Renovating your basement

A little hidden gem within the house is our basement. Like the rest of the house, this room was unloved, damp and falling apart. We had serious mould on the walls, the stair case was rotten and we could see that the ceiling was falling through. We had no option but to renovate this part of the house straight away.

 

 

 

 

I have heard some horror stories when it comes to basement renovation work. The chances are, the water levels will be higher than your basement walls, therefore you will ideally need to invest in a decent taking system to ensure that you don’t have any issues in the future with damp.

We worked with our builder to find the best possible tanking solution for us. In the end we opted for a sump pump system which has piping running below the basement floor and a pump that pushes water away from the basement and into the external drains of our property. This system is constantly working but is unbelievably quiet and costs very little to run.

As I have mentioned, it was our builders advice that led us to choose this contraption and it has worked perfectly since we had it fitted 18 months ago. Remember, basement renovations aren’t cheap and you will most likely uncover problems you weren’t expecting. Whatever budget you put aside for this work, I would most definitely advise you to double it!

When doing a project like a basement renovation, don’t just use any builder. Make sure you choose a specialist who understands the complexity of renovating a basement. We had roughly 6 builders look into renovating our basement. 2 ran scared and never got back to us with a quote. 2 said they could easily do it but their portfolio in no way suggested they could and 1 was way over our budget. We were so lucky to finally find a basement specialist who had vast experience and was able to advise us and give us solid peace of mind every step of the way. Anyone from the North West of England who is looking to use a basement specialist should definitely consider using our chosen builder Aidan Vallely who runs and owns elite basements. Aidan and Danny, of elite basements were professional throughout our renovation, they never moaned even when conditions were grim and the renovation went over the expected time-scale. Through hard labour they managed to pull the time back and complete our basement renovation to an incredibly high standard.

 

Below is a short story board of how the basement started to take shape:

 

The beauty of the sump pump system meant that we could also plum in a toilet and piping for a sing and potentially a washing machine. We decided to turn the back of our basement into a utility room area and the front of our basement into a second living area, although my boyfriend likes to call it his games room…

In the end, for safety reasons we had to remove the flooring from the first floor as this simply wasn’t safe enough for Aidan and Danny for work under. We originally had 1 metre long Yorkshire slate flags weighing over 1 ton per flag resting above the basement on small wooden beams. Aidan replaced these wooden beams with 2 large RSJ’s and then new wooden beams, finally he fitted new flooring above the basement.

This picture shows the new beams in place before the new flooring went on top.

 

Our basement was technically already classed as a room therefore we didn’t need planning permission, however we had building regulations sign this renovation off at every major step of the way to ensure that it can ‘legally’ be classed as a liveable room. From my knowledge, If you do not involve building regulations through out a major renovation of a room like a basement or attic then this can not be classed as a room when you come to sell your house and you could end up spending a lot of money but not making any profit when it comes to selling your house. Definitely make sure you look into this before starting such a project.

Moregeous view on a visit to The Flooring Show 2013, plus a bit of lovely Harrogate

Great website for some very honest homely ideas. Allhomelythings loves the thoughts and views shared here!

MAKE IT MOREGEOUS

 Aside from the controversial marketing decision I posted about earlier this week, Harrogate’s Flooring Show 2013 had some great stuff going on and some lovely people involved in trying to coax some exhibitors / attendees / sales reps into the 21st century. The UK carpet industry has taken a massive hit in recent years, on a one to one level I’ve spoken at length about this with a close friend whose family owned a carpet factory in the North West for decades, now recently & sadly closed down. Partly because we all wanted timber & laminate, partly European manufacturing took over, partly the UK industry may not have been forward thinking enough?

My personal feelings are that successive governments have failed UK manufacturing, preferring to concentrate on Southern money making / banking / tech and lots of airy fairy industries which don’t give many real people real jobs. Now it’s down…

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Step 4

It’s time to see what’s behind that old fireplace!

We had 3 fireplaces in our house and 3 separate chimneys. Our fireplace surrounds were very art deco-not at all to our taste:

 

Ours were open fires, we had absolutely no gas connected to our house when we bought it so for us it was simply a case of ripping the old fire places off the wall! if you do have a fireplace which has a gas connection then make sure you have fully switched off the gas before attempting to rip your old fire place out!

The best way to remove the old fireplace surround should be fairly simple. Pick yourself up a hammer and chisel, place the chisel between the wall and the surround, tap your hammer into the chisel, once the chisel is embedded between the gap you can start to edge the fire surround away from the wall.

 

make sure if you do plan to keep your carpet/flooring that you protect them with substantial material, and wear a mask that covers your mouth and nose for protection, this is going to be a very messy job!

 

Once we ripped out our surround we realised that our fireplace could be opened right out as it had been boarded up using bricks, we ensured the lintel above the fireplace was strong enough and knocked the bricks out.

 

We found a stumbling block when we knocked out our kitchen fireplace. Within the surround was an old fashioned water heater, this had obviously been put in place to heat water when the fire was lit, this was connected to a copper water tank in the loft-again extra cost to remove all of this which we weren’t expecting.

