The goodlife -1930 full renovation

[mattvanders]

bungz said:

Good lord that next door garden

Does that not bother you

Yes and no, the building next door to my current flat was derelict when I bought. It was a big Victoria house house set over 3 levels. It got bought a few years back and converted into flats. Increased my flats valve without me put a single dime into mine. I would prefer not to be next to it but the price we paid was still reflected by everything

[mattvanders]

trixical said:

I feel like there is going to be a plastering course in your future to see if you can do it to a reasonable standard yourself, alternatively have you made friends with a plasterer yet?

Is that the neighbours extension in the pic? Is it an L shape?
Love the random 2 old fence panels in the run

I will be getting the a mate that’s a plaster in or get the misses to do it (not bad at icing cakes, same thing right)

Pics of there work

[Richard-G]

Great thread! I just moved out of a 1930's semi and loved working on it. As you said, you've got a good solid base to work on with real character.

My dad helped me during the works as well and it was great bonding time, you'll look back when it's all done and every inch of the building will have a personal story, it broke my heart when we moved!

[mattvanders]

Richard-G said:

Great thread! I just moved out of a 1930's semi and loved working on it. As you said, you've got a good solid base to work on with real character.

My dad helped me during the works as well and it was great bonding time, you'll look back when it's all done and every inch of the building will have a personal story, it broke my heart when we moved!

Due to my dads age and health (cancer) they took covid very seriously that meant I hardly saw them in person over 2020 and only started to spend time with them in 2021 when testing kits were easily available. Working on the house has been a great way to reconnect and bond. It has also been great therapy for them and has helped them to get back into a different routine and interaction after spending 2 years with just each other. Even my mum who at times has said I’ll only come over to clean up and make the teas has ended up do more including getting on the jack hammer to remove the drive brick wall - as she said when will she get another chance to use one

[Swift93]

I'm probably too late in offering how we got wallpaper off...soak in 'glass plus' or 'windex' and it comes off in large sheets, but you must immediately clean the paste off the wall or it becomes very stubborn. Nice project.

[mattvanders]

Swift93 said:

I'm probably too late in offering how we got wallpaper off...soak in 'glass plus' or 'windex' and it comes off in large sheets, but you must immediately clean the paste off the wall or it becomes very stubborn. Nice project.

Unfortunately very late as we started to strip the house the minute we got the keys in January and I’m load the photos from the month that followed work in process. The spiker roller I had worked brilliantly with making holes and getting steam behind the paper (even plasticky wall paper).

[mattvanders]

More photos work…
Started to strip all the old carpet up and the underlay as well as skirting. I would of taken more pictures but ended up doing a lot of that on my own. There was a huge amount of dust in said carpet, the under lay was fulling to bits so had to flip it over to roll it up to keep the dust inside. And getting all the gripper up and nails at the same time to make place safer on the knees.



What’s this?


Concrete to fill the hole in a skirting board after they removed a plug…




Next job was to get the old prefab shed down, it’s in the wrong location for me and not what I want in the future. I stripped back all the plug sockets from it first so now the tea making facilities have to go into the house. Next was to get the old doors off as they were falling apart anyway



On to then a climbing onto the roof to unbolt all the nuts holding the asbestos sheeting roof. Not the best thing to do on a cold damp day with moss frowning on it

[mattvanders]

With the asbestos roof we got in contact with the council and made arrangement to get them to collect it, they sub it out to a specialist but require them to be double bagged beforehand and charge around £400 for it.






The garage came down in one day in a lot better weather than when I was on the roof. We put it onto fb market place and sold it for £250, this house is almost making me money!

Let’s start on the external walls on the driveway as there’s room for two cars but very tight to get both on.


Even just removal the small wall around the house made it more tidy

A very st flower bed, most found garlic bubbles and plastic bags
[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/Ndw9vftu[/url]

I turn

The misses turn

My 81 year old mums turn

As she said, I’ve never have used a jack hammer and I probably won’t get another chance to do so, doesn’t she look happy with herself



[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/77Skhapd[/url]
And where all the bricks are ending up for the time being

Edited by mattvanders on Wednesday 17th August 11:32

Edited by mattvanders on Wednesday 17th August 16:56

[RC1807]

Great effort - and hugely admirable of your folks at a certain time in their lives to be getting stuck in with all that effort.

Looking forward to the next updates.

[rustyuk]

Just another bit of advice, finish one job before you start another

[mattvanders]

rustyuk said:

Just another bit of advice, finish one job before you start another

Completely agree, there are some blue Peter magic of here one I made earlier moments on the photos and story telling and I have had to jump around depending on the weather and body count. If it’s only been me I have sorted out things and not taken many or any photos about it. It’s also been a bit of playing around with space as we have filled up a number of rubble sacks but can only take a bag or two a month. Luckily the flat and house are in two different councils so can take to both

[mattvanders]

RC1807 said:

Great effort - and hugely admirable of your folks at a certain time in their lives to be getting stuck in with all that effort.

Looking forward to the next updates.

