies. The beauty of digital data is that it's very easy to make perfect copies of all your 'stuff' and plug-in external hard drives are very cheap these days so there's little excuse not to make multiple copies. You might even choose to store a copy away from your main home in case of disaster; it all depends on how valuable your data is to you. Just get organised and it's a simple process that should take none of your own time.

 

[MdB]

I can show you some CDs which are only a couple of years old but look far worse than this:

They certainly are not an archive method I trust. I have also had a number of hard drives fail on me over the years. Currently I have the most important files backed up on removable USB hard drives and I am in the process of creating an automatic backup system which puts files in three places: 2 PCS and a NAS box. That hopefully will keep me safe.

 

[Flyfisher]

Agreed. The other thing I don't trust about archiving is the idea of locking something away for years on end and not knowing if it has deteriorated until the time comes to read it - when it's too late. With 'on line' storage it's easy to verify the data or refresh it with a full copy. There's no substitute for multiple copies in my mind.

 

[robgil]

i did do a nights research a while back , not looking too deeply i found out that there used to be four mills in walsham , none of which are standing now. in stanton however a stones throw away from walsham there is still a mill that used to provide flour to the cuttysark and as far as i can remember there was another clipper cottage close by , perhaps they are linked?
i read it as Cooks and Coppelowes being the tenants in the cottages behind clipper cottage? walsham has a history group and has got a lot of recorded history so you never know what i will dig up when i get up there and amongst it all.

 

[robgil]

ive got a few discs like that , cd's and computers work well with electricity but who knows , in 200 or more years we may not have any? i guess you just got to make sure you have as many copies in as many different formats as you can.

 

[Flyfisher]

If there is no electricity (or equivalent) in 200 years then I reckon our descendents will have more things to worry about than historical house records.

 

[robgil]

If there is no electricity (or equivalent) in 200 years then I reckon our descendents will have more things to worry about than historical house records.

yup , like hysterical women wondering why they cannot watch east enders , corrie , the x factor among others.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

i did do a nights research a while back , not looking too deeply i found out that there used to be four mills in walsham , none of which are standing now. in stanton however a stones throw away from walsham there is still a mill that used to provide flour to the cuttysark and as far as i can remember there was another clipper cottage close by , perhaps they are linked?
i read it as Cooks and Coppelowes being the tenants in the cottages behind clipper cottage? walsham has a history group and has got a lot of recorded history so you never know what i will dig up when i get up there and amongst it all.

Here are one-and-a-half of the Walsham mills (the body of one of the other post mills was set up on the ground and used as a steam-powered mill next to the last to work by wind)View attachment 1

 

[Lime]

SkyDrive is always an option.
http://www.windowslive.co.uk/skydrive.aspx

 

[Penners]

I am in the process of creating an automatic backup system which puts files in three places: 2 PCS and a NAS box. That hopefully will keep me safe.

I do this for important stuff. Mrs P and I exchange backup folders and we also have a NAS drive. It's the next best thing to a RAID array, which is probably the closest thing to a completely secure data storage system.