Cherry Tree House

The Context

Our house is near to a hospital. Hospital parking is outsourced to a private company (Gemini) which charges all staff and visitors for parking – and it’s not cheap. £8 a day.

It’s no surprise then, that many of the staff and visitors park on the nearby streets free of charge. I would. But this has left local residents furious. Cars line their streets leaving no parking spaces for them. Or, even worse, poorly parked cars are sometimes left blocking cars in/ driveways for 12 hours at a time. Can you feel the mercury rising? 🤒

A Facebook group was set up around the hospital parking issue and it rapidly filled with photos of cars blocking driveways, pavements, stopping bin trucks and fire engines from getting down roads. And lots and lots of notes on cars! 📝

Three of the streets closest to the hospital had previously successfully petitioned for residents-only parking, but now there was a growing pressure to do more for the wider neighbourhood.

So the brains at Stockport Council brought forward a proposal. 🧠

The Proposal

Residential streets in the vicinity of the hospital would have parking meters in operation between 8am and 6pm. Ticket wardens would be employed to monitor the parking in the area.

Installation and maintenance of the ticket machines costs 💵, and so do ticket warden salaries, so the plan was to get the residents to pay for it.

Residents would pay £32 a year for a parking permit, up to a maximum of two permits per household.

In contrast, we have some family members who live near Salford Royal. They get FOUR permits a year for FREE! And there is NO parking AT ALL for non-permits.

What about us?

We were in a slightly different position to the majority. Our street was on the boundary of the proposed parking restrictions. It would be the nearest available spot for people to park WITHOUT paying the parking charges. No doubt we would lose parking outside our house.

The Fury

First came the Facebook Fury. The posts were numbered in their thousands in the weeks following the proposals. Residents were fuming! 😤

Letters were written to councillors, MPs, hospital managers, Gemini. Petitions were started. Leaflets were distributed. There was a full-on campaign to ensure that every resident had completed the online consultation. The local newspapers even got involved and ran the story. 📰

The council offered two face to face consultation meetings. I had planned to go to the second one.

The first meeting was filmed. It was a modern-day angry mob. All that was missing were the flaming torches. 🔥

The residents swarmed into the meeting hall and stood there bristling with fury. When a council representative stood up to introduce the consultation process he was booed and heckled until he could not speak. 🤬

The representatives were supposed to be there to help people understand the proposals. But the residents saw them as a target for their outrage and disapproval. There were shouted at and bullied. It really was quite ugly.

I decided not to go to the second meeting. The voice of disapproval was loud enough. Plus covid.

What next?

The council have promised these consultations are just to gauge public opinion. It has been VERY clear that public opinion has been very much against the proposals.

The pandemic then hit and in the spirit of clap for carers, hospital parking was made free for all staff! The problem immediately disappeared! Who’d a thunk it?

The council have put the idea on the back burner for now … so watch this space for the next wave of fury!

Someone had to do something about the back bay roof! The side panels looked a mess and it was letting water in.

We’d thought about replacing the whole lot, but the tiles and flashings were good. If we were to just sort the side panels, slide some slate under the edge tiles to create a proper overhang, and put up some guttering, we’d be right as (and in the) rain! 🌧

So that’s what we did!

Before

During/ after

We had a spare length of gutter, which isn’t long enough, but we’ve stuck it up there for now! We also dropped it, and cracked the end of it 😬 🙊 so it doesn’t quite look right, but hey ho! 🤷‍♂️

Later, when we got a roofer round to look at the main guttering, he asked if we’d done this all ourselves. When we told him we had, he chuckled and said “well, at least you tried!”. 🤣

An incredible surprise this week! 🎁

We had taken the old, damaged stained glass out of the door in Week 65, and were mulling over what to do.

Earlier in the year, Paul had booked himself onto a stained glass making course. He had spent a few days learning how to cut glass and how to shape and solder the lead. (I know you can probably see where this is going but bear with me! 🐻)

He had made a pretty piece of stained glass during the 2 day course – small and simple. The instructor had been very impressed with his work. 👏🏻 🏆

It had crossed my mind that he might be able to cut a few replacement pieces for our door light and lead them in for us. But that seemed a a huge step-up in terms of skill – the glass in the door was a far more complicated design than the piece he had made, matching old lead to new would be nigh on impossible, and besides, where would we even get the reclaimed glass from? 🤔

Well… he went one better.

He designed and made us an entirely new stained glass panel for our front door from scratch!

It’s in keeping with the style of the other windows and it does not have any cracks in! He bought the textured and coloured glass himself, cut each piece to the size and shape of the design, and leaded them all together!

We couldn’t believe it! From a short course, to making panes like this! Thank you Paul!!

We can’t believe how good it looks! What a pane! Thanks Paul!

The ‘porch’ had looked a bit tatty with flaking paint. Paul sanded it all back for us and repainted it, along with the rail and the hallway window. Now dried, the paint looks a little grey, so it’ll need another coat or two at some point.

We also fitted a new gutter to it. Hopefully, this will stop quite so much water collecting in the front garden and turning it into a pond every time it rains! 🦆

We had stripped and sanded the front door back in Week 53. See Week 53 – Shut the Front Door! 🚪 to see the full adventure!

It was time to get it undercoated and decide what to do with the damaged stained glass.

Recap

Damage

Most of the stained glass panels in the door had cracked. Parts had been filled with expanding foam or were held together with parcel tape. There was even a hole the size of a fist 👊 where the wind was getting through!

Upcoming Decisions

So we’ve taken it out whilst we decide what to do…

All boarded up for now and Paul has given it two coats of white undercoat while we go away and decide on a colour! Thanks Paul!

So the never-ending stripping and sanding continues! Let’s talk through the internal doors!

The doors are originals with original wooden hand-turned knobs and cast iron rim locks. But of course, they were smothered in decades of thick paint. Worse still, they seemed to be a thick layer of tar-like scumble under the paint. Some doors had been panelled. The front bedroom door was also twisted significantly.

The architraves add a lovely extra detail and frame the doors beautifully. As I’m sure you can imagine though, they weren’t the easiest to strip and sand! All those nooks and crannies!

Let’s get to it then!

We started with the heat gun to get the paint off and, with a huge amount of effort and time, tried to scrape off as much of the tar-like scumble underneath as we could before sanding the rest off.

So then we decided it’d be easier to take the doors off for the stripping and sanding! It was!

Next to deal with the twisted front bedroom door… we put a couple of paint tins in the corners and left it for a few months.

A big thank you to Jenna who helped with some door stripping! It’s certainly not the most pleasant job! Grateful to her for helping to ensure that we had slightly less to do!

Whilst we’ve made a good start… we have 8 double sided doors to do (not including the front door), so it’ll be a while yet before we are able to close the door on this particular project!

This blog will be about radiators, radiators and … well … radiators! If radiators don’t interest you, maybe it’s time to go elsewhere.

This week we got radiators!

Having warmth in the building is AMAZING!! It certainly makes the place feel more homely and welcoming! It’s great not to have to keep moving to stop yourself from shivering! 🥶

Brace yourself for lots of pictures of radiators!

Thanks to our gas central heating guys! A long, hard days work for them but without any snags. Well, just the one. The suppliers had given them the wrong radiator for the kitchen diner – a 700 x 800 instead of a 800 x 700, which meant they had to come all the way back to fit the final radiator. All done now though!

And let’s not forget the beating heart of our central heating system; our boiler! ❤️

And that’s a wrap folks! Get yourself off for a cold shower! 🚿 Then you can dry yourself off next to one of our warm radiators.

Let’s talk boilers! So turns out my bruv Jake works for Siemens who have been bought out by Bosch who make Worcester boilers!

This means that he was able to get us a trade price Worcester boiler! What a lovely house warming gift… quite literally! 🎁 Thanks Jake!

We went for the 32CDi in the end. A 30 might have done it for our house, but Hayley is basically aquatic 🧜🏻‍♀️ and spends most of her life in baths and showers 🛁, so we upgraded to a 32. It also future proofs us if we were ever to get a second bathroom. 🚽

Hayley had thought long and hard about where to put all the radiators – sounds easy, but you have to visualise furniture we don’t even have yet and where it will all go! I wasn’t very good at it.

The one place we were struggling was the huge kitchen-diner. With the kitchen, the back bay with French doors AND the chimney breast, there was not a lot of wall space left!

We’d thought about a tall radiator on our little wall stub but would this give us enough heat? Jenna and Danny then gave us the idea of a plinth heater to sit under our kitchen units and we were sold!

Our gas central heating engineer okayed it all after calculating heat outputs and spaces. He insisted on a radiator in the cellar – we are glad he did, as it gets damp down there.

He advised against the fancy cast iron radiators (not sure we could justify the cost anyway) and even against a tall radiator in the large kitchen-diner – a small double double would be plenty! Winner! Fitting next week!

