There are many bits of doing up this house that make me feel too lucky…guilty lucky…our new wine cellar is definitely top of the list.

Under our dining room, for reasons best known to the victorian builders, we had a half dug out room, and couldn’t resist the temptation of turning into a wine cellar.

So having knocked through into it, it transpires that it’s perhaps only a quarter dug already – not a half. Oops. Well we’ve started, so we’ll finish.

So a bit of underpinning later, we now have a reinforced concrete floor and breeze block walls, forming a room about 2.5m square.

We’ve been recommended Wineware – a wine racking company in Rustington, West Sussex, so I dropped them a line to see what they could help us come up with.

Chris, at Wineware, has been incredibly helpful (and patient!) as we worked up what i’m hoping will be a really useful space in which we can develop a new hobby. Yes – we know very little about wine at the moment – other than we like it a lot – so this is very much the beginning of a new journey. I can’t wait!

So we’ve gone with a mix of Magnum bottle racks, double depth criss cross racks (to maximise the amount of bottles we can get in), and case racks (which i’m told are a very handy way to keep the Bordeaux). We’ve also got some worksurface with space underneath and above so we can stack up cases of beer, mixers etc… and have somewhere to lean and pontificate.

We’ve also gone for a Wine Corner C18 IN air conditioning unit, and 10cm of Celotex insulation in the roof to keep the room at the right temperature and humidity.

With a last minute steer from David H – we’ve also kept a good chunk of space free for stacking up cases of stuff that’s going to be in store for the fairly long term. His words of wisdom are echoing round my ears still – maybe if I write them down, I’ll remember to take heed… “50% of all wine put in cellars ends up being thrown away as people buy too much that just doesn’t keep – so be patient, and take it slowly”. We’re going to do our damnedest not to make that mistake.

All that’s left now is for the racks and air conditioning to be installed and for the drinking to commence. I’m really excited about it all…Bring on that first weekend in the Loire valley – yes David I’m going to take you up on the offer – it sounds like an awesome way to spend a couple of days and begin this exciting new journey. Happy days

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So as our heating bills are somewhere between outrageous and astronomic, and due to the sieve-like quality of our roof we are whipping the tiles off, we thought it might be a good moment to insulate the life out of our roof.

So here’s the formula:

1) 30cm of fibreglass insulation on the floor of the loft
2) Solid Celotex cut between the rafters
3) Triso Super 10 (19 layers of silver foil, reflective film, wadding and other such clever stuff all in 30mm) over the rafters

Then a breathable membrane, battens and slate go over the top.

We’re figuring that it’s best to do even more than modern building regs require, on the basis that we’ll get the money back in heating bills over the next few years. Fingers crossed!

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Well, this wasn’t something we’d planned to do… but having got the scaffolding up, it seems we would be foolish not to clean the bricks on the front of the house.

Restore from Wimbledon is the company of choice, and a soft scrubbing brush, hydrofluoric acid and a jet wash (with a bit of help from a grinder on some of the tricky bits) are the instruments they have selected.

It transpires that our bricks are actually a lovely creamy lemon colour beneath 125 years of grime, and that it takes about 5 coats of acid and a whole bunch of elbow grease to reveal their true splendour.

[Edit] With hindsight I would never let anyone use a grinder on any brick again. It’s too hard a tool. The bricks end up uneven and I am worried at what long term damage we may have done to them.

You should also be aware that keeping the water out whilst jet-washing involves a staple gun attacking your lovely window frames.

I have to say, I wouldn’t use Restore again. No restoration company should be recommending grinding bricks, and I would have appreciated being warned about the staple damage in advance.

I would definitely recommend cleaning the bricks, and the acid and jet wash worked brilliantly, but if I ever did it again, I’d seek out a different supplier, and watch them like a hawk.

If anyone does find a superb brick cleaning company, do let me know so I can spread the word.