Over all removing the fire surround and opening up the fire places was without a doubt one of the best decisions we made. Pictures will be revealed at a later stage of how these fireplaces look today.

Step 3

Having renovated houses we soon learnt that when it comes to decorating people seem to wallpaper on top of wallpaper. This can be a painful process for when you decide to strip back the walls and re decorate.

Things that make wallpaper difficult to remove:

1: Wallpaper lining

2: several layers of wallpaper-placed on top of each other

3: The length of time that the wallpaper has  been on the walls for

4: The plaster beneath the wallpaper

Unfortunately stripping wallpaper can lead to bigger jobs. Our house was built somewhere between the 17 and 18 hundreds. The walls are made up of a plaster mix using horsehair. When we pulled the wallpaper away from the walls, certain sections of plaster completely crumbled.

From what we learnt there is no way of stopping this from happening, as the walls age the plaster will loosen (we’re talking 50 years+), therefore will crumble. If wallpaper has been on it this will dry the plaster out even more and inevitably the plaster will crumble. Please do always bear in mind that what ever you budget for renovating, always add a little more to the pot. We had to plaster board all the areas where the plaster had crumb

removing wallpaper can remove plaster!!

led and have the walls skimmed with plaster.

My biggest tip here would be use any means of water that you can to make removing wallpaper easier. There are several ways  you can remove wallpaper but I would honestly say wallpaper steam strippers are a great investment and really do make this gruelling process much more bearable! You can use a bucket filled with water and sponges that you can dampen the wall with however walls dry so quickly, this can be a slow process.

We relied on top tips from one of my mums most regularly bought magazines, ‘readers digest’. Follow their tips below if you want to understand what’s involved with steam wallpaper stripping taken from http://www.readersdigest.co.uk/health-home/diy/preparing-the-surfaces/removing-wallpaper-how-to-use-a-steam-stripper Please do not ignore the mention of goggles that are most definitely needed when stripping ceiling wallpaper-imagine a paper cut but on your eye- Ouch! not nice…

Removing wallpaper : How to use a steam stripper

Using a steam stripper If you want to strip a room in a day, your best bet is to use a steam stripper.Tools Steam stripper;  wallpaper scorer; rubber gloves; safety goggles; wide stripping knife; dustsheets.Before you start Cover the area with dustsheets and put on some old work clothes and a pair of rubber gloves. Read the instruction leaflet carefully.1. Fill the tank, switch the stripper on and wait for the light to come on, indicating that the stripper is ready.This usually takes about ten minutes, when steam begins to come out of the perforated plate. While you are waiting, score the surface of the paper with a scoring tool. 2. Strip a length at a time, working from the bottom up, loosening stubborn areas with a stripping knife. Hold the plate at the bottom of the length. Keep it in position until the paper around it shows signs of damp – usually after about a minute. 3. Holding the plate in one hand over the next area you are going to strip, use the other to start scraping the paper from the first area. 4. Top up the tank as necessary, first switching off and leaving the stripper to cool for half a minute. 5. If you find you’ve missed any bits, spray them with a garden spray gun. This will soak in and allow you to scrape them off easily. Tip Take care when using a stripper on plasterboard. The steam will soften the surface, so use a stripping knife as little as possible and do not dig it in. Stream-stripping a ceiling Use a steam wallpaper stripper to remove old painted or washable wallpaper from a ceiling. Because you will be using the steaming plate above head level, take precautions to stop yourself being splashed by hot water. Wear a baseball cap or similar headgear, safety goggles, a long-sleeved shirt and work gloves. Set up a work platform across the room so you can hold the steaming plate in front of you as you work across the ceiling strip by strip. Put down plenty of dustsheets. A steam stripper will also help to remove old textured ceiling finishes such as Artex, allowing you to scrape the softened coating off area by area. Be warned, however, this is a messy and time-consuming job, and you may prefer to employ a plasterer to apply a skim coat of plaster over the old finish to create a smooth ceiling surface. Thank you readers digest, you certainly saved us some time- great DIY tips!!

Step 2

If like us you plan to change every single decor detail within your home then it’s sensible to do this in stages. We decided to strip the wall paper prior to ripping out our carpets. This was done for 2 main reasons.

1: if you are planning on restoring the floorboards then this protects them for longer. We found that when we steamed the wallpaper it turned into a gloopy, sticky mass-once that had contact with wood and dried it became tricky to remove.

2: you can simply roll the carpets up at the end so any small bits of wallpaper that you had lying around will definitely be collected and removed from the house-simply saves another ‘bitty’ job along the way.

 

As you can see from the picture we were unfortunate enough to have wallpaper on our ceiling too. Having removed paper from every room we uncovered one wall from wallpaper to reveal the date 1946 which I can only assume was the last time the house was decorated. 65 years since the house last had a revamp…We certainly had our work cut out!

 

Step 1

We renovated every room in our house so I can hopefully give you an idea on each individual room.

Take advantage of the first week to clear out anything left behind from the previous resident. in our case the previous resident had left the (not so nice) curtains so we kept hold of these. these proved invaluable for protecting the floor while painting and the car while lugging bits to the tip.