With Paul being a kitchen designer, he had enough spare Formica and a spare sink unit for us to make a useful utility space in the cellar.

Unfortunately, we didn’t think to take any before pictures but c’ellar vie 🤷‍♂️. We got some along the way.

It isn’t quite finished yet, but will make a useful space for washing out paint trays etc in the future!!

And as little teaser for next weeks blog… Note: no boiler down here yet!

A short one this week – no, not a short skirt you pervs! A short blog post!

This week we put our Selco card to good use and got ourselves a length of skirting board. This was for the hall where we had blocked up the old kitchen door.

We managed to find a 7” board that was a perfect match. It was about £12 a metre, which if you imagine across a whole house would cost a fortune! Luckily we just needed one straight run across the back of the hall where the old kitchen door used to be.

Looking back, this would have been one of the last days where our was house full of friendly faces helping us out with our renovation project before we went in to the first lockdown.

We had Danny working on the bathroom, Jenna stripping the bedroom door, Hayley taking the paint off the spindles on the stairs, and Paul tackling the front door. I was of course making the brews. We had the music blasting and laughter and chatter filling the house.

We have never taken the help offered to us for granted, but perhaps I did take the bustle and busyness and having a full house for granted. Really looking forward to when we can invite people around once more and have a chat and a brew with them! And maybe the next time we have a house full, we won’t have to put everyone to work, and could maybe even offer tours of the finished article! 🤷‍♂️

Our bathroom floorboards and our replacement sink had arrived! See Week 57 – Bathroom Planning 🗒✏️

Our amazing friends Jenna and Danny had not long done a great job of putting a beautiful new bathroom into their renovation home. Danny offered to come and take a look at our pipework…

This turned into Danny planning out, supplying and fitting all of our copper pipework in beautiful neat parallel lines and right angles with isolation valves for each feed, fitting all of our floorboards with carefully considered access points, fitting the waste pipes and traps, raising our shower tray, and lots, lots, LOTS more besides. 🙈

I don’t think he (or we!) realised how much help we needed! Good job he’s a patient man! But we are eternally grateful from the bottom of our hearts for all the hard work, problem solving, expertise and hours put in!

We do also need to say a massive thank you to Jenna for pulling the strings to get him to our house; by taking on the childcare and organising around their own enormous renovation project!

We are dead pleased with how the suite fits, and how neat the new pipes and boards look.

Unfortunately, we can’t fit the bathroom just yet, as we need to tile the walls and the floor first…

Oh well, we’ve been without a functioning bathroom for 36 weeks, I’m sure we can hold it in for a little bit longer! 🚻

It has been 35 weeks since we ripped out the bathroom. And what an adventure that was! See Week 21 – Don’t throw the baby out with the bathroom 🛁

That means 35 weeks of using McDonald’s toilets! 🚽😂 Good job we weren’t living at the house! It was about time we got started on a new bathroom.

The Plan

First job was to decide on our layout. We wanted a four piece for the separate shower but were concerned the bathroom would look crowded. We opted for a small quadrant shower, and a suite that was in keeping with our Victorian style.

The Suite

With the plan in hand, we ordered our suite.

We got a replacement sent out so no bother, it just set us back a few days. Luckily the rest arrived in one piece.

The Floor

The old floorboards had to go. They had been lifted to get to the pipework and many had split.

We initially tried replacing with 18mm ply boards (quicker, cheaper, easier) but we weren’t happy with this. If we had a leak, a huge part of the floor would have to come up. We were worried about the ply getting wet, and with thoughts of tiling the floor one day, it wasn’t as level as we would have liked.

We decided to change to floorboards – but not before we had tried our suite in situ!

Bits and Pieces

There were also a few other bits and pieces to get sorted. The old cast iron soil stack had to go. Paul cut this back with his angle grinder – but it was hard going! The cast iron was thick and the angle grinder had a tough time getting through it! It took several long attempts and a house filled with the smell of burning but we got there eventually!

You can also see that the plasterers have been back to finish a few bits and pieces that they couldn’t previously get to.

Just awaiting our sink replacement and our floorboards and we’ll be good to go!

We’ve always really liked Hayley’s mum and dads dining table. It’s a lovely oak table, with decorative turned legs and an extending mechanism to allow an extra leaf to be inserted. It’s Edwardian too, so is in keeping with houses like theirs (and ours!).

So when Hayley found one for sale in great condition nearby, we had to go and take a look!

It was exactly what we were after. Perfect period piece, in fabulous nick, with great legs – not too big to fill the room, but extendable so that it could fit our dinner party guests around!

Into the hire van it went. Happy Hayley!

We had seen that the young couple selling it had a couple of other pieces of furniture for sales. Could we please take a look?

Lovely condition, we’ll have it thank you please! Onto the van! Did you have a matching wardrobe you were selling too? We’ll take that too!

It was an effort getting this down the stairs and we may have *ahem* taken a couple of gouges out of their wall, but we got that on the van as well.

Finally, we took the three chairs too! We thought they were quite pretty, and although there was only three of them, we thought we’d find a fourth to match somewhere sometime.

So we cleared them out! We tried to take their cute little chocolate cocker spaniel too, but unfortunately, he wasn’t for sale… 🐶

So you’ll see we now have our wall cupboards hung! This week our brand new, sparkling oven arrived and our brand new sparkling five-burner hob! 😍

We’ve tried them in position but will have to wait for the worktops to be fitted before we can fit them properly.

Just going to go back a step first though and take a little trip down memory lane so you can fully appreciate the transformation! 😉

Getting there, ever-so-slowly! Just a shame Hayley won’t ever let anyone use the oven or hob so that they can both stay sparkly and clean for all of time!! ✨🙈

The house is sat quite high up, making it a fair bit higher than the garden.

Ever since we’ve moved the back door, we’ve had to improvise steps down to the garden.

First, we had the tree stumps which were very popular (a few people thought they were to be permanent!).

However, they had gotten slimy and slippy. It was time for an upgrade!

We are thinking about what we will do longer term. Perhaps raised decking? Or pogo sticks? 🤔

Knock knock! This week Hayley has been busy finishing stripping and sanding the front door while I stood around and took pictures! 📸

We love the size of our front door – it has quite a grand feel. We also love the brasswork and the stained glass. However, the glass is badly damaged (and poorly repaired) so we will need to think about repairing/ replacing this somehow.

A look back at the journey so far!

It has been quite a journey! It started as Walter’s house, absolutely full to the brim of a lifetime’s worth of possessions. We sensitively cleared it all and stripped it back to bones.

As we turned our attention to structural issues, it quickly became a building site. We fixed up the roof, removed a chimney, replaced the wood-wormed floor, knocked down a supporting wall, and replaced the old rotting windows. We even found a ‘bomb’ under the house!

And then towards the end of the year, with a bit of plastering and painting, it has started to feel like a house again. This time, a blank canvas!

Maybe, by this time next year, we can report on turning this house into more of a home!

Challenges

There have been some sad/ difficult/ stressful experiences this year:

• Learning about the previous owner as we sorted through his life’s possessions.
• Finding our floorboards riddled with woodworm.
• Losing all faith in our builder, fearing for the collapse of the house, and the confrontations that followed.
• The realisation that someone had broken in to the house.

All on top of the usual stresses of renovating a house; figuring out the order to do jobs, finding reliable tradesmen etc.

These experiences have pushed us back, and even kept us from wanting to be at the house at times, but we have learnt a lot from them and I am proud of our resilience. The highs of achievement feel all the better having overcome a little adversity. 💪🏽

Anyway, on to the progress pics!

Front room

Hallway

Dining Room

Kitchen

Front Bedroom

Bathroom

Back bedroom

Third bedroom

Back of the house

Still a long way to go, but happy to see the progress that’s been made!

And who can forget these old chestnuts! 🌰 💣

We started on our mist coats this week. Again, it actually took us WAAAY longer than a week as we squeezed it in between other jobs, but hey! 🤷‍♂️

We used a Mapei primer on the walls, before applying the mist coat. We found the paint covered well and only needed one more coat (with a third coat for anywhere that was staying white)!

Hayley used an extender pole for the bulk of it, which sped up the whole process enormously, and I mostly cut in on the edges. Teamwork! 💪🏽

As Hayley had warned me, preparation is key! Everywhere was thoroughly hoovered and damp-dusted before we began. The walls were lightly sanded between coats.

Take a look! 👀

Kitchen

Back bedroom

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Dining Room

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Hall

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Stairs

Front Bedroom

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Bathroom

What a difference a lick of paint makes! It really is starting to feel less like a building site and more like a house again!

Certainly the most arduous of jobs so far has been the stripping and sanding of all the skirting boards and picture rails in the house. It isn’t glamorous and it isn’t quick.