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1 large tarpaulin over the dormer window and removing this crazy roof-light might help keep that water out.

Who actually thought that gaffer taping a roof-light together on a 4 storey building was a good idea??

Cowboys Ted!

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No messing about. We got leaks & we’ve got to fix them.

If we’re going to stop this place leaking like a sieve, then it’s time for a new roof & new dormers…. and hey we got the scaffolding up, so we have to sort out the render, chimney stacks, windows, guttering et al. whilst we’re at it. The money pit strikes again.

Time to change the plans again. The kitchen extension can wait. Let’s get cracking with the roof and the basement

Scaffolding up. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain for the next month *ahem*

I’m going to get blogging more now building is underway again…

Back soon…

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OK – so having just found our third new leak this morning I feel compelled to moan. These old houses are gorgeous but crikey once they have gone to seed just trying to keep the weather out is a nightmare.

Our soon to be en suite bathroom had a small lake on the floor this morning where the bay window roof decided to give up the ghost under the duress of yet another night of constant rain. And of course it’s pouring through the floor and ceiling below – messing up our newly perfected dining room. Damn it.

We also have (lots of ) water running down the wall to the right of our front door (under the porchy bit, so it’s meant to be dry). That’s going to be a scaffolding job just to work out what’s going on.

The third leak is I suppose technically still the second, but hey it’s pouring through the floor and soaking all those boxes we never quite got round to unpacking in the cellar. Nice.

So 8 towels 2 buckets, a saucepan and a box of paper later we have done everything we can until Monday when I’ll be calling our surveyor’s and Project Manager – JJ Hatfield – to try and get the builders round quick smart.

We were warned by everyone that these houses are a constant project and eat money. Everyone was right.

Time for a drink now.

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It’s been too long since I blogged but I couldn’t miss this one….our planning permission for the next 2 phases of work….officially Phase 1 and 2 (you may remember Phase Zero was never meant to happen)…has been approved. Happy days.

If you want to know the details, here’s the planning documents and decision.

In short, we’re knocking down the garage, widening the drive, replacing the roof tiles with slate, redoing the dormers, and enlarging the kitchen and opening it up onto the garden…in 2 phases.

8 weeks of waiting, no objections from anyone and 1 small request for a change from the Conservation Officer, and now we’re full steam ahead for Phase 1 building works to start on the 1st February 2009. That’s the theory anyway.

The only change the Conservation Officer wanted related to the wall at the front of the house. We thought the swirly plasterwork circles in between the pillars had been added after the original railings had been removed, but the Conservation Officer reckons they are original.

We’ve had another look up and down the road and there is 1 other house with the same plasterwork, so he could well be right. Anyway it’s a minor change that we’re happy to go along with.

Now for the small matter of getting all the detailed drawings done, building control approval, and a full schedule of works drawn up…not to mention going back out to tender to find a new builder….don’t ask….let’s just say we have still not found builder paradise yet…maybe I’ll explain more one day. For now though suffice is to say that:

1) we won’t be using GT Developments again
2) If I ever ran a building firm I would have my own retained, reliable and competent plumber
3) if you ever think about using Hodges & Marten as plumbing subcontractors then contact me for a reference first

That’s a story for another day though.

I would add though that JJ Hatfield’s project management has been excellent throughout and are as highly recommended now as they were at the start of the job. I am beginning to get the feeling that in the building world this is praise indeed.

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To get a bit of inspiration, on tuesday I headed to Hampton Court Flower show. I’d never been to a flower show before, so I was interested to know whether i’d enjoy it or not.

I did. A good day out with my mum and sister. It was really nice to see some amazing gardens and plants, as well as some fun/interesting garden furniture and bits and pieces for the home.

We had to dodge a few thunderstorms, but generally the weather didn’t cause us any problems. I felt distinctly middle-aged, but hey i’m getting used to that now.