Thanks, they have been a great help on site and for advice, as they have been there and done it 40 odd years ago. I’ve already said that my mum always says she doesn’t know what she will be doing other than making cups of tea and tidying up but she has got on all the power tools once she has had her safety briefing. It’s been great to spend time with them.

The misses mum has been over to help as well but she doesn’t live that local to us. Her husband/misses dad would of been over helping as well but he unexpectedly passed away just before Christmas/we got the keys (went out for midweek track run and killed over on the warm up lap with a heart attack). He would of been over helping but more on the project management side of things. He was in the process of building a 4 seater kit plane but the running joke was that it was actually his wife that he was building the plane. He was the sort of character that you would meet in a bar and would have the best conversation and stories to tell (as well as same very bad jokes).

[rossyl]

mattvanders said:

Let’s start on the external was as there’s room for two cars but very tight to get both on.

[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/Ndw9vftu[/url]

I turn

The misses turn

My 81 year old mums turn

As she said, I’ve never have used a jack hammer and I probably won’t get another chance to do so, doesn’t she look happy with herself



[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/77Skhapd[/url]
And where all the bricks are ending up for the time being

Edited by mattvanders on Wednesday 17th August 11:32

Any reason why you're removed the wall at this stage. Given the extent of rubbish, quite useful to have retaining walls?

Looks like a hell of a lot of work demo-ing the place. Well done.

The fun is yet to begin, wiring, plumbing, plastyering and generally fitting out. Sure with your enthusiasm it'll work well.


Whereabouts in the country are you?

[Fast Bug]

My in laws love helping out, but I can't see my mother in law using a jack hammer

[mattvanders]

rossyl said:

Any reason why you're removed the wall at this stage. Given the extent of rubbish, quite useful to have retaining walls?

Looks like a hell of a lot of work demo-ing the place. Well done.

The fun is yet to begin, wiring, plumbing, plastyering and generally fitting out. Sure with your enthusiasm it'll work well.


Whereabouts in the country are you?

The size of the wall really did restrict parking to cars on the drive and when the builders start and the skips come the space will be more useful. The wall to our neighbours to the left is falling down already so it’s not a lose to us. The rest of the drive is just concrete so it will be redone after the house has been done and back garden.

Thanks for the positive words. I’m currently on my works month long outage (so doing 13-14 hours day 9 days on and 1 off pattern) so needed to do as much as I could to restrict any building work happening in the year (will up that on the next post).

We are in Chelmsford, Essex (init babies). The area seams to have the usual mixture of old Victoria, 1930 semi, 50 ex council, 90 estate and brand new estates as most towns. We are only 20mm so down the road so easily enough to pop by but not worth working evenings.

[mattvanders]

Some bonus bodges that I’ve found pictures on the phone

Cut the post of the gate to fit around the electrical box for power to the garage

They had new windows a few years ago and rather than decorate properly they plastered over the existing wall paper

Speed house required once the windows had been replaced but they refused to open then so had mild in the bedroom. Kitchen extractor had been installed but not wired in.

The chimney to to the dinner room had been removed a while back, we had got told that they had professional builders to it 20-25 year ago, when speaking with the neighbours they said he had done it. Support brackets aren’t that manly so will need to install more/new

[mattvanders]

So while we was stripping things out the house we was also making process with the planning stages and thing about what we actually wanted. After speaking with the kitchen designer we got a first version using the measurements of the extension if we just built inline with the current width of the property. It was clear to see the width wasn’t wide enough for our preferred design. Choices are either change the kitchen design or the extension, we would rather change the extension to fit so back to the drawing board (quiet literally as my dad was a draftsman).

Edited by mattvanders on Wednesday 17th August 19:06

While this was all happening we was making progress with the builder, well that’s what we thought. My builder mate basically pulled out of the project without any real reasoning. If he had said he was too bizzy or didn’t want the work due to being further out from his normal area I wouldn’t of had a problem but it’s the fact it was at least 6 month down the line from when we first started to talk about the extent of the work. We started to look into builders and getting recommendations from others and had some attend the house to get an idea on their costs and availability. We had estimates of over £300k with availability starting next year, ffs.

Through a bit of luck with got the name of the misses, bosses son builder. He only does two jobs at a time and only sorts out the next two jobs. Doesn’t advertise and only takes on the jobs he wants. After chatting with him properly he says how he did work as part of a bigger building group but ended up having a break down and that when he realised he wanted to not chase the work and just do a do a good job. He’s done fostering of a friends kid as well when his father/his friend passed away and the family wanted to move away. He seems like a decent all round guy.

Edited by mattvanders on Wednesday 17th August 19:12

[dhutch]

What a project. Fair play!

mattvanders said:

Doors in the 1st floor are original with wooden handles (not bakerlight). Ground floor doors are 90s cheap.

Lovely doors on the first floor. I guess you can retain them, if you want, and replace the downstairs ones with sympathetic new doors of a nice quality? Oddly our house retained the doorstairs edwardian panelled doors but the upstairs got 60s flat ones.

