A Retrospective – Part one of the renovation

We have now finished what I would describe as “Phase One” of the house renovations – the bits that needed to be done to make the house work as a building and be reasonably comfortable (to my standards which are high – J and R live to lower comfort standards.  J in particular).  This has taken almost exactly three months.  I have restrained myself from making any comments about the tradespeople who carried out various parts of this work.  Some of them were brilliant, and some of them were fucking diabolical.  The ones in the former category know who they are, were paid on the dot and will get more work from us.  The ones in the latter category may not know who they are as they may lack the self-awareness and/or moral judgement to make that call, but they will probably be aware that I was not pleased and that they will be seeing neither further work nor favourable reviews from me.

In order of urgency when we moved in.

The basement stairs – outside.  I have not said much about this because I wanted to wait for it to be finished, but one of the main things that was wrong with this house (and which I strongly suspect stopped it from selling) was the access to the basement.  There are two ways into it, an outside stair down to its own front door, and an internal stair from next to the ground floor back door.

When we moved in, the outside stair had no handrail and was 14 steps of slippery concrete waiting for an accident to happen.  So we put a handrail on (not easy as solid concrete).

While we were in that area we had a new door made for the coal vault and I painted it.

The inside stairs were a disgrace.  In 1977 a decision was made to make the basement (which would have been an integral part of the house used for the servants) into a separate flat, and to create a back door for the main house at ground level.  This was in principal a very good idea, but the way they did it was a crap idea.  Basically they chopped up the beautiful mahogany and granite staircase and created an internal staircase which was so narrow you could hardly squeeze down it, and so steep it was a deathtrap – again it had no handrails!  In the process of doing this they ruined the access to the back door by pouring about a ton of concrete over the Victorian stairs.    So in as much as we could, we undid the worst of their damage.  We had a lot of the concrete removed to restore one of the Victorian steps, and put in a wider door with the top three steps remodelled to follow more or less the original lines of the stairs.  Critically we put in handrails at both sides while retaining what was left of the old bannisters.  I would have liked to do more with this, but completely restoring the stairs could not be done without sacrificing the back door, and we couldn’t do this whilst retaining the character of the basement.  We have, however made it a great deal better and haven’t done anything which would preclude a full restoration being done later.

These were the stairs “in progress”

These are the stairs now.

The kitchen before looked to have been installed about 1985.  Not only was it ugly, but it had no storage space

We put in a new kitchen, flooring and I tiled it.  Now we have loads of cupboards.

There was no proper bathroom upstairs – one had no shower and a broken acrylic bath from about 1985, the other had a broken shower so for many weeks I was using J’s shower in the basement.  We put a new shower into one and a complete new bathroom into the other.  In the photo Saphy is getting ready for bath night.

I redecorated the basement lounge and created a games room out of an empty store room.

We turned a neglected bedroom with a broken fireplace and shabby pink rose wallpaper

Into this swish office.

We disposed of a load of “Sindy Doll” style furniture

and returned the Victorian master bedroom to its former glory, complete with plumbed in washstand.

We got the roof fixed, including replacing many broken slates and repairing a broken chimney.  We even got our broken “pinnacle”  repaired and replaced the bronze lions to each side of the door (which the previous owners rather ungenerously removed) with some more appropriate cats.

As well as all this I have done sundry other pieces of decorating and fixing work (everything from cleaning brasses to mending china to repairing plaster dado rails).  Some of this I have been less than competent at in the first instance, but I have got through it.  I have also done a great deal of gardening and R and I have been to the tip with over 20 loads of miscellaneous rubbish.

The only thing now left to do in phase I is the basement heating.  The plumbers tried very hard to repair the existing system, but it had been so mistreated (never serviced and allowed to build up rust and sludge) that it was unfixable and they are having to replace it altogether this month.  We will then continue with phase II – there is still a lot to be done but it is mostly redecoration and cosmetic work which will be done by me.

There has been a great deal achieved in three months.  I’ve had a bit of help from the other two, but it has been mainly me and I am pretty proud of it.