Paul Dyer of WaterFeatures.co.uk had a stand there…we’ve decided to use him to put a stream into the garden next spring. (Slightly awkward use of the the Royal ‘we’ there – still trying to get the missus bought in!).

Dyer's Show Garden

Check out his website WaterFeatures.co.uk to see an enthusiastic rant about how streams should be done!

You can see my photos of the show here, and using the wonders of social photo sharing you can see other peoples’ too in this Flickr Group.

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OK, so there’s a million jobs to do which will cost a King’s ransom to get done. If we do them all at once we’ll be buried in builder’s dust for a year, bankrupt and probably divorced…a plan is required…

There’s the inevitable weighing up of things that really need doing…fixing that leaking roof for instance, and things that make you smile…reinstating cornices, decorating, that kind of thing. Heart vs head..that old struggle…head never seems to win with me…

So here was our initial conclusion:

Phase 1 (Spring 2009):

• Kitchen Extension
• Sort out leaky roof in dining room
• Ground floor decorations
• Replace rotten cellar window
• Split cellar into rooms and dig wine cellar
• Merge loo and bathroom on first floor

Phase 2 (Spring 2010/2011)

• Replace concrete roof tiles with slate
• New dormer windows
• Decorate exterior of house
• En suite bathroom
• Decorate the rest of the inside of house

It begins to dawn on us that Phase 1 is going to get held up with changing our mind over the design of the kitchen extension, and getting planning permission. If we want to live in a house that doesn’t resemble a squat, then we’re going to need to break phase 1 up a bit….hark the sound of the heart beginning to edge a lead over the head!

So Phase Zero is born (January 2009), the kitchen extension and cellar can wait a year…

• Ground floor decorations
• Cellar window replaced
• Dining room leaky roof fixed
• Proper steps put in between kitchen and diner
• Cast iron radiators to replace horrid white ones (how did that sneak in there!)

So everything was set for a January 2009 start, all decisions made, no need for further prevarication or change… when on New Year’s eve the cooker decided to blow up…damnation, Pandora opened her box once again…

De Dietrich Range - A thing of great beauty!

There seemed no point in getting a temporary cooker, so we undertook a quick but extensive bout of research (and agonising) to decide what would fit in the future kitchen extension. It had to be Pyrolytic, it had to have 2 ovens, it had to be gas on top….well that limited us to a De Dietrich range as they are apparently the only people in the world who make such a thing.

Nice and easy you might think, but typically the beast, although a thing of beauty, was 20cm bigger than the chimney opening it had to fit into, so suddenly a bunch more building work was added to the job…oh yes and then there was the stripping of the bay windows and the replacement of the 2 fireplaces, and the sudden change of mind from doing a doing a temporary repair on the dining room roof to a full blown lead roof.

The lessons learned…give the plan time to mulch before locking it down, and keep flexible. Have a mechanism for revising the project plan once you’ve got going – in other words have a good Project Manager. No matter how much you plan not to, you will change your mind.

Enough for now. Until next time.

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Always a tricky one this…do you use those builders you’ve used for odd jobs over the years? do you go with the one recommended by a friend? do you use an architect? a project manager? do you even do some of the work yourself?

Super Surveyor Jim Hatfield

As chance would have it, my sister had some bad luck with a house a few years ago and met Super Surveyor Jim Hatfield. He does actually have his own super-suit.

Jim and his crew (JJ Hatfield & Co to be more polite – and one feels one should be polite around Hatfield’s) do surveying for legal cases and building surveys, and they also do architectural design and project management. Jim is a restoration nut – he even has is own steam engine – so he seemed like a good person to have around for a project like this.

Anyway, i’m jumping the gun, we actually got Jim involved to do our building survey – for which he wore the famed super-suit – 9 hours of crawling around in the rafters, and a whole bunch of report writing later, we benefited from 2 inches of pure weapons-grade building survey joy – identifying every single problem with our future baby. For the first time in my life I actually trusted a building survey. Needless to say we bought the house.

