New to the whole 'period property' thing :)

[ChrisP3]

Hi all,

I thought I would just drop a quick post to say hello, I've been looking around the forum for a little while and thought it was about time I signed up. Myself and my wife (along with two kids and cat and a dog) have very recently become the proud owners of a circa 1840's, 4 storey Mid terraced town house in North Shields, Tyne & Wear.

The house is vastly different from our old two bedroom 'new build' but despite the huge size difference it's already starting to feel like home. The old girl's previous owners didn't lavish her with much love and had a very much 'that will do attitude'.
As a result a lot of the 'work' they had done appears to have been carried out by workmen who turned up on horses. The wet room is indeed that...right through to the ceiling below, the kitchen fit is interesting to say the least, the what seems like, miles of original coving, staircases, skirting boards and door surrounds have had copious amounts of gloss paint applied to them. Some of the broken spindles have been replaced with metal ones (?!?!) and the lack of a picture rail has resulted in large numbers of nails and screws in walls.

The list goes on, but over time we hope to get some life back into the house and make it a wonderful home for out kids to grow up in.

I'll get some pictures up tonight for everyone to see and start to prepared some of the many, many questions I have for you guys and girls.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[ChrisP3]

Hi all,

I'm having a few issues getting pictures up and the moment, so I've attached a link from the estate agents which shows the state of the house before we purchased it. To be fair we haven't really done much in the 3 weeks we have been in, apart from starting to remove the concrete rendered from wall, clean and carry out any urgent repairs. I'll get some better pictures this evening hopefully....


http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/3-lovaine-place/north-shields/ne29-0bw/31600195

Cheers,
Chris

 

[kreyszig]

Let me be the first to welcome you!
I'm not sure why nobody else has responded to your earlier posts, it could be the lack of pictures
It sounds like you have a lot of character in your place!

 

[ChrisP3]

Thank you

I did put a link up to the estate agents pictures in the absence of my own, it just seems to take an age for your posts to be released by the mods

 

[Flyfisher]

Welcome to the forum ChrisP3,

The first post by a new member is often delayed a few days while awaiting approval (a spam protection measure) so when it is posted it won't be at the top of the list and may get overlooked, so well done kreyszig for spotting it and putting it back to the top.

When I read your point about the previous workmen turning up on horses, my first thought was 'oh good, that must have been long ago so the house won't have been modernised' but reading on I assume you actually meant they were cowboys

Well, don't despair, you're in the right place and you obviously have concern for the well-being of the house so I predict a happy outcome - as long as you have the patience for things that will almost certainly take longer than you think. But learn to relax into the place, don't rush around in a blind panic and everything will come right in the end.

Anyway, you've already made a good start by promising to post pictures.

PS: You'll probably find you can't post photos using the 'load attachment' option as we seem to have used up our storage quota, so you'll have to upload them somewhere like photobucket and then link to them using the 'img' tags. If that doesn't make any sense let us know and someone will talk you through it.

 

[jackpoint]

Hello. Good luck. Pictures!

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Hello and Welcome Chrisp3. Wow, your house seems to have some interesting takes on period style ! Still, spend a little time getting to know the house first, starting from the roof downwards and I am sure that you will soon have a lovely home to enjoy in years to come. Maybe you will find the pot of gold we are all hoping for!
Enjoy!

 

[LadyArowana]

Hello and welcome from me too. I had the same thought as FF about the horses, ancient and venerable tradespeople....... As others have said, take your time and get to know the place and all will get done eventually. If you are a Facebook person the forum will also accept links to albums/ pictures from there and seems to just show the pix without comments etc ( if you have privacy concerns ), BTW FB is usually referred to as "the other place" here as some of us are connected that way.

 

[ChrisP3]

Thanks for all the kind replies. I think all of my posts/replies are still subject to moderation, so I may well end up with lots of replies from me on here that are on the wrong order. I've put some quick snaps (I was carrying our youngest lad, George, around with me at the time, so the photography isn't great!) on dropbox showing some of the features of the house.

We have work booked in at the moment to address and leak in the roof and also install some ventilation slates. The previous owner had the roof replaced to a very poor standard, using flash band rather than lead flashing and PVC soakers on the chimney stack. Needles to say the flash band has now perished and water enters the building during times of heavy rain. So everything is to be replaced with grade 4 lead.
It's unfortunate that the original Westmorland slate was totally removed from the roof some 15 years ago, we know this what the house was built with as among the deeds to the house we have what appears to be the 'planning permission' dating from 1827. The document outlines various material and restrictions that the builders needed to stick too.
You will be able to see the poor quality of the previous owners decorating ability on some of the pictures, something we are hoping to put right, along with the wood floor she allowed her dog to destroy. The plan is to do a room at a time, sanding the floors and replacing the UPVC windows with wooden sash ones as we go.

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/8ezbje29bybna3e/AABZjT3q-_bv9Ms_vcGdUZ9wa#/

Thanks for looking, sorry if my posts are a tad long, I could talk about the house all day long!

Cheers,
Chris

 

[ChrisP3]

Pictures up and running now, all comments welcome!

 

[kreyszig]

It looks a lovely place. Are those shutters in picture 7, or cupboards?
- nevermind, I've seen the listing in your first post that somehow I missed!
Did you get to keep the doctor?

 

[ChrisP3]

They are indeed shutters. We have 4 original sets in the house, Two windows are missing them and the mid-landings didn't appear to have them from new. Two of the sets have been butchered beyond repair and we will need to have new sets made.

It appears the previous owners had a love of circular saws, and used one to slice the bathroom ones in half 'ala' saloon doors (they did this with them still attached to the wall, resulting in the window frame getting the circular saw treatment too.... :shock They also used their favourite power tool to get under the floor boards :roll:

The doctor went, thankfully.

 

[Zebra]

Hello Crispy and welcome to the forum. Looks like a nice house. Boo to the lavender painted fireplace though! Hope you have a lot of fun restoring it, and keep us updated!

 

[ChrisP3]

Thanks Zebra. Fireplace is missing some tiles too, we will probably replace it at some point as I'm not sure if original to the house.

slight update on the house, well the garden, the unsafe internal garden walls have been removed. This has opened the garden up really well, all the over grown horrid weeds have been removed and replanting has started. The grass is going to be reseeded and more plants will be added. Eventually all of the 1960's rendered wall will be removed making way for iron fencing. Hopefully we can afford to have the original fencing, which is still in use in the opposing gardens, replicated and installed.

Although I hear commissioning iron casting isn't cheap :shock:

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/37t5kc93238s78x/AAB5eFxj4l0HnDQeAHEjaBQla

Cheers again for the warm welcome, enjoy.

Chris

 

[malcolm]

It would be expensive to have cast iron railings made. Back in the day people didn't commission manufacturers of obscure materials to custom make their railings - they were available off the shelf. It's worth having a look at a gates and railings catalogue to see if you can find current off the shelf components that would complement the neighbours' railings. http://www.fhbrundle.com/iron.htm offer a reasonable range.

Your local gates and railings guy should be able to weld them together and install. Worth going for galvanising before paint to avoid the rust thing.