Fireplace Hunting

 One of the many items on the tick sheet of what Mat and I wanted in our new house was a fireplace. Its just one of those things. Its not essential, we know that, but they're just lovely things to have. And since this house was about finding a home to fall in love with, on the list went a fireplace.

So when we first saw this house and saw the huge chimney stacks and what appeared to be no less than 5  covered up fireplaces it was definitely an exciting sign. As soon as we had a chance both of us were itching to take a sledge hammer to them and find out what was underneath.

The lack of any other obvious original features around the house meant we weren't getting our hopes up too much about finding anything other than a brick hole under the coverings, but it was still good fun. It turned out a crow-bar was more practical than a sledge hammer (sorry Mat!) and if anyone tries this at home, make sure you wear a mask! My (phone)camera struggled to take a photo through the dust! And for the observant among you, although Mat doesn't have one on in the photos, we soon donned them when we saw how much debris there was. 

Here are some photos of the unveiling of the first two, which were in two of the bedrooms and back onto the same chimney stack as each other. This were just covered by a couple of bits of wood nailed in front, some hardboard and then wallpapered over.

Before - If you look carefully the seam around the edge is just about visible

Cue the arrival of a scary man with a crowbar, you can see the avalanche of debris waiting.

With dust - and Mat very pleased with the mess he's making!

After a bit of a tidy up.

The second one, just after the board had come off, no wonder the seams of the paper were starting to give.

Now all I need to do is find a couple of cast iron fireplace plates to stick on the front. Simple!!!

Job No.1 Contain the Dogs

As previously seen in blogs, "The beginning of the Befores" and "Why this House?", my husband and I have 2 dogs in our lives. Finn, the rather large German Shepherd/ Husky and Bella, the not so large, but still by no means small Australian Kelpie. Both have great times taking over our lives and making pretty much everything we do all about them.

As far as house renovation goes theres a general need to be continuously walking in and out of a house, so the first job, had to be completely unrelated to actually renovating the house and all about the dogs - putting a gate on the garden.

As jobs go, we thought this would be pretty straight forward, but still it managed to take longer than planned. After some research we discovered it would be a minimum of £200 to buy a decent 5 bar gate, then we still needed the required posts, hinges, latches etc. A quick call to some local gate/fencing companies and we found it would be around £400 to buy a gate and have it installed. However due to the slope going up at the entrance to our drive, the gate would either have to be hung about 18 inches off the ground (not so practical for keeping dogs in) or we would have to dig up the concrete drive way. The latter we are planning to do eventually anyway, but for the duration of building works it makes more sense to keep the very dilapidated concrete in place.

So we elected for the cheap quick fix. Buy the cheapest gate we could find and only expect it to last until we dig up the driveway. Apparently the cheapest option is Wickes wooden flat pack gates (about £25 each) we needed 2 because they were only just over a metre wide. This also solved our issue of how high to hang them, because of the shorted length they didn't need to open as far into the drive.

Mat sporting his dashing double denim work look to model with the new gate, while Finn looks on. He was very pleased to later find his head fits perfectly through the holes to check on passers by.

Fortunately our dogs are great at realising a barrier there to make a point, even if it doesn't actually stop them. Which is handy because Finn previously demonstrated his ability to jump 5 foot without hesitation. As by the time we were done the result wasn't particularly pretty or dog proof. But it was cheap, and by the time we've grown some additional hedge around the edges it will do for now.

Why that house?

After showing various photos, which give some idea of what we're dealing with - and hint at what work we have to come - I thought I should show something about why we decided this was the place for us.

At this point I also ought to give a little back story. Although it may currently be mid-December, and if you live in England, you may have been enjoying all the miserable weather that has been bringing us lately. Lots and lots of rain (in our area, whole villages have been closed), freezing fog, always a joy at 6.30am, and half hearted snow, which very rapidly becomes icy brown slush.

It is an ongoing threat of ours to move to another country for the winter!

Anyway, my point is not to grumble about the English weather, more importantly, that wherever you are in the world, it is mid-December, regardless of what good or bad weather that brings. However, when we bought our little Victorian number it was actually July, and when we first saw it, it was May. We were in the process of selling our previous project, a 1 bedroom flat just around the corner from where we currently live. We'd bought it as a repossession, dirt cheap, and (with an interim of my younger brother Richard, living in it for a while) sold it for a bit of a profit. Between that and nearly 3 years of desperate saving we managed to upgrade the flat to the new place.

The aim of the new place was primarily to upgrade our home. We currently live in a terrace house which, once we're in the door, we love. Its outside that's the problem. The door opens directly onto the street, which is no big deal, but annoying. We also only have a small garden, again, not a big problem, but having acquired 2 large dogs (spotted in last post photos) a bigger garden would be a major bonus. The location is in a village, about half an hours drive along ever degrading country lanes before reaching any kind of sensible sized main road. Very frustrating when we have a 3 hour drive to my family in Kent. Also its in the fens, serious fens, or as I like to put it, the black desert. I'm very sorry to all those fen dwellers out there, but its just not my cup of tea. Too damp and too flat. I'm afraid Mat bought it pre-me for all the practical reasons, but frankly I'm just not always that kind of a practical person. Oh and we spend the entire winter doing battle with rising damp. So that is a practical reason to move!

