Period House Renovation

baloon

Registered User
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Thinking of taking the plunge and renovating a period house... Hoping for advice of info from others who may have undertaken similar jobs.

The house still has almost all of it's period features, which we want to retain. It's about 1100sq foot.

The main problems are as follows:

Severe damp issues. Walls are wet to the touch in kitchen, and wet floor. So essentially this needs to be gutted, new floor, damp proofing, dry lining, plastering. Anything else I'm missing?

Wallpaper is peeling off nearly every wall in the house, and some ceilings. Hope to remove it all without damaging the walls.

Upstairs landing wall, connected to neighbours house is damp, with that white 'foam' secreting from the wall. Also, damp patches on ceiling of landing.

Looked into the attic, and there are gaps in the roof slates - you can see daylight in about 3 spaces. Not big gaps, maybe 1inch thick. 4 inch long. Can these be repaired, without being replaced? Obviously water is getting into the attic space. So new insulation needed.

These are the main issues, and once these have been fixed, we'd be able to do all the other work ourselves, or have friends do it - i.e re-wiring, bathroom/plumbing, kitchen, floors/carpets, decorating.

I have posted for quotes on the builders website, and waiting on word back. But really I'm looking for info from people with personal experience in undertaking a job like this for themselves.

Thanks in advance!
 
Our place didn't have the extent of the damp issues you have but we still ended up having to replace the plasterboard on most walls and ceilings. Once the wall paper came down so did a lot of plaster, it wasn't expected but worth it now. The few places we didn't replace are obvious now, wish we'd done it all.
Plus by using insulating plasterboard on external walls and some walls with neighbours, the place has excellent sound proofing and really retains heat well, which is surprising as we still have single glazing.
 
hi in the middle of it myself my house was built in 1884 so as u can imagine lots of work but the reward is the satisfaction you get there are lots of specialist materials out there for such jobs ie old style plaster ie:cement lime and horse hair in carlow roof bonding etc
 
get an engineer too take a look,it should give you a fair idea of whats needed,better safe than sorry.
 
Thanks for all that guys!

I am expecting the plaster to come down with at least some of the paper. In my head I'm thinking and budgeting for worst case scenarios! Let's hope we get lucky though.

House isn't as old as 1884, but good to know about the specialist materials. Hadn't thought of that in case of damage to cornices or plaster features. Good to know.

Engineer and an architect friend will be in there before anything starts, have had to rely on them once before and defo needed, i think no matter how old the house!

Thanks again.
 
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