Progress Photos

[Flyfisher]

I've not been completely ignoring the hints for some progress photos, though I confess it has taken some time to get around to sorting some out. Anyway, without further ado, here is a little of what I've been up to over the past few years.

Here are a couple of 'before' photos. Actually, because the white is a bit washed out the render looks in better condition that it actually was. The second photo shows the condition a little better. Needless to say it was cement render and had to come off anyway. It's also not really possible to see where the roof was leaking in multiple places, though the poor condition of the dormer windows is apparent:

This photo is after the roof had been stripped, timbers repaired and a membrane installed, together with rebuilt dormer windows and a new chimney above the roof line. Not really much to show for a great deal of work, but it certainly banished the damp feel from the interior of the house as well as the buckets in a few strategic places:

A few years later (when funds had been replenished!) it was re-rendering time. This was not a DIY job so I was able to sit back and watch others work for a change. This photo shows the underlying structure. Much of the original wattle & daub panels were intact (and were not disturbed!) though it's also possible to see where the previous 'vandals' chopped the original timber frame about in order to insert the Georgian sashes. As far as we can tell, the frame dates back to 1550 and we think the totally inappropriate windows were inserted when the C17 addition to the right was built. The original timbers were in very good condition, though the sole plate to the left of the door had to be completely replaced due to being covered by concrete for many decades. The sole plate to the right of the door was in better condition and only required partial replacement. Fortunately, it was fairly easy to reduce the ground levels, though winter halted the final landscaping work to the front of the house.

This is a 'during' photo taken after the first scratch coating of lime render. Not particularly interesting really:

And this is the final result after limewashing. Well, not the final, final result as winter halted any further work, but really only needs a bit of landscaping work to lower the ground level in front of the house (I'm planning a sort of 'gravel moat' along the front) and re-positioning the surface water drain so that I can remove the temporary flexible down pipe and replace it with a cast iron downpipe, plus a final touch-up of the black plinth. A large part of the C17 wall (under the lower roof) was dismantled and rebuilt and substantial new oak lintels added over the two main windows, though they are a little hard to see now that everything has been limewashed. I managed to get two coats of linseed paint onto the woodwork before the weather turned against me, but it was in fairly poor condition and will need a bit more work this year, but at least everything was protected over winter.

So, about six years of work (ok, not full-time - I had plenty of other projects on the go as well!) and the old place doesn't look a lot different than it did in this 1908 photograph - which is how it should be I suppose.

 

[Feltwell]

Sometimes difficult to see in full elevation pictures that can't show much detail, but from what you've posted over time you've turned a house that was starting to head down the route to dereliction - a route which we all know starts slowly but can then build up speed quickly as the rot quite literally sets in - back round to a point of good structural integrity and given it a considerable extension to it's life. What a fantastic achievement, you've now got a home that should never need such major work again if it is kept well maintained, and you've saved a building of real historical merit.

Thanks for posting up the pictures - always good to see progress.

 

[Zebra]

Marvellous! More! How about some interior shots?

 

[mims&pip]

Thank you for sharing - a real labour of love, wonderful!

 

[kreyszig]

Brilliant - thanks for putting these up. Funny how after all that work you end up with - as you rightly say it should be - little apparent change! I think the most work probably goes into the parts you can't see. That timber frame is something to behold as well!

 

[88v8]

Is it just me... suddenly instead of pictures, I'm seeing the word Image.

All of the pics in this thread. The system knows there's a pic there because when I hover over the word Image I can right-click and the option Show Picture is bold, although it doesn't do anything.

Oth, those in Pip's thread about the new/old house are visible.

Not aware that I've done anything to my computer, and on the RREC forum I can see both imgs and attachments.

Anyone else having a problem?

Ivor

 

[TheRoost]

Stunning work. Love the old pic, really gives you a feel for the scale of the building!

 

[formerly known as]

That is certainly an interesting house.

thank you for posting the photography.

Did you have much difficulty dealing with applications for planning etc?