Tango13 said:

Congrats on the new house.
Has that radiator been cut, bent and then welded?

You have got to love an 70-80s bay window radiator!


Newspapers are a nice find.

[mattvanders]

dhutch said:

What a project. Fair play!

mattvanders said:

Doors in the 1st floor are original with wooden handles (not bakerlight). Ground floor doors are 90s cheap.

Lovely doors on the first floor. I guess you can retain them, if you want, and replace the downstairs ones with sympathetic new doors of a nice quality? Oddly our house retained the doorstairs edwardian panelled doors but the upstairs got 60s flat ones.

Tango13 said:

Congrats on the new house.
Has that radiator been cut, bent and then welded?

You have got to love an 70-80s bay window radiator!


Newspapers are a nice find.

Because we are doing a loft conversion you have to install fire doors in the upstairs bedrooms, we want everything to match so will be replacing (and hanging oposite way to what they currently are) all the doors with new.

The rad is only a single layer so won't give out the required heat so will be getting it changed for new as well, if it had been a double row we would of kept it (or at least thought about keeping)

[mattvanders]

So while we were carrying out the work on the house we was also sorting out the planning permission for the loft and ground floor extension. The loft was pretty much drawn up and ready to be submitted but still hadn't decided on the size of the ground floor extension, we were put two planning applications in so that if one element was rejected we could carry on with the build on the other while sorting out changes. We did contact the council to try and do a consultation to work out what would be like to be a provide but in the end they will only do this if you already have plans draw up (its a chicken and egg situation). In the end you have to bit the bullet and just get a deign draw up and apply and see what happens. We did look at the last 20 extension applied to the council to see what got approved and what got rejected and try and use that as a guild to what we could get away with. All but 1 application got approved so that doesn't mean there is a preference or a design that keeps in with the neighbouring houses which is good to know so most things should get approved. The only house not to be approved was our neighbours next door, they were looking to do a two storey side extension that would go hard up to the boundary to the footpath (they are on a T junction with a road going down the side of their property) which you aren't allowed to build up to.

After working out the extension we want isn't wide enough we looked at extending to the side of the excising house. We looked into the going as wide as we can before coming too close to the drains cover and also to the closes we can to our boundary (with the drains moved to suit) while still having side access to the property. In the end we decided to just go up to the drains cover, this will mean less cost from moving the drains. Also because the drains do a 90 degrees turn and goes across the back of our property to next doors when i was going though the water companies website I found out that you have to apply for planning permission from them if you build over 6m of of drain (we will be spot on 6m). None of this was high lighted by our architect which was a bit annoying as it was more luck from out end.

Any way we decided to go for a gable end roof design with vaulted ceiling and Velux windows to allow a much light in while not having a full width glass bowl folding & sliding window pane. We wanted to stay away from a flat roof mainly because we don't think they look nice but it will also be less likely to get leaks in years to come. We did look at lean to roof but due to the length that we wanted to come out the angle of the roof line would be too low or we would have to go up past the windows or even move the windows which would add lots of cost. The other thing with the cable end and with us kicking out to the side was that the peak of the roof line will be perfectly in the middle of the back bedroom and toilet windows leading to a more natural look. I will post up some of the screen prints of what I mean later on. Plans were drawn up a put in. We spoke with both sides of our neighbours to let them know what would be happening and that the council should be in contact to get their view points or issues. We already had our joining neighbour not liking what we was planning on doing due to potential blocking out some of their like in the down stairs dinning room area which seamed very strange as they built the shed in front of the window.

Any way while that was going on we also was looking into sorting out a new front door, the old owners had ripped the old door and storm porch out which we wanted to reinstate. We did look at buying second hand original doors but did get some advice from people saying any old wooden doors tend to bow and not be great. There is a company not to far away from us that make new old style doors with stained glass but double glassed. So a Saturday away from the house to do some door shopping entailed, what surprised up was how helpful they were when it came to discussing the difference in price and helping to try and keep the price down. Because of the out owners knocking down the old storm porch brick surround they pointed out it would cost more to rebuild it back up that just make bigger glass panels. It was also a case that they had a pre build one large glass panel with stain glass set in that would work out cheaper than the more traditional 6 or 8 plane glass panelled doors because each glass panel had to be made individually and inert gas inserted in the layers. This would mean up to 11 panels would need doing. In the end they suggested doing a double door design would would mean only requiring 5 glass panels getting fabricated and inert gas added. This design is very common in Southend were the shop is but not in Chelmsford which will look a bit different but not silly (again photos to be added).

With only an hour to go before most shops were closing we let the door shop to walk next door to go a fire place shop for a quick look around. Our intension was to keep the existing one in place even if we intended to change the surround. The owner was out but the chimney sweep was manning the the shop which to honest was probably the west thing as she was able to run through all the maintenance and upkeep required and explain why they are designed the way they are. We showed them out one of which they point our any faults with it including the size was too big for the chimney breast size which would prevent air flow around the burner... well i know what I was going to be doing the next day then