Back and catching up on old postings having been MIA for most of the last year due to a rather manic job with one of the referendum campaigns that took up all time and energy.
In the meantime we have now lived with the new house for over a year and discovered most of the foibles and problems including a fair few that didn't show up in the survey. Have also got rid of the smell of cat pee from almost all rooms... the bathroom will have to be ripped out to remove it from there I think.
As a recap, house is a small cottage that dates back to c.1580, timber frame with brick nogging (originally wattle and daub, peg tile catslide roof with a later C17th bit on the back that was extended in 1970 to make a small kitchen. Various botch jobs over the years and a lot of benign neglect have not helped and there isn't a single bit that doesn't need attention plus a need for a complete rewire and re-plumb.
We discovered over the winter that the woodburner leaked smoke back into the house due to the whole flue system not being fitted correctly - on the upside, found an amazing Polish chimneysweep who got very excited about the house and took lots of videos of the insides of my chimneys and confirmed that the fireplace in the main bedroom is stable, perfect and not the pile of rubble the CO and surveyor had feared.
The shower room in the attics developed a slow leak - fortunately we found it by sheer chance and although all the sections of modern wood in the vicinity had completely rotted away, there was no damage at all to the beams, joists or original floorboards - huge relief.
The rain in the Spring did confirm the leak in the roof and we need to tackle sooner rather than later, so this evening I have the local conservation builder coming to take a look - rather terrifying to finally be making plans to put things right rather than just talking about it!
Hope everyone else's projects are going to plan!
In the meantime we have now lived with the new house for over a year and discovered most of the foibles and problems including a fair few that didn't show up in the survey. Have also got rid of the smell of cat pee from almost all rooms... the bathroom will have to be ripped out to remove it from there I think.
As a recap, house is a small cottage that dates back to c.1580, timber frame with brick nogging (originally wattle and daub, peg tile catslide roof with a later C17th bit on the back that was extended in 1970 to make a small kitchen. Various botch jobs over the years and a lot of benign neglect have not helped and there isn't a single bit that doesn't need attention plus a need for a complete rewire and re-plumb.
We discovered over the winter that the woodburner leaked smoke back into the house due to the whole flue system not being fitted correctly - on the upside, found an amazing Polish chimneysweep who got very excited about the house and took lots of videos of the insides of my chimneys and confirmed that the fireplace in the main bedroom is stable, perfect and not the pile of rubble the CO and surveyor had feared.
The shower room in the attics developed a slow leak - fortunately we found it by sheer chance and although all the sections of modern wood in the vicinity had completely rotted away, there was no damage at all to the beams, joists or original floorboards - huge relief.
The rain in the Spring did confirm the leak in the roof and we need to tackle sooner rather than later, so this evening I have the local conservation builder coming to take a look - rather terrifying to finally be making plans to put things right rather than just talking about it!
Hope everyone else's projects are going to plan!