 

[Bayliss]

Fabulous work and exactly the sort of home I dream of owning one day, dream is likely all it will be.

 

[Flyfisher]

Sometimes difficult to see in full elevation pictures that can't show much detail, but from what you've posted over time you've turned a house that was starting to head down the route to dereliction - a route which we all know starts slowly but can then build up speed quickly as the rot quite literally sets in - back round to a point of good structural integrity and given it a considerable extension to it's life.

Good observation. These old houses are pretty robust and can withstand a lot of neglect but you're so right about the rot eventually setting in and causing serious structural damage. I think we've been fortunate in catching things before that point, though there was certainly one part of the roof where one of the main A-frame joints to the wall plate was very near to complete failure as a result of years of water ingress.

 

[Flyfisher]

Marvellous! More! How about some interior shots?

I'll try to dig some out later today, though I give you fair warning that the interior decor has progressed even slower than the structural works!

I've come to the conclusion that the generally held view of living with a house for a while before deciding on interior works is all well and good, but it does risk becoming acclimatised to things that would otherwise be deemed unacceptable. Thus, things like peeling wallpaper, bare walls and missing plaster seem to simply disappear from conscious view - so be gentle with me :wink:

 

[jackpoint]

Top banana! Very impressive

 

[Flyfisher]

Is it just me... suddenly instead of pictures, I'm seeing the word Image.

All of the pics in this thread. The system knows there's a pic there because when I hover over the word Image I can right-click and the option Show Picture is bold, although it doesn't do anything.

Oth, those in Pip's thread about the new/old house are visible.

Not aware that I've done anything to my computer, and on the RREC forum I can see both imgs and attachments.

Anyone else having a problem?

Ivor

That's odd, Ivor.
Pip's thread has photo attachments whereas my photos are pointers to photobucket and seem to be visible to all the others who have commented. Perhaps your browser security settings are disallowing embedded links, though I'm clutching at straws on that.

I suppose you could try looking at the [img] code in my post (pretend you are replying with a quote and you should see the links) and then copy/pasting the link directly into another tab in your browser. Hardly convenient I know, but it would be an interesting test of your browser.

 

[Keithj]

Love it! So little apparent change, which I suppose is how it should be.

We were lucky with ours - similar story (worse, if anything) but we'd "downsized" into it so had the capital to have it done in one go, professionally. I'm very glad we did it that way

I was amazed, when we did the south aisle roof in the church, to see just how much [pick your word for bad workmanship] had gone into it. How do you fit a window from another (demolished) church that's too big for the space you want it to go into? You could see the stages the work went through, each fixing one problem and creating two new ones. If I'm bored one day, I'll write it up!

 

[Flyfisher]

OK, by popular request (well, Zebra is popular isn't she?) here are a some internal pictures . . . er, starting with a few outside ones to show the kitchen extension :lol:

This is the rear of the house during the roof repairs. The tarpaulin is covering the stairwell outshot, which was more-or-less derelict and had to be completely rebuilt:

As described in a previous thread, it was decided to extend the stairwell outshot across the rear of the house to form a new kitchen area under a 'catslide' roof. large rooflights were specified to allow light into the upstairs windows and this has worked very well indeed:

The final result - currently looking a bit stark against the C17 addition, but this will also be limewashed later this year to match:

Here are some pictures of the inside of the stairwell, showing the extent of the dilapidation and the final result. The actual staircase was not disturbed during the works and just needs to be painted:

Here is the 'before' fireplace in the sitting room, which is the ground floor room to the left of the front door:

This was opened up back to the original inglenook and revealed some earlier and rather crude repairs following a chimney fire sometime in the early 1990s:

I replaced the steel i-beam with a new oak bressumer and lime rendered the chimney breast, leaving the inside brickwork untouched:

The room still requires some decoration but we got it into some sort of shape for Christmas:

This is the rear-facing wall of the sitting room as it was. The green doors are the exit to the stairwell and the rear wall itself was simply one layer of plasterboard inside and lath and cement render on the outside. Unlike the front of the house, there was no infill between the timber frame (except for one panel next to the green doors), which suggests that previous work had disturbed it, probably when the sole plate was replaced (it doesn't match the upright timbers) though I don't know when this was done. No wonder this room was always so cold, even with a roaring fire!