It actually took us 36 and a half years to strip and sand all the skirting boards and picture rails – in fact I don’t remember a time when we weren’t stripping and sanding. 🤔 And we still haven’t finished. But we’ve condensed it into one blog so you don’t get bored (or sanded) to death.

We naturally fell into two roles with Hayley preferring the blast of the heat gun, the bubbling of paint and the satisfying scrape-offs, whilst I just loved that sanding with the friction and the dust and the aching arms and repetitive strain!

Moans aside, it has given us a real appreciation for these pieces of wood. And they REALLY needed doing! They were a minging creamy coffee colour and were absolutely filthy with decades of muck built up on them! 🤢

To make matters worse, many of the heating pipes had been run along the skirting boards and had scorched the paint.

We left most of the skirting boards and picture rails on whilst we stripped and sanded them. They were nailed in with big old rusty 9 inch nails. We were trying to avoid huge holes being ripped out of the plaster and the wood splintering and getting damaged. It just made the stripping and sanding that little more difficult!

We think it’s starting to make a big improvement, but we won’t see the full impact until we’ve glossed them!

Finally it was time to get the plastering finished off! Just the front rooms to go!

Upstairs Front Bedroom

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Downstairs Front Room

Tip run!

The plasterer’s left some plasterboard off-cuts behind. The first recycling centre didn’t have the facilities to take it. The second recycling centre wanted me to come back with a council tax bill. I did and they complained that it was last year’s council tax bill. They questioned why I was at that recycling centre and not the closer one. I had to explain where we lived and where we were renovating, and then show a council tax bill from our other address. Finally, they gave me a high vis and a hard hat and sent me over the weigh bridge. Moral of the story – make sure the plasterers take their plasterboard off-cuts with them!! Never mind, I got to dress-up! Rather fetching don’t you think?

We had already had much of the house plastered; including the back bedrooms and the bathroom (see Week 25 – From the windows … to the walls!), and the kitchen-diner and hall, stairs and landing (see Week 28 – Getting Plastered! 🥴).

We had left the front rooms until the windows were in. Well… now they were! (See Week 43 – Front Windows Part 2: It’s fitting really! & Week 44 – Front Windows Part 3: Baywatch!). With our shiny new windows it was almost time to call our plasterer back in. Just a couple of jobs needed doing first…

1. Bricklaying

When the downstairs bay was taken out, we had to take down the internal cavity by a layer of bricks. In the process, some of the bricks below had come a little loose. So we took it down another layer of bricks to clean them up and build them back up again a bit more solidly.

Paul laid the bricks (another one of his many skills!) and Hayley and I did some smashing and mixing and cleaning up 🧹.

2. Stripping the ceiling

The front room also needed the paper stripping from the ceiling. The night before the plasterer was due to arrive, it still wasn’t done. I went round after tea to get it done, but it was already late and I was tired. Luckily for me, we were offered the help of two volunteers – Tim and Jean. Between us, we got it done in no time! (And the plasterer didn’t arrive for a few more days after all that!!).

3. Wardrobe destruction

Finally, upstairs there was a built in wardrobe that needed taking out. 🔨 It was no match for Hayley and I! 💪🏽

So finally, with a true team effort, we were ready for plastering! Find out how it goes in the next blog!!

Buckle those seatbelts, it’s time for another history lesson! This is the story of John Dean, the Watson Square murderer, who after his execution, was the last man in Britain to have been gibbeted… but does that mean? And what does this have to do with Cherry Tree Lane? All shall be revealed! 🔮

It was the year 1790, and John Dean was living in Watson Square in Hillgate; “a grimy ramshackle of Jerry-built houses”. He was a poor weaver who had come over from Saddleworth to work in one of the many hat works of the area 🏭. With him, had come his heavily pregnant wife and five children. 🤰

Dean did not have the best of reputations. He was fond of his beer 🍺 and the “wild women of Hillgate” 💃🏻. He was well-known in the neighbourhood for having a vicious character 🐍.

One Saturday night in late 1790, murderous screams filled the square and awoke the residents. The screams were coming from Dean’s house. Witnesses heard Dean shouting “What darn thy soul aren’t ye dead yet?”.

The next morning Dean’s pregnant wife was found lifeless. Her head had been smashed in … with a hairbrush of all things! ⚰️

Dean was arrested and marched down to Dungeon Brow (Mealhouse Brow) where he was locked up. ⛓

Dean’s trial was in Chester. He was sentenced to death and hanged on 2nd September 1790. 💀

His body was returned to Stockport in a cart, escorted by a troop of 50 cavalrymen. Dean’s body was paraded around the town as a warning to others of ill-repute and as a demonstration of the might of the law. People came out of their houses to witness the spectacle. Soon an immense crowd followed behind. “Where are they taking him?” might have enquired one young boy. “Up to the gallows at Black Lake” would have been the reply!

But where was Black Lake? Great Moor takes its name from the rich peaty ground that it is built on. The area was heathland pitted with lakes. The largest of them was called Black Lake, due to the colour imparted by the black bog at the bottom.

The gallows had been erected up at Black Lake which is located today at the junction of Dialstone and Cherry Tree Lanes; less than 50m from our house!

Dean’s body was taken here and gibbeted. His body was encased in an iron gibbet, or cage, and suspended from the gallows, until his bones were picked clean by the birds. 🦴 He was the last man ever to be gibbeted in the U.K.

His body was left there for years. The residents would avoid the area as far as possible. Eventually, they cut his bones down and buried them nearby in (what are now) the gardens of Castle Farm Lane. The cage was sold to a blacksmith to be melted down.

The End … or is it? 👻

The story comes courtesy of Stockport Heritage magazine. A stack of these were left to us by the previous owner of our house. This story is an amalgamation of the three articles from three different editions shown below.

The hour was late. The staff meeting had rambled on until the streetlights sparkled outside. The heavy drizzle was dancing synchronously to the whims of the wind. I pulled my collar up and braced myself for the car to door dash.

I had stopped at Cherry Tree House. To pick something up, drop something off or take a measurement? My memory escapes me.

I ran to the door noticing what looked like a plastic bag filled with plastic bags just slightly tucked under the bricks that framed our cellar window. It must have been blown and trapped there.

I was fumbling with my keys when I noticed a piece of paper twitching on top of the bag; some sort of note 📝. How strange?! I picked up the bundle, which was weightier and bulkier than I had imagined, and dived into the stillness of the hall.

I peeled off the layers and the shape emerged. I couldn’t work out what it was until I had cleared the last bag.

Why did we have a vase? I picked up the soggy note. It was a letter!

We were bowled over by the lovely gesture! How nice that someone had taken the time to not only acknowledge our windows, but to write a letter full of advice and praise AND to buy us a gift! A true act of kindness that really lifted our spirits!

I did send a lengthy text to the mobile number a couple of days later to say thank you, but did not receive a reply. So, a BIG thank you Sue Banahan – wherever you may be!!

The window fitters had done an excellent job on Day One, fitting both the upstairs bay and the bathroom window. We were really pleased with how they were looking! See: Week 43 – Front Windows Part 2: It’s fitting really!

Day Two just left the downstairs bay to do. Easy right? Nuh uh. Nope. The downstairs bay held the weight of the house above making it much more difficult to replace.

1. As the fitters has suspected, the bricks had been layed directly on top of the wooden frame. Some of the mortar had perished with age, so the bricks were just sitting on top of the window frame. Take the frame out and the bricks would fall. However, the fitters had the ingenious idea to use wooden battens to screw into the bricks and hold them together!

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2. Getting the acrows in to take the weight of the house was always going to be difficult. They had to go in at an angle and the fear was that they would slip. Again, however the fitters came up trumps and Hayley and I could breath another sigh of relief.

3. As with a lot of period properties, the inside and outside cavities were of differing heights to compensate for the chunky old window frames. These timber frames usually sit on the outer cavity, so the outer cavity is made a whole brick lower than the inner. Again, Mark had anticipated this (and had already helped us to deal with this issue at the back of the house) and had instructed the fitters to remove the extra layer on the inner cavity.

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With the weight of the upstairs held tight, it was time to put some windows in!

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It was nerve-wracking stuff for us onlookers. The fitters though stayed cool, calm and confident throughout. Only afterwards, did they confide that this was one of the hardest windows they had ever done. Glad they kept this to themselves until they were done! Also, glad that Mark put his most experienced fitters onto the job! These old properties can certainly throw up some challenges!

Anyway, the new bay went in without a problem and we think it looks great! Beers for the boys 🍻 and new windows for us 🥳!

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Next time … the front window saga concludes with a secret admirer! 😍🕵🏻‍♂️

After agonising over front window decisions for a year (see: Week 42 – Front Windows Part 1: Window Shopping), it was time to fit them! Mark sent his two most experienced fitters for the job.

We’ve had to split the fitting over two posts as they were quite photo heavy, so here’s Day One!