So, as I digress some more, the point was we wanted a new place, with a better location. We'd heard great things about the village, its 5 minutes from the main roads and much more direct to Cambridge city centre. I wanted a project, and Mat insisted it have 4 good walls and a roof (again with the practical!). So although in terms of footprint the new place is actually smaller, its merits made it a brilliant option. And of course it was at the top of our meagre budget.

 Since we were also due to be getting married in September not a lot happened beyond making the purchase until after the wedding. And with it less than ideal house renovation weather. Not that I'm complaining, I love it in all weathers! However, whilst the weather was still good we did get over there a bit, and managed to take some more attractive pictures of the local area and orchards around the corner. Perfect dog walking territory. So, since it may be a while before I am posting beautiful house photos, here are some lovely countryside ones.

On your marks, get set..........

The beginning of the befores

I feel it is my duty to post some before photos of the house, hopefully not too shortly to be followed by some during, and then after photos.

It is especially good to put these photos in because this house has presented us with some pretty special before material. As I've previously mentioned the 70's has reigned supreme in our little Victorian place. Its so extreme that, in some parts done properly I think it would actually be pretty cool. Unfortunately 3 odd years of sitting empty hasn't done it any favours. Its going to be so satisfying stripping it back to basics though.......

My favourite, the lime green and flowery brown kitchen.

 

Downstairs, sitting room, through the kitchen doorway (with Bella and Finn having their first investigation!) and the lovely aqua and black bathroom, sadly the wall paper of this room is out of the shot.

A rather narrow staircase, with head room up to about my chin. Upstairs, a shot from the largest room, showing two areas of further wall paper, and the plastic floor coverings. Oh, and an example of some very interesting wiring, we've yet to contend with.

And last for today, another of the second bedroom, somewhere under the yellow TV cabinet is one of the 5/6 rumoured fireplaces!

Can't wait to get stuck into turning this place into the beautiful home it should be.

What we've got - some technical stuff

I mentioned in my last post about the plans of what we've got at the moment and so what our limitations are, so I thought I'd better actually post those plans so you can see what I'm talking about.

Well, here are my scale plans.

They are not to scale.

However, I did make Mat follow me around the house with a tape measure while I wrote down every dimension I could think of. After that, I went home and drew said "scale plans" mostly I discovered that the walls in our house are Not straight. Not at all.

On a serious note though, the plans have been really useful. I drew them in Illustrator, with a scale of 1cm to 1m, it was really helpful for working out the layout. Its amazing how, whenever you picture a place you decide what shape a room is until you measure it and draw it and suddenly realise what space you actually have, I was convinced the bathroom was square, its not, its very much a rectangle. I printed out a few copies and we scribbled alsorts of ideas over them, such as possible wall rearrangements to try to find more efficient ways to use the space. I could then go back to Illustrator and move the walls around and work out how much space the ideas would actually give us. Then we could go around measuring random things like our bed (Bed is very important of course!) to make sure it would fit in its potential allotted space. Now we've got the drawings its also really handy to be able to print copies for planning things like where electrics will go.

Obviously if we had a lovely big spacious house this whole process might not be so essential (though having tried it, I'm willing to bet it would still be really useful), but it really was amazing how useful we found it.

The Challenges

In an ideal world of course we would have bought a big rambling country house for our current renovation project - well wouldn't everyone! However of course there are always limitations with these things, namely of course money. So, our rambling estate is, as previously mentioned a 3 bedroom semi detached Victorian place. And not a very big one at that. In fact, the footprint is smaller than our current 2 bedroom Victorian terrace, and somehow, the layout is far less practical.

So one of the major aims beyond just renovating it into something beautiful is going to be making the absolute most of the space and making it as efficient as possible.

Extending is an option, something we've been looking into a lot and the potential for extension was one of the winning factors when we bought it, but at this stage, its a bit of an uncertainty in terms of possibility and also affordability. For the time being we have to concentrate on making what we've already got work to the best of its ability.

Next chance I get, I'll put some pictures on here with plans of what we've got and what we think we're going to have to do to get the most out of it.

In the beginning

Well my new husband and I bought a derelict house near Cambridge and started creating havoc - in an attempt to eventually turn it into a lovely new home. I thought it was about time I did some documentation.

The place is a little 1880's Victorian semi-detached. From the outside its got some great original features (that phrase we all love so much!), brilliant chimney stacks, stripes of rich red bricks and lovely brick arches over the windows. 

However, I wouldn't be writing this if it was the perfect little home would I?!

Also outside, most of the garden is transformed to concrete, an asbestos roofed concrete garage, and the footings of an extension which never had planning permission to start with, let alone by the time we bought it. Other little delicacies include a window arch which rests haphazardly above a twice as wide as it, and bricked in with new bricks where its not as tall as it should be. The neighbours half of the house boasts lovely sash windows, adding extra contrast to our rotten 50's disasters, its certainly a clear reminder of what we're aiming for! 

Inside, the extreme 70's has taken over....combined with 2 plus years of emptiness and some very scary wiring - even I could tell that without my husbands help!