Restoration vs renovation.

[plasticpigeon]

Happy New to everyone. I wish a warm and dust and damp free 2015 to you all.

This Christmas break I intended to install a fireplace in my front room, which involves quite a lot of work, including pouring a constructional hearth and building brick jambs within a builders opening, and tiling the new hearth. I also wanted to patch up the lime plaster on the walls that were covered with woodchip on the ceiling and above the picture rail and some other gloss painted textured paper below. After taking off the wallpaper, I think about 70% of the plaster remains, and it is pretty shabby, and the lime render below the setting coat is so weak in lime it is red and sandy and crubles to dust in the fingers. Also the skirting boards in one alcove and by the bay window were pretty rotten to the point that they turned to dust when I removed them to try and level the floor. I used to mock scorn on people that just ripped everything out wholesale and started again with new woodwork and plasterboard. However I have spent nearly a week of fruitless work preparing to make the walls good, and from now on i think in the other rooms where the plaster is obviously even worse i will just get folks in to rip it all out and start again. I will reinstate woodwork that isn't rotten and get stuff matched, so i don't think people will know it isn't original. I know this isn't proper restoration, but I'm beginning to think it the only solution, if a house is going to be a home and not a lifetimes project.

 

[Feltwell]

No right or wrong answers really PP, just what's right for you, your home & your family.

I'll always try to patch first, but if that much plaster is shot, I would take off what is left if it's not sound and replaster back from bare brick. I would never dry line with plasterboard, but I wouldn't be above using modern plaster on internal walls where breathability is not a concern in order to speed the job up. On external walls I'd want to lime plaster.

As for woodwork - I always try to save it where I can as the patina of age is so hard to replicate. But if it's shot to point that it crumbles then you've not much choice really and to replace with a new match is as sympathetic as you can be.

To me the above is not scorn worthy - you say "I used to mock scorn on people that just ripped everything out wholesale and started again with new woodwork and plasterboard" - that to me is those who rip out perfectly good woodwork, rip out original details like built-in cupboards in alcoves, dry line everywhere then stick cheap half round & chamfered mouldings in rather than bother to try to match the originals. Those who want their 100+ year old house to look like a new Barratts home are the ones I pour scorn on.