Now Jim was so familiar with the house, and having been so impressed with him, it seemed folly not to give Hatfield’s a crack at project managing the renovation.

OK, so you could easily think that it would cost a bit more because of their fees, but actually it meant we wouldn’t go over-budget, we wouldn’t get any surprises, we’d have someone totally on top of the builders and we wouldn’t need to engage an architect separately.

We figured that in the end the costs would work out about even and we would get a much higher quality, and less stressful, job done. Much more importantly, 6 months in I still believe all of this to be the case.

David Witcombe - Project Manager

So having got Hatfield’s on board, they specified every tiny detail of the first phase of the job – down to how many times to stir the paint in the morning (leave nothing to chance!) – and then put the job out to 3 builders to quote on. 2 of the builders they had worked with before, and 1 wildcard.

The wildcard came in cheapest, but their references just didn’t make us feel good, so we ended up deciding on builders no.2…

Ladies and Gentleman I present to you…the builders all our hopes are pinned to…. GT Developments.

So Job Done (well for this blog post anyway). Builders for phase 1 selected. Building work to commence January 2009 and last 3 months. Project manager, surveyor and heir to the supersuit, David Witcombe, was assigned.

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Crikey, so where to start…so much to say, but nobody even knows this blog exists yet…I guess I have to imagine lots of people excitedly hanging on my every word, and hope that one day somebody will come along and read it, and hopefully find it either interesting or useful – either would be nice

OK, so off we go…it all began when we got the keys at the beginning of September 2008…yes that’s right, just as the UK housing market peaked…but hey ho!

I should introduce you to our baby…she’s a big old Victorian House in Brighton…6 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a cellar with lots, and yes I really do mean lots, of work needed.

In the beginning...there was a lot to do...lots and lots..

You can see from the outside that she needs some love. The previous owners had done a great job of converting the house back from bedsits to a family home. They also redid the plumbing and electrics – saving us two big expensive (and boring!) jobs, but then ran out of steam (or maybe it was money…judging by our depleting bank balance that was almost certainly it).

So what we start with is more than slightly rough round the edges, but at least it still has most of its original plaster cornices, roses, fireplaces, stripped pine doors, beautiful stained glass, sash windows, high skirting boards etc..and it really is a lovely layout, with great open halls and landings, high ceilings and a lovely established garden….. but…..and it’s a pretty big but to be honest…

Pretty much the condition of the whole house...ouch!...

As you can start to see from the picture in this post we’re going to have to get rid of those concrete roof tiles which are squashing our baby as each day ticks by, rip out the horrific dormer windows and the dodgy DIY velux (which our surveyor reckons was from an old camperan!), replace the nasty plastic guttering with cast iron ones, repair all the windows, clean off the bricks, overhaul the front garden, recondition the old victorian tile path, banish the concrete drive…and that’s just what you can see from the front of the house!

Once you get inside we’ve got to restore the cornices and rose in the living room – they were lost in a fire - Strip the artex off the walls, remove 120 years of paint from the cornices and ceiling roses, put a proper staircase in between the kitchen and the dining room, make the bathroom on the first floor habitable, move the airing

A fine example of a DIY dormer!

cupboard from the landing, put in a decent cooker and kitchen units….in fact we’re going to extend the kitchen – but more on that later.

In fact really the only way you can get a good idea of the scale of what we have to do is through photos – i’ll get snapping. But hopefully by now you have the gist. We have bought a lovely house, but it needs a hell of a lot doing to it.

As we go through the journey, it is my intention to update victorianjack.com with the story as it unfolds, and build it into a mine of useful resources for anyone else doing a similar job…we’ve already uncovered hundreds of really useful sites and books that I wish I’d come to know about without quite so much digging. So hopefully you’ll find the end product useful, and I hope it might even give someone some encouragement to take on a similar challenge. Enough for now though…in the words of the immortal Governator….”I’ll be back!”

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