This is the same wall as it is now. The window was removed to form an entrance to the new kitchen and because the 'outside' wall is now an inside wall there was no need to worry about further disturbing it with insulation etc.

This is the new kitchen, showing the entrance to the sitting room at the far left:

. . . and this is a view into the kitchen from that entrance:

Finally, this is the drawing room (to the right of the front door), which we scrubbed-up for our Christmas house guests, though you can probably spot what I meant about peeling wallpaper! If I’ve learned anything from all this, it’s that I prefer to crawling around fixing roofs to interior decoration. Nevertheless, it looks like 2015 will be the year of decoration (if my marriage is to survive :wink: ).

 

[88v8]

Urrrgh
Still can't see the pics.

Can see imgs on the TR Register, the RREC, LRO, but not in this thread.

Here's one of mine from Bucket
If I can't see that, I'm really sunk.



Afaik nothing has changed in my browser, but when one downloads Microsoft updates, one never really knows.

Ivor

PS double-urrgh. Can't even see my own picture.

Although I can see that same picture in other forums, just tried it.
It's only this forum. I wonder of its licence has expired, or something, says he vaguely.
Or perhaps there's a bot in here and it's being blocked by my security software.
All above my pay grade
Urrrgh

 

[Keithj]

I can see your pic just fine. Windows 7, Firefox, all the appropriate security plugins.

 

[Flyfisher]

Very odd, Ivor. Like Keith, I can see your photo ok on my PC (Win8.1, Firefox and Chrome) and on my iPad, so I reckon it must be something to do with your particular configuration. Strange that it works with other websites.

I'm sure there must be an answer but I've not used Microsoft IE for years now after having a few problems with big red crosses instead of pictures, so I'm not really up to date with IE and can only recommend using Firefox.

 

[Flyfisher]

That is certainly an interesting house.

thank you for posting the photography.

Did you have much difficulty dealing with applications for planning etc?

Not really. I've made three submissions for LBC and all have been approved first time, though all had been discussed with our CO and 'tweaked' before formal submission. The first two were mostly related to repairs, opening up fireplaces and moving a few internal stud walls. The third one was for the kitchen extension for which there was some initial resistance from English Heritage (the house is G2*), even though it was the CO's idea, but was passed unchanged after a few months delay. Before committing to the project we approached our CO to discuss our basic plans and objectives and he was extremely supportive and helpful. That's not to say he just said yes to everything we discussed but if he wasn't keen on something he would always suggest an alternative and - to be honest - his ideas were often better than ours. So, from my perspective, it has been like having an expert consultant available on call to help solve the "how can we achieve this" type problems. So, by the time each LBC application was submitted, all the pros and cons had been discussed and various alternatives examined before settling on a mutually acceptable solution, so the application was more or less a formality. The only slight exception was the kitchen extension, but our CO was very supportive and really helped to justify things in the context of the whole building and helped to gain EH approval as well.

To summarise, I'd say the key for us has been to talk about things while they were still at the ideas stage and to allow some movement on both sides before refining them into firm plans with the CO's active involvement. In that way, there is more likely to be a meeting of minds and a working together for the benefit of the properly in question - and ultimately, it should really be all about the property. For us, that turned out to be very easy to do as our CO is available, helpful and responsive - which is why it's so disappointing to read other accounts on here about people who can't even arrange a meeting with their CO, or where the council doesn't even employ one and uses external consultants.

 

[formerly known as]

Thank you for your detailed reply.

I am firmly of the opinion that listing, and all that that brings, could be considered as an 'imposition' placed on ownership and that the provision of expert advice, at no cost to the ownership, should be provided as a matter of course.