If you’re not too bothered about your car getting dusty then definitely use this as your main means of transport to discard of rubbish from the house, this will save you a lot of money compared to buying a tip. Once you have complete clarity of the house and you can see all floors, walls and ceilings, then you’re ready to devise a plan of what needs doing first and how you go about doing this. In our case our house was not liveable, therefore we had free reign of the whole house. Once all objects were out of the house, including all kitchen units we then started to pull up the carpets too. Once you have done this…step back and be clear on exactly what needs doing throughout the house

So you’ve bought the house, what next?

Congratulations on your purchase!

As I can only reference from my own knowledge, I am going to take you through the stages of my homes renovation. I will take you through section by section, room by room in hope that you can take some ideas and inspiration from someone else who has been through the property renovation process.

First tip is to make a scrap book of how you want your house to look, even if you don’t use any of the ideas from the scrap book, I found it really helped me to focus on an end goal.

where it all began

Top 5 tips before you start your renovation project

1) Do Your Research

If you are renovating a house to make money on it then make sure you get a realistic market value. Right Move is my bible, it is one of my absolute favourite websites, it is so much more advanced than simply buying and selling houses, it will now give you home improvement tips, market trends and even price comparison reports to ensure you know exactly how much your house is and potentially could be worth. visit http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices.html

2) Be a Realist

You have to think realistically when potentially dealing with large amounts of money. Don’t buy the house unless you are sure you have enough money to A) pay the mortgage and B) pay the tradesmen. When you renovate the house you technically have employees on your payroll, it is so important you have enough money put aside to cover costs. Top tip, what ever you think your house will cost to renovate…DOUBLE IT! you will always find jobs that you didn’t realise needed doing.

3) Don’t Cut Corners

If you do buy a house that needs a great deal of work doing on it then make sure you have a good survey done! It will cost you more in the long run to fix the issues once you have completed the renovation than it will if you catch them early and treat them before it can effect other parts of your property. 

4) Find a Specialist

If a part of your renovation is a big job then don’t just rely on someone you know or the first tradesman you come across to complete it-DO YOUR HOMEWORK. There are plenty of specialist tradesmen out there who are excellent at what they do, you can usually find these in the phone directory or Online. Get a few different tradesmen to take a look at your job, this will ensure you get the very best quote and even if you don’t use that particular one they can often share their wisdom with you on the best possible solution or even recommend people that can help on other areas of the property. Make sure you get your tradesman to sign a contract that states you will only exchange money after certain parts of their work are complete (never do this to a time scale-they will put their feet up and you’ll be paying them for it). Lastly ask to see some of the work they’ve done! All good tradesmen will be happy to provide you with a testimonial, while we renovated our property we visited a couple of houses to see the quality of workmanship from our chosen builder-this is crucial if their work is pricey.

top tip-if the builder doesn’t look like they’re passionate about your renovation project then don’t use them-if they don’t love what you’re doing then they won’t put much TLC into the project-fact!

5) Know what you have to pay out before you make your offer

It is really important you work out what your mortgage repayments will be so in turn you can understand how much money you will have left to fund your project. speak to a financial advisor to understand the best rates. make sure the house is in a liveable state before you make your offer. Some mortgage providers will hold back some of the money that they will let you borrow until you make significant changes to the house. This can be a costly and time consuming period.

For any further advice or tips I found BBC homes and Chanel 4 scrapbook very handy.

Visit; http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/property/improving_renovating.shtml or http://scrapbook.channel4.com/category/homes

 

 

Understand the commitment

First thing’s first. You’ve seen the house of your dreams, OK, it’s a little aged and things need updating but other than that it looks great. You’ve never done a project like this before but if you get a bunch of friends and family to help then it shouldn’t take long to do at all. As for the costs…that’s easy, you’ll do most of the work yourself and before you know it, it’s complete and you’re ready to move in- WRONG if you’re not a qualified tradesman and your friends and family aren’t either then this might be tougher than you originally thought.

Taking on a renovation project is a huge commitment, from my own and hearing of others experience I have learnt that the only people you can 100% rely on going into this project are the people that physically own the property. Renovating your home is hard work and time consuming, before you commit you need to look at things in a simple way, my next post will help you do this.

Where it all began

For many people the idea of buying a house, then spending over a year renovating it is a huge ‘NO GO’ area. The idea of both your evenings and weekends being taken over by stripping wallpaper, knocking down walls and ripping up carpets can be a burden on both your personal time and bank balance!! However for the rare few this idea can be one of the most adventurous and rewarding experiences to ever partake in.

For myself and my partner, buying our first home together was a huge step for us. We were fortunate enough to have already renovated a house previous to our own and learnt a lot of do’s and don’ts along the way. We were both brought up in ‘new build’ houses, small rooms and magnolia walls, so knew we wanted the complete opposite. On the same wave length, we started to search the market with our long list of what we wanted from our home and most importantly what we could afford.

This blog is for the rare few: I always get asked from friends for advice on how we did certain things in our home and often get told how beautiful it looks inside, therefore I have decided to create this blog as an aid for people in the same situation that we were in when we bought our first house, I will hopefully give you some useful tips, not only on how to renovate your house but also after all the dust settles, how to make your house into a beautiful home.