First Renovation of the Year

We’re underway on the first renovation of the year. Old houses are great, then you start opening up stuff and then they can be a massive pain in the arse. But we carry on regardless.

Heavy, man….

There was a small wooden wedge holding in the whole window and panelling around it, pretty mental. But as we were replacing all the old rotten timber lintels we’d uncovered the structure and I’ve never seen this type of construction before. It’s similar to a nofines build but the house was built in the late 1800’s, I thought nofines came about in the 50’s? I’ve spoke to a few other guys I know who do this stuff and they’d never seen it either. Best way to describe it is that it’s been shuttered and then filled with an aggregate about the same size as type 1 and mixed with lime. It’s pretty solid but when you get into it it comes apart quite easily. Never came across it before, no big stone on the face either, it’s as if it’s held together with the render on the outside. It could be experimental for the time.

When you start a project like this you always hear a few stories about it from the passer-by’s during the first week or two, One guy was telling me he was going to buy it 40 years ago and it had subsidence back then. Which is also pretty mental. I’m not sure there’s been any proper work done to it since then either. People like to patch stuff up.

We done some exploring. This looks like a part of the foundation, it’s just a few course of brick forming some sort of channel, behind the brick was the soil with a 20mm render over it. No foundation. The fact that there’s no foundation isn’t too uncommon for something this age but I’d have expected something for the size of the place.

So the channel in the pic above runs from the back of the house and all the downpipes from the gutter and the water coming from the hill behind the house run around the channel. Very wet. All the years of rain seemed to have washed out the soil and the house just sinks bit by bit. Which again, is pretty mental, man!

Geo technical guys will be out for some deeper test bores and the engineer can draw up a spec for the underpinning. It’s not a great start if it’s your house but it is what it is.

We thought we’d have been starting the roof this week but I suppose the delay means we’ll be in the better weather when we’re doing the roof.

The good thing about this one is you can’t do any more patching up and hiding stuff hoping it somehow gets better. This will, eventually, be a great house. It’s just work, and obviously money.

I’ve been working on some workshop stuff too, got a few external doors to do and I made a bed that I think turned out well. Oak with a danish cord headboard

I’m pleased with this. I’ve got better pictures I’ll fire up on another post but you get the idea. This was a commission thats heading down to England. I’ve saw this design a few times from a few different guys and they all argue about who made it first. I don’t bother with the arguing, nothings original now anyway. Im a mercenary, a hired gun :)

But I’ll probably do my own version and put it up on the store section the same way I do with my benches and mirrors. Eventually when I get the time.

Time, man! There’s just a lot of stuff in the construction/joinery/furniture world that I enjoy doing so that’s why I’m sometimes making nice bits of furniture and other times lifting the heaviest concrete lintels into an old house that’s falling down. Is that mental? I think it’s what the version of guys like me would have done back in the olden day, specialisation ruined good workers. Joiners are supposed to do all this. I don’t know why it changed. They’re missing out on a good time…maybe.

Anyway, that was a long read, I apologise, I could just keep going. People avoid me on the street because I’m that guy who’ll talk to someone for an hour about nonsense. My apologies.

More stories on the instagram of all the work we’re doing if you want to see any more. Also, if you’re into doing this sort of work and looking for a job you can send me a message, I don’t know what happened to all the people looking for work. It’s a barren landscape out there, where are the guys?

Take it easy