Day One

The Upstairs Bay

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Bathroom

This was Hayley and her mum Anne’s favourite window by far. It is a little unusual as the two panes open outwards from the centre. Anne says it’s like the windows in a fairytale, like when Cinderella or Snow White are feeding the birds!

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In conclusion…

We felt the windows looked great! All those months of discussions and decisions had paid off with no regrets! The fitters had done a bay AND a bathroom window in a day. Just the downstairs bay to go, a much easier day right? Wrong! Stay tuned for the next chapter in the saga!

When viewing the house, we had loved the original stained glass windows at the front. It was a priority of ours to keep them, but they were in such a poor state of repair. We had began our research into stained glass before we even got the keys. It quickly became clear that whatever we chose to do with the front windows would be a HUGE decision. It would be very expensive and would determine the whole look of the house.

To help break the decision down, we called back Mark who had already replaced the windows at the back of the house in white UPVC. Mark had been incredibly patient and understanding with what we were trying to achieve, he had anticipated key problems with the brickwork before we began, and we were chuffed to bits with the results. See: Week 24 – Baby got back (windows)!

Pleased with the service, we got Mark back to look at the front windows.

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Decisions, decisions, decisions…

So with our goal of keeping the look of the original windows as far as possible, we had some options to consider.

1. Timber or UPVC? It had to be UPVC. The maintenance and cost of timber frames was just too much for us, and the lifespan shorter.

2. Black or white frames? Both! The original windows had black sashes and white frames. We wanted this replicating in UPVC. We were even able to get a wood grain effect on the black.

3. Openers? As we were having thick black sashes, we could have as many openers as we wanted without affecting the look of the windows. Great news for ventilation! 🌬

4. Encapsulate or replicate the stained glass panels? I was desperate to keep the original stained glass. To do this would mean encapsulation, where the original glass is sandwiched between two panes (triple glazing if you like). However it was complex. It would mean removing the stained glass panels, sending them to a specialist who would painstakingly remove all the lead, replace broken pieces with matching glass, clean it all down and then re-lead it all. The original pane would also have to be cut down significantly to fit into the larger UPVC frame. As you can probably imagine, this would be extremely expensive! After speaking to a number of specialists, we concluded that the stained glass design was a fairly simple one after all, and though it is pretty, it probably does not warrant the labour and cost. Maybe replication would be alright? Mark promised us that we would be happy with it.

5. Colours? The main reason we were sceptical about replication were the colours. Would we be able to match the colours of the original with new glass? Would they be too bright and garish? Would it look fake and modern? We got hold of a swatch and started matching.

It took a long time! The windows were over a hundred years old and different parts had been exposed to differing amounts of light. So the red for example, looked orange where the light had hit it but a darker ruby red where it had been shaded. Probably because of this, the upstairs and downstairs windows were slightly different. We spent an afternoon colour matching before settling on what we felt were the closest matches.

6. Textures? If you’ve seen old stained glass up close, it has a fantastic texture to it and we wanted to retain this feature. We had a few different textures in our glass, which we really liked. Luckily, Mark had an answer: We could texture each section of the pattern to make an identical replica. These came in many varieties, so again we spent hours coming up with our closest matches.

7. Leading? The stained glass panels had lead in. Antique (blackened) lead was the obvious choice for our windows as it would look closest to the original. But what about the main windows with no stained glass? We originally opted for no lead, however, we changed our minds – we had worked so hard to keep everything else original, why change this? And besides it would tie in to the stained glass panels better. Changing our minds however, wasn’t as easy as we first thought. Putting lead in the bottom panes meant it would be better to triple glaze them. Otherwise one side of the lead would be exposed to the air and would therefore age faster than the other. Triple glazed it was!

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A mock up!

Mark repeatedly reassured us he could get the look of the originals and that we would LOVE the replicas. To ease our worries Mark offered to make us up one stained glass panel to show us how it would look before we gave the full go ahead.

The replication looked fantastic! Our worries quickly vanished, and the way forward was clear at last! Go go windows! Time to book in a fitting!

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Making a Mark

We were so grateful to Mark. His knowledge and experience meant that he foresaw problems in advance and gave us a choice of solutions that would fix it. What’s more, he fully understood our vision and showed incredible patience as we learnt what our options were and considered them. He must easily have spent 5 or 6 patient hours with us! He even met us in the McDonald’s carpark to deliver the swatches in what could only look like a bizarre drug deal to the employees!

So we’d had woodworm, ladybirds, spiders, and even a pigeon infestation. Time for the wasps! This wasn’t at the Cherry Tree house, but rather in our bathroom where we are living.

We noticed 2 or 3 wasps a day in the bathroom to start with, which were easy to catch and release, but numbers quickly increased.

Soon, we were coming home to this every day…

The whole bathroom was buzzing. We clearly had a nest. It made for some thrilling wees! We would take our showers first thing in the mornings before they became too active. And we’d be quick!

After some careful observations, we saw that they were flying in through an old pipe hole in the brickwork. Which means the nest was under the floor. We peeled back the linoleum and there it was…

We tried to tackle the problem ourselves with wasp-nest killer spray from B&Q. Covering every inch of skin with thick denim, dressing gown, gloves, hat, scarf; I made sure I wasn’t going to die if the swarm turned on me. I sprayed the nest as best as I could with the foaming spray. I tried to get a stick in there too to try and break the nest apart. It was difficult due to the angle, but I came out of the battle unscarred.

We repeated the attack morning and night for a week, and soon the stench of rotting nest was wafting victoriously through our nose holes!

However, the wasp numbers didn’t seem to change. A lot of them seemed to be coming in through the airing cupboard. It couldn’t be? Did the wasps had ANOTHER nest?

Outsmarted! And then they launched their counter offensive. Boom! Out comes this monster!

It was a moment of panic when we saw this beast. After the screaming subsided, we came to the conclusion (based mainly on the 1990 film Arachnophobia) that this must be the queen! If we could kill the queen, the battle would be won!

Armed with hair spray, wasp killer spray, and nerves of steel, we took her down! Queen wasp was no more! We’d released the house from the sovereign terror of this insect enemy!

Although… as we looked closely at the beast laid to rest, something didn’t feel right. What was that thing on its mouth?

When another hatched the next day, we realised that we may have celebrated prematurely. In the spirit of ‘Know Thy Enemy’, we took to Google to arm ourselves… and we came across this surprising nugget of information.

It wasn’t a Queen Wasp at all! It was just a harmless hornet hoverfly! They lay their eggs in wasp nests. The eggs and larvae are treated as wasps, so it’s a very safe and comfortable room and board for the hoverflies, until they hatch and fly away!

We felt terribly guilty for killing this harmless and beautiful creature so when another popped out, and another, and another(!), we made sure to gently catch them and release them to go suck on some nectar nearby.

The battle raged on throughout the summer. As we moved towards autumn, as well as the odd hornet hoverfly, we started to see more and more of the larger females hatching. Turns out the average nest harbours hundreds (maybe thousands) of the little monarchs. These were significantly larger than the males and were looking for somewhere warmish to lie low for the winter before potentially making a nest of their own. We even saw one couple engaged in coitus! Amazing! Attenborough eat your heart out!

Eventually, after accepting there was likely two nests, and we hadn’t got a handle on the situation, we finally decided to call in the experts. Out came a guy from the council. He found where the wasps were entering and gave it a quick spray. He said the adults would be dead in a couple of hours, and the larvae within a couple of days. After 15 mins and £60, it was done. The wasps were no more. We’ve got our bathroom back!

So by now you’ll probably think we are fire-obsessed arsonists and this is just a blog about fire and all things firey; from chimneys to grates and everything in between!

Well, yes, that’s partly true, but also it is one of the features that WE could work on without relying on tradesmen.

This blog looks at our living room fire. Let’s take a look at the before shots…

So after ripping it out, it was clear the brickwork was sticking out too far for our fire to go in. Enter Paul and his hammer drill to take back the brickwork for us!

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Now we had space to reposition our concrete fire back…

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After dry-fitting our back and insert, we raised the concrete base to sit the fire back on and filled the sides before fixing it in place.

Next to fit the hearth and to fill in and level the concrete behind it…

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Now for the fire itself… This was fixed snugly to the wall and sealed with fire cement.

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After adding the grate, last job was to admire our work and seal the fire cement by lighting our first fire 🔥 …

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And finally, finish with a nice surround!

Hayley is an addict and I love her.

I love how she hasn’t ended up addicted to drugs or alcohol or nicotine. I love how she hasn’t even ended up addicted to mind-numbing makeup tutorials or reality tv or mini-cheddars (although she’s tried!).

No, Hayley’s addiction is much more pragmatic and thrifty. Hayley is addicted to Facebook marketplace.

She has spent hours on there hunting down only the very best bargains. When she finds one; a rare and valuable diamond in the rough, perhaps every 2 or 3 days or so, she shows me. “It’s worth three times that” she’ll say and then carry on scrolling.

Well today, she surprised me by suggesting we actually go and buy something! This in fact:

It was being sold by a young couple down in Stoke. We messaged and said we’d be there in an hour. Road trip! 🚙

After 10 minutes we were stuck on the m62 because some bloke was walking around on there and the police were trying to get him off the motorway and into a van.

Never mind, an hour later and we were moving again and two hours later eventually got to Stoke. We our now the proud owners of this super heavy dog grate. I think it looks AMAZING in our half inglenook. Very happy! Good ol’ Hayley! 😊😘

We got word from the neighbour that we had a feathered friend who had been seen frequenting our bathroom.

We’d taken out the old toilet and waste pipe which had left a nice size hole in the bathroom wall running from under the floorboards to the outside. 🚽

Mrs Pigeon had decided it was nice and dry under our floor and a perfect place to start a little pigeon family.

As much as Hayley was delighted that she had a new pet, I knew deep down that we would have to evict Mrs Pigeon and her egglets.

Who we gonna call? Dad the Pest Controller of course!

Dad came round with his mate to help Mrs Pigeon relocate. He peeked under the floorboards with his torch and could just make her out on the far side of the room. He went over and stamped on the floor to shoo her out.

Dad had to act quick before Mrs Pigeon came back. With his mate on the lookout, dad rushed outside and up the ladder. He reached in to find two little egglets. They had been laid, not in a nest, but directly on the timber battens.

He scooped up the eggs and blocked the hole with two half bricks. The eggs were dropped into the hedge so that Mrs Pigeon could see them. Dad said he wanted her to be able to grieve and move on because “that’s the kind of pest controller I am”. The operation was a success providing closure for both the hole and for Mrs Pigeon.

Hayley hasn’t forgiven me or dad. 😬 She’s finding solace in the fact there is a resident badger 🦡 in the garden. Just hope she doesn’t get mauled when she tries to hug it. 🤷‍♂️

So June was busy – we had stag dos, birthdays, the Duke of Edinburgh Qualifying Expedition with 50 students to lead, and of course, all the work at the Cannabis house to do.

However, one tiny thing we did do that made us happy… we cleared up one of the cellar chambers and created the perfect spot for our second fridge and freezer! (currently contains milk 🥛 and Prosecco 🍾)

After nearly four months with only a single electrical point in the house, this week was the week we got electricity! Oh yes, it was Neil’s Second Fix!

I know it sounds silly, but we had gotten used to having just one socket in the house; the draping of extension cables up the stairs and the huge shadows cast by our lamps had become part and parcel of the property. Boiling the kettle involved a trip to the kitchen for tea and coffee, the cellar for water, and the front room for electricity.

So when we finally got switched on, we were both in awe! We were walking around the house flicking switches on and off! And you wouldn’t believe how excited we were when we came to plugging something in and had a choice of several sockets to use!

It has been really nice to feel so grateful for something we usually take for granted.

It meant we could stay later in the evenings too, and get more work done!

So no more of this!

Look at this beast of a switch! This was a shocker to discover!

Wall lights, ceiling light, kitchen light, kitchen downlights, outside lights …and … a mystery bonus switch! (Hayley says she knows but she won’t tell me!)

We are pleased we paid the extra for the brushed steel finish. We like it.

Neil also installed some of our light fittings for us.

We also had our security lights and our Victorian style front door light mounted.

All is merry and bright! 😇💡

All that damage (see Week 33 – Cannabis-gate: A large scale operation 🏚🔌💡🧯💸⛏⚙️ 😱). Time to clean up!

First port of call, the insurance company. Turns out that landlord insurance doesn’t cover ‘criminal activity’. And that is apparently the industry standard. As this was very clearly criminal activity, the damage caused is definitely 100% not insured. As was explained to us ‘it WOULD be covered if someone were to spray a hose pipe over the floors on purpose and cause water damage, but not if they were watering cannabis plants’. 😔

So, we get on the phone to the estate agents. The estate agents assured us that they did everything by the book. The tenant produced a valid passport and passed all the checks; he even had references!

Weeks before, we had requested an inspection of the property after complaints from the neighbours. The estate agents outsourced the inspection, gave the tenants 3 weeks notice and found nothing. Less than a month after our request for an inspection, the house was raided and found full of cannabis. We were gobsmacked.

The inspector did however, follow protocol. We were shown a handful of pictures of the house looking in reasonable nick. It seems the tenants had pulled the wool. They had been up all night prior to the inspection scraping and painting and removing evidence. They had even bought in a van full of furniture to make the house looked more lived in. They had used giant canvasses to cover the holes in the walls and had sealed off the cellar and loft.

So whilst we were angry and disappointed that we were out of pocket for ALL the repair costs, there was nothing we could do.

Except… fix it up, spruce it up and get a new tenant in. I had some fun tip runs with a car full of 5 month old bin bags; each filled with rotting food waste and cannabis plants. It was a hot summers day too! 😷☀️ We had the plasterer round to fix up the holes in the walls and ceiling and to sort out the worst of the water damage. The electricity board had to come out to fit a new meter. We painted the whole house and put new carpets and flooring put in throughout. The sickly, sweet smell wasn’t gone until the very last piece of carpet was taken to the tip.

But, at long last, it’s looking better than ever and back on the letting market! We even got a guy to flag the back yard – he did such a good job, for a great price, that we may very well use his services again in the future! 😊

After finding the front door smashed in and the police having seized around £100,000 worth of cannabis plants (see Week 32 – Cannabis-gate: Part One 😱) in we went!

Almost every room had been used to grow weed including living room, dining room, two bedrooms, all three chambers of the cellar and the entire loft space. The only rooms that weren’t used were the kitchen and bathroom which were kept as living spaces.

The sheer scale of it was phenomenal. We were walking around with our jaws on the floor. Huge industrial filters; great metal cylinder shaped things, hung from the ceilings. Giant holes had been smashed into the chimney breasts and ceilings, so that big cube-shaped pumps could pump air along the industrial sized pipes before going up and out of the chimney. UV lights were hanging from their steel cables across every inch of the ceilings. Big plastic tubs filled with fabric conditioner were littered around here and there trying to mask some of the smell. And there were plant pots everywhere. Some big, some small. Hundreds of them, all filled with compost, covering the floor of every room.

The cellar rooms had been completely cloaked in plastic sheeting. Bags of fertiliser were piled up to the ceiling down there. We hauled around fifty bags up.

The internal doors had been taken off their hinges and had a dozen or so transformers screwed into them. They had gotten so hot that they had deeply scorched the wood. We shuddered to think of the fire risk in this mid-terrace.

They had tapped into the electricity before it hit the meter to power the UV lights and transformers. Quite clever really.

The tenant was supposedly Vietnamese, which explains some of the strange foodstuffs we found in the fridge (chicken feet etc). One of our neighbours commented that it was surprising they hadn’t booby trapped the house. I laughed thinking it was a joke referencing the guerrilla tactics of the Vietnam war, but later I googled it and found that it isn’t too uncommon for Vietnamese cannabis farmers to lay booby traps to protect their crop – things like electrifying windows and razor blades on light switches! Glad we didn’t find anything like that!

Trying to remain as private as possible, the tenants hadn’t bothered taking the bins out weekly. Instead they had thrown all their rubbish under the house in bin bags and they stank!

In amongst this rubbish we found several bags of cannabis plants that were in various stages of decay. From this, we estimated there to have been three different crops grown at the address, plus the one taken by the police. That’s 200 plants at £500 each = £100, 000 per crop x 4 crops = £400, 000. Not bad for 5 months work!

The final, and most shocking, place we explored was the loft. Without meaning to stereotype, it brought back memories of the Cu Chi tunnels. You had to crawl through this long tunnel until it opened out into a large space. The insulation had been rolled back, the floors, ceilings and walls had been covered in plastic sheet and every single inch was covered with pots. Including on top of the tunnel we had just crawled through! It was a sight I’ll never forget! It was so hot and stuffy up there and the thick sickly sweet air was almost unbearable. We couldn’t stay up there for long.

We were left reeling by the scale of this thing! Never mind, time to get it fixed up and claim some money back from the insurance, or so we thought … to be continued …

After a difficult early spring with our Cherry Tree house, we were getting ourselves back on track and were looking forward to making big strides over the summer when … Cannabis-gate struck!

Hayley and her dad bought a house back in 2012 and have rented it out ever since. One day, as she was coming home from work, Hayley drove past this house and was surprised to see a police van outside it. She parked up and went to see what was up.

The police officers had smashed the front door in, and with good reason too! The entire house had been converted into a cannabis farm!

We had smelled it out on the street a few weeks back when walking past and some of the neighbours who knew us had complained to us, but we suspected they were just heavy users, dealers at worst, but never growers!

After the neighbourly complaints, we thought we should act and requested an inspection of the property from the estate agents who manage the letting. They gave three weeks notice and… found… nothing.

What we have since learned from the neighbours is that the night before the inspection, our tenants had been hard at work throughout the night drilling and painting and sanding. At 3 and 4am, vans arrived with furniture to make the house look lived in. But we weren’t to know all this until it was all over.

Anyway, back to the raid. Hayley stood and watched as bag after bag after bag after bag of cannabis plants were carried out by the police officers. The van was absolutely crammed with them and more was still coming out! They had to fetch a spare van to carry it all!

Hayley’s dad arrived with a new lock for the door and one of the police officers helped to fit it.

No one had been found in the house when they raided it, although the neighbours said it had been close! They’d heard our tenants in the house only an hour earlier.

Even the police had been shocked by the quantity of cannabis in the property. They seized 200 plants at around £500 each = that’s about £100,000 worth of cannabis! Clearly not an amateur job!

Once the police were done, we could get in and assess the damage… to be continued in Part Two…

We loved the garden when we were buying our Cherry Tree house, but nothing prepared us for what an oasis it would prove to be! In the summer the butterflies dip in and out of the lush, green bushes 🦋. In the autumn, the apple branches are bent low under the weight of hundreds of big red apples 🍎. And always, there are the songbirds. The bird feeder on the fence and the surrounding perches are always aflutter with the activity of robins, tits, thrushes, and finches.

And it’s not just songbirds! Hayley and I once spotted a peregrine falcon on the neighbours’ gable! There is a resident hedgehog 🦔, foxes 🦊 , and even a badger set 🦡 nearby!

We have enjoyed taking our breaks out on the grass in the summer, running around with little Harvey or having a brew with friends and family. We’re really looking forward to spending time out here once we’re properly in.

Thanks to dad who has taken on the role of head gardener.

First to sort out was the ‘patio’, in order to clear the air bricks and return some airflow under the house. It also provided a solid base for the window fitters to work from.

Dad also took up some troublesome trees.

Some shots of the garden in early spring.

As the new French doors went in, we had to consider how we would step down into the garden. Dad came up with an unusual solution…

Break time!!

Now for the front of the house!

Now it’s Autumn and with all the recent rain, the log steps have become slippery and so dad has upgraded us to some pallet steps!

Just 😍

So Paul surprised us this week by putting the kitchen carcasses in!

Before:

…aaand After:

Still a way to go before we get in there, but worlds away from what we started with!

Missing the old wallpaper though – anyone know where we can get some more of it?

Isn’t she lovely? 😍

Whilst we had been busy mucking about with the chimneys and the floors, our plasterers had made moves on the hall, stairs and landing and (eeek!) the kitchen-diner!!

The Kitchen

Paul kindly erected a frame for our ceiling and we had put some batons into the alcove. In an ideal world, we might have made use of this alcove, but it was too low, so we would have needed to remove bricks and put a new lintel in – a job we didn’t have the money nor the appetite for.

All plasterboarded and ready for plaster!

The Diner

Before shots:

After shots:

Apologies for all the boards in the way! We didn’t get the ceiling done over the back bay as we were deciding on whether to replace the back bay roof first.

The Hall, Stairs and Landing

We were told that plastering would make such a difference, and it really has! A big step away from building site and towards a home!

We still have the front rooms to plaster (plus a snag list) but won’t be doing these til we know what’s happening with the front windows!

We got our chimneys swept!

Knowing we wanted to utilise both fire places in the downstairs rooms, we thought it would be a good idea to get the chimneys swept before any carpets/ painting etc.

We called up to Marple Fuels at Rose Hill and were told they’d sold the business. They put me on the phone to a bloke who was happy to come round the very next day!

The next day, the two chimney sweeps turned up – we’ll call them Sooty and Sweep for fun!

Sooty was a guy in maybe his early 40s? He was full of conversation and told us all manner of things, some of which may have been true! His main business had been nightclubs. In fact he owned Lammar’s in the Northern Quarter! He had heard the family chimney sweep business was being put up for sale and couldn’t bear to see it go, so he’d bought it himself! “I love getting dirty me!” was the catchphrase that he beamed out several times that day. He got particularly enthusiastic about the sound of soot falling onto the dust sheet he’d taped over the fireplace; but only after he’d insisted on us all being deadly quiet to hear it! He did a little dance when he saw our dining room fireplace – “it’s a half-inglenook that!”

Sweep on the other hand was a lady sweep! She turned up in ripped jeans and a tiny leather jacket. From what she was wearing, I’d assumed she was just along for the ride, but no! she got well and truly stuck in! She was nice and friendly and also pretty filthy by the end!

They got to it with their smoke bombs and their sweeping. Sweep got stuck in on the dining room fireplace, whilst Sooty attempted the living room. As we’d half-expected, Sooty hit a blockage in the front room. However, what was surprising was that it was a big chunk of cement fell down! What was that doing in our chimney??

Rather quickly Sooty took a turn for the worse. He started coughing and panting and sweating and did not look in a good way. He tried to continue but thankfully, he listened to Sweep and agreed to come back in the morning. Besides, he needed his ladders and another body. He explained that to remove the blockage, he was going to have to use chains ⛓. They are dropped down the chimney from the top and are pulled up and down to remove blockages; I suppose a bit like dental floss. If it was cement that was blocking it, it would certainly need chains! ⛓ No extra charge for the work.

The next day, the van turns up, but there’s no sign of Sooty! And there’s no sign of Sweep! Instead out comes Scampi and he’s alone. He’s an older guy and looks like he was born in a chimney. I can tell he’s been in the game for a very long time. He decides to take a quick feel first with his brush, and very quickly comes to the realisation that there is no blockage. From the outside, I see his brush poking out the top. The smoke tests showed a good draw up into both chimneys and then billowing out into the Stockport sky! No sign of any more cement!

Scampi explained. “In the older houses, the chimney can sometimes go off in a different direction to what you’d expect. Sooty and Sweep were probably pushing the brush in the wrong direction!”

Anyway, chimneys are now clear! Looking forward to getting some fires lit!

The Half Inglenook!

The Front Room

Whilst the walls were being smoothed upstairs, we were busy sorting out the floors downstairs!

We had already taken out the infected wood in the dining room and replaced with floorboards (see Week 10 – Woodworm News! 🐛). It was the turn of the kitchen!

The floorboards were in a bad way, we had to get rid. Thankfully though, the joists had barely been touched by the picky woodworm so we were more than happy to lay the new flooring on top.

Dad’s friend had suggested using 18mm plywood instead of traditional floorboards. It gives a smoother finish (plus it’s quicker, easier and cheaper too!). Selco even delivered them for free!

We didn’t nail down the ply until the plastering was done – so can’t show you the finished product without ruining the surprise!

We also decided to use ply in the bathroom. Many of the floorboards that had been lifted for electrics or plumbing had splintered due to age and, besides, they were very uneven anyway.

There have, however, been some regrets on using ply in the bathroom – it has made getting under the floor to access the plumbing difficult, especially with a heavy suite on top. We are now considering whether to cut the pieces of ply smaller with a jigsaw, or completely revert back to floorboards… the jury’s out!

Now satisfied we had;

1. a solid roof (see Week 7 – Chim Chiminey)
2. a structurally sound building (see Week 17 – The Builder 😱)
3. at least some windows (see Week 24 – Baby got back (windows)!)…

… we could start turning our attention once more to the inside! Floors and walls seemed pretty important to us (I know, I know, we’re those people! 🙄) so that was our next area of attack!

Time for Jeff and Stuart – our plasterers – to smooth our walls! First up – the upstairs! Starting with…

1. The Back Bedroom!

The ceiling had a bulge in it. We assumed that the plaster had come away from the battens. This would mean taking the old ceiling down before putting new plaster board up.

However, upon closer inspection, it was the timber joists that had bowed over time. In a way, this was good news. It meant that we could plaster over the original ceiling without removing it.

Jeff and Stuart did a great job straightening it out with the plasterboard! Now there is no bulge to be seen!

Starting to look like an actual room!

2. The Bathroom!

Unfortunately, in hindsight, this may not have been the best time to plaster the bathroom, but hey, you live and learn. We hadn’t yet chased out the cables for the mirror lights, and we hadn’t fully removed the old cast iron soil stack. Once these were done, we tried to patch these up ourselves with some bonding, but it doesn’t look great, so when we get the plasterers back, we’ll ask them to skim it over. We might be putting some more pipe work into the walls though, so think we’ll hang fire until the bathroom is plumbed in.

3. The Spare Bedroom!

Unfortunately, we have no pictures! (watch this space!). But trust me, the walls are Sinatra smooth and gone is the old loft hatch! 🐣

We text Jeff to see what day he was coming round. He said Sunday. We turned up on Saturday afternoon to clear the spare bedroom ready for plastering and Jeff was all finished and just cleaning up! Turns out he had two jobs for two different Sams that weekend and he’d got his Sams muddled up! 😂 Just a shame that we’d paid for Jeff to clear our room out for us! 😂

So upstairs is now nearly plastered! We only have the front bedroom to go and we don’t plan to touch this until we’re ready to tackle the bay and those beautiful leaded lights! ❤️💛💚

This is technically week 25, but April gets busy so hope you don’t mind us getting a bit of a head start on it!

After having a gaping hole at the back of the house, we were very excited to be getting real double glazed uPVC windows at the back of the house!

Why just the back you ask? We’d had a number of people round for quotes and been quoted some unfeasible amounts for what we wanted across the house (in the region of £20k!). We were desperate to keep the original leaded lights at the front of the house, but it was giving us a headache – Could we afford it? Was it worth it? Do any cheaper alternatives give us the look we wanted? And on and on…

However, the back of the house seemed simpler. We wanted white uPVC. The windows were to follow the general shape of the originals, and we chose our openers to be symmetrical, yet practical! 👍 The only difficulty (we thought) was that we were turning the back bay into French doors.

We chose to go with a company we knew to be reliable and reasonable. Not only had we used them before, the installation manager was the only one who filled us with confidence. It was obvious he knew his stuff; he understood how our property had been built, he understood our vision, and was well-equipped to tackle the challenges of an old property. He was also the only one who foresaw the implications of replacing the original timber frames with uPVC in an Edwardian property…

Our installation manager immediately came across a little snag. The original windows were built in to the brickwork. They had big thick timber sills; typical of this time period. Because of this, the internal and external cavity walls were at different heights! They would need to be levelled before the windows went in.

This was easy enough on the bay; the fitters would just take out a course of brick from the inside. However, the other windows were presenting a different issue. The external cavity needed a layer of bricks putting in! But, not to worry. We know a brickie. He’ll do it for us!

Ah… but… hold on… not so simple. Our brickie wasn’t picking up his phone. We rang and rang, left message after message, and could not get through. We started to worry.

The windows were due to be fitted on the Monday. By the previous Friday, we had given up on getting through to our brickie. A hasty search for a new one ensued. We tried every avenue, every contact, left no stone unturned; and yet, could not find another brickie! By Sunday afternoon, we had run out of ideas.

And then… Bing! A message popped through Sunday night. It was Tom the brickie! Did we still need him to come by and do some work tomorrow? Boy did we! His phone had been broken and he was using his daughter’s. We were saved!

We had the team together, but still a difficult job to do and in a very particular order.

1. Upstairs windows out.
2. Upstairs brickwork completed whilst the downstairs bay was taken out.
3. Downstairs bay replaced whilst mortar was drying upstairs.
4. Finally, upstairs windows could be put in.

Phew! 😅

We are so happy with how they turned out. Not just to secure the house and to keep the outside out, but they transformed the whole feel of the place. From the inside, the bay now feels like it extends right into the garden. It feels so light and airy and we found that no matter who came round, they would always gather in the back rooms, bathed in light and overlooking the garden.

From the outside, the house just looked so smart. We would often go out just to stare back at the house – in fact, we still do! Thanks to Worsley Glass for great windows and a great fit, for foreseeing the brickwork issues. Thanks to Tom the brickie for coming up trumps when it hit crunch time. And enormous thanks to Paul for working as project manager for the day whilst we were safely out of the way at work!

As previously mentioned, March was not particularly productive for us. We were still reeling from our builder confrontations and the burglary. We didn’t really want to spend any more time at the house than we had to.

Going Underground

One of the many features that we loved about the house was that it had a cellar. It takes up about half the footprint of the house and has three chambers. Working closely with our electrician and kitchen designer, we have planned to fully utilise the space: We have planned for a second fridge and freezer in one chamber, a tool workshop in the second chamber and a laundry and utility area in the other. This week we spent some time mapping out how our cellar might look. Looks alright doesn’t it?

Windows Security Update

Following the break-in, we were paranoid about the opening at the back of the house. Even though the door had been bricked up to make a window hole, it was still just an opening with no window! This was the security system we had at the time:

The rain got in, the wind got in, the inside felt like outside, and with a good shove in the right direction, maybe the burglars would get in too! All that timber was strategically screwed tight to prevent entry. The side gate we locked and screwed shut too, so for a while the only way to get around the back was to climb over the 7ft side gate! The stepladder helped to get me over, but getting back was tougher!

We were so happy when we finally got our windows… but in the meantime, the paranoia sent us a little bananas…

If you aren’t singing Take That by now, then are you really a human? 🎤

So, we had not been spending much time at the house throughout March following a couple of difficult months. However, one thing that we did get done in Week 22, we got our dining room fireplace repointed! Thanks to Tom the brickie!

Progress pics:

Other possible contenders for this week’s blog title were:

Tap out

Sink hole

Pull the plug

Pipe dream

Cistern of a down

Can you guess what it’s about? Yes! That’s right! We pulled the bathroom out! In fact, we pulled the whole central heating out!

After getting several unexpectedly expensive quotes for all central heating and plumbing work, we decided to split the task. Our central heating guys would take out our existing system, and at some later date (after plastering/ painting/ tiling?) they would come back to fit the new one. Plumbing the bathroom in would be an issue for another day.

It was great to get the maze of thick copper pipe out. It was all over the house – along skirting boards and through walls.

Exhibit A:

Imagine these pipes running around your living room skirting boards! 🙈

Here’s a few snaps of how we pulled the bathroom apart:

We had hoped to maybe get the cast iron bath out in one piece to sell, but alas, it was not to be. The sheer weight of it had our two strapping men seriously struggling. As they started down the stairs, it became apparent that a teeny slip could result in mega injury. The final straw though was seeing the old floorboards on the stairs bending and creaking under the weight. Visions of a floorboard cracking and the ensuing carnage flashed through my head and so… we decided instead to smash it up into pieces! It was LOUD! A giant cast iron bell smashed up with lump hammer. The pieces themselves were heavy enough to get down the stairs, so reckon we made the right call!

The heavy lifting was not done though. As well as the cast iron bath and the boiler, there was the old back boiler to remove too! Filled with concrete, this was another back-breaker! But they got it out eventually after much grunting and sweating!

Phew! 😅 Some Radox Muscle Soak 🛁 would have been very welcome at this point, only we don’t have a bathroom anymore! 🙊

We invested in some heat guns this week! 🔥🔫 So we got blasting the paint of the bannister, the spindles and the panelling on our staircase!

A quick reminder of the panelling we uncovered in Week 5:

And on to the stripping!

Hayley took the brunt of the workload on this one, working way after the sun had set, in a dark, electric-less house with a single lamp illuminating her progress. #dedication

We experimented with Nitromors – a green slime that causes the paint to peel. Think we prefer the heat guns!

And what a result! Super happy with how it is looking!

So far, our renovation journey was one of destruction. We had smashed and stripped and gutted. So we were excited for Week 19 – a chance to create something! Danny came to put us in a new loft hatch!

The electrician and structural engineer had both swooned over the loft’s high pitch and vast space and we were keen to utilise it for storage. The entrance was a teeny little hole in the spare bedroom. We wanted a big hatch with wooden steps on the landing. Super Danny to the rescue!

It was dirty work. Danny looked fresh from t’pit at the end of each day. I had fully intended to help out as much as possible but in the end just felt as if we were in the way! So I had the hard job of sourcing pasties for everyone!

There was a little issue with the old plaster coming away from the slats, but we pinned it all up with a floorboard, mixed some bonding to fix the two back together, and let it set overnight.

We were so grateful for Danny – not just for his workmanship with the loft hatch (which was top notch) but for his cool and calm demeanour in the midst of the storm that was blowing (see Weeks 17 & 18!). His advice kept us reassured and his approach to everything was positive and ‘can do’; exactly what we needed in those dark days! Thanks Danny! 😊

We were in the eye of the storm. We had noticed the big cracks in the brickwork that morning and were genuinely concerned about the structural integrity of the house. The already annoyed builder had come round and offered no solutions other than ‘I’ll redo it’. We’d quickly come to the realisation that we didn’t want him to do it. We were stressing over how we were going to break this news to him and how we would get the job finished.

That very same night, we were broken into.

‘Broken in’ may perhaps be a little strong, seeing as this was the back door situation at the time:

…but nonetheless there had been intruders!

The evening after, I had popped round to the house; mainly to see if it was still standing. I went straight around the back to check the wall was still there. It was, but immediately I noticed that the board covering the back door had been moved ever so slightly a few inches to the right. 🤔 Had someone been in? I easily lifted the boards aside and entered the house.

It was dark at this time. Remember we had no electricity in the house either. We were using the torches on our phones 🔦 and we had no idea if our visitors were still there.

As I walked around the house I noticed drawers and cupboard doors that had been left open, and not by us. I’ll confess, I was completely spooked, and I REALLY didn’t want to stay long. But before we could go, we had to secure the back door so that the intruders wouldn’t return. Ten terrified torchlit minutes later, I’d screwed and blocked up the back door as best as I could and got out of there quickfast!

So now as well as our stress around the collapsing brick wall, and the incompetent, angry builder, we now had to consider who had broken into our house! And, even scarier still, whether they were coming back!?

Was it a burglar who had scouted it out, rubbed his hands with glee at an empty house and an easy entry, and was coming back with his mates later? Was it a bunch of youths who would use it as a bit of a hang out and cause who-knows-what damage? A very nervous night followed!

Hoping to feel emboldened by the daylight, the next morning I recruited former PC Tim as reinforcement and went back. It only marginally helped. I was still terrified. We walked around. There had definitely been someone in. Dust covers had moved and cupboard doors were open. We find a semi-footprint on one of the dust covers (=evidence!), but could not see anything that had been taken. Not in the bedrooms, the front room, the kitchen.

Down into the cellar we went. We saw that a stack of boxes had been messed with. They contained the old ornaments we had inherited from the house, all wrapped in newspaper. On closer inspection, the stack looked smaller than previously. Had some been taken? I wasn’t sure… 🤔 … hmm… hold on! Yes! The box of brass ornaments was definitely gone! And probably another! And some of the ornaments from the big box too! 📦 📦

It might sound a little strange but I felt a surge of relief. To know that it had been thieves meant a) it WASN’T kids looking for somewhere to hang out and vandalise, and b.) they had clearly had chance to see that there was nothing worth taking! a + b = less chance they’d be back!

This self-reassurance only slightly helped. For weeks we felt uneasy around the house. It was a really horrible sensation. We just did not want to be there. Every thud or bang made us jump, and we were on edge the whole time we were there. I felt the need to go and check on the house before and after work every day for a while.

The stress to fix the back door up properly was immediately vamped up to the jigawatts, and with builder woes, evasive bricklayers and window fitters who take a lifetime, it just didn’t really go away for weeks and weeks. Was someone in our house? Has someone been in our house? Is there someone in our cellar? Our loft? Constant irrational questions.

I would spend a good 20-30 minutes every time we went round unboarding the now ultra-secured back door and then 20-30 minutes boarding it back up again. With no electricity in the house, and the February nights closing in from around 4pm, I’d begin my boarding and locking up procedures from 3pm, scared of being in an unsecured house in the dark.

It was months before we fully relaxed in the house again. I remember one day, weeks and weeks later, maybe some time in April; the sun was shining and the radio was playing, and I’d felt like I’d had a productive day. I started smiling because I knew that I was back in love with the house again after all that time. The dark days were over at last!

As for the culprits…

I heard on the social medias that there had been two scrap metal men in the area who had been overstepping their mark. They had been sighted going up drives, down the sides of houses, round into back gardens… I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine our scrap metal ‘friends’ coming up the drive to look in the skip, noticing the side gate open, heading round the back, giving the boards a bit of a shove and gaining access to the house. After all, they did take a box of brass and metal ornaments! But hey, in the end it saved us taking them to the charity shop!

Week 17 nearly broke us. It was hands down the most stressful experience of my life. Drawn out over weeks, it all came to a head in Week 17. It’s not an over-exaggeration to say it left us both with almost debilitating anxiety and stress. I couldn’t concentrate at work, I couldn’t sleep; I was a bag of nerves. It tarnished our renovation project to the point that we didn’t want to do it anymore and we certainly didn’t want to live there.

So what happened? It’s all to do with removing the internal wall between the kitchen and dining room.

Here’s the full saga right from the beginning;

1. We assumed that the brickwork above the internal wall that was being removed would be supported by a steel that would rest on two ‘nibs’ like this:However, the builder suggested removing the wall WITHOUT leaving a nib. The steel could rest on the internal cavity of the external wall.It would be no extra cost and very little extra work. Total = 2 days max. Payment to be made once we were in receipt of a certificate from building regulations. We said “okay!”.

2. The structural engineer came out. The steel was to rest on the wall right next to the opening for the back door. He wasn’t happy that such a weight would be resting on such a vulnerable corner of brickwork that could crumble…

“I’d be happier if there was an extra column of bricks built in to support the steel”

This is where it would go:

This would stop the corner of brickwork above the doorframe from potentially crumbling. “Doesn’t change anything!” said the builder.

3. We asked to see the structural report. Builder shrugged it off.

4. Down came the dividing wall …

…but also down came part of the wall that wasn’t supposed to!

5. So… the builder built it back up again with some VERY questionable brickwork…

“Don’t worry! This will all be covered with plasterboard. We’ll do a much tidier job on the external wall”

6. Not only that but due to a copper pipe, he’d left out a brick at the bottom. So the wall would have an unsupported overhang directly underneath the steel.

Bricks were also missing from above the steel, meaning that the weight wasn’t distributed as it should have been.

7. We asked for structural report again. “Okay” was the reply. The report didn’t materialise.

8. Next, where the steel needed to go was also where the window lintel was. This meant that a.) the lintel needed cutting to make space and b.) there was nothing to hold up the lintel (and the bricks above) except for an acrow.

9. So the house was left resting on acrows until the column of bricks could go in. Problem was, the back door and frame needed taking out to do this, as that’s where the brick column would be going. See the problem?

10. So work stopped. We didn’t want to have a hole where the back door should be in the depths of icy January for any longer than necessary. We were trying to orchestrate the door being taken out, the brickwork being done, the steel being completed and the new windows being installed.

11. We got a quote for everything from our builder. We weren’t thrilled by what we’d seen so far but appreciated the convenience of having one contractor doing all the work in one go.

12. The quote arrived and we asked questions and scrutinised it. Eventually after pestering, the builder confessed he had added the unforeseen costs of the first job on to the new quote (the wall section he’d accidentally knocked down, the extra column of bricks and the skip and acrow hire after it all took more than two days!)

13. We were not happy. We had not been told about any unforeseen costs. We expected there would be some after the complications we’d had BUT had heard nothing from builder and certainly nothing before work began!. We also didn’t like that he’d tried to hide the costs in the new quote.

14. The builder got cross. I don’t like confrontation. He said he didn’t want to do any further work for us in case unforeseen costs came up again and we’d have another ‘argument’. We agreed that this was for the best. Patronisingly he said “Let me give you some advice. There will always be unforeseen costs in a job like this.” Which is fine, it’s just that usually the customer gets told about them before they are charged!! 😡 Nevermind, once he’d finished putting the steel in, then he’d be gone!

15. So we started searching for our own bricklayer and window company (more on this in another blog). However, this proved to take a very long time. Weeks for a quote, weeks to build the uPVC to size, weeks to book a fitting date.

16. With the acrows and skip hired, our builder was patient for the first couple of weeks, but eventually he started putting pressure on us to remove the back door and frame. Fair enough. His 2 day job was turning to two months.

17. The builder mentioned cash flow issues. We decided as a gesture of good will to pay half of the total in advance.

18. We still had no structural report though.

19. Eventually we decided it would be best just to take the back door frame out ourselves and let the builder finish.

20. This obviously left us without a back door. We boarded it up as best as we could using the old door but it didn’t quite fit without the frame. A couple of pieces of wood and some screws kept it in place, but it lacked security (more on this next blog) and it let the wind and cold in. The inside felt like the outside. 🥶

21. Finally though, despite all this, at least the builder could crack on. He built the column of bricks and put the steel in.

Let’s pretend we haven’t seen the new brickwork for just a moment and focus on the steel… It’s supposed to rest on a padstone and the padstone is supposed to rest on concrete bricks…

Well, the steel here is resting on mortar which is perishable. The padstone is resting on half a flagstone taken from the garden (without permission) and broken to size.

And at the other end, the padstone was been put straight into bricks. Not right at all.

22. So about these bricks… the mortar dried and most of the acrows were taken out (by some divine premonition, the builder decided to leave a couple in!) Three days pass and this is what we find …

Big cracks and a wall that looks like it’s falling down! Our house is collapsing!!

23. The builder came round immediately and said “yep, needs redoing that. I’ll get on it Monday morning”

24. Okay… it’s just… we don’t really want him to touch our house EVER again.

25. The inspector had been booked to sign the job off on Monday so we told our builder that we wanted the inspector to see it as it is. He could give us advice on how to stop the same thing happening again. The builder bristled at this; he didn’t like it but saw my logic and agreed.

26. Out came the building inspector. He was quite appalled at the job and pointed out all the problems mentioned above.

27. Meanwhile, the full weight of the back of the house appears to be resting on two acrows. Scary, stressful, not nice.

28. We asked AGAIN for structural report.

“I’ll be honest with you – I keep the structural report back as security until you’ve paid.”

29. After the inspector had been, the builder wanted to get to work rectifying the issue on Tuesday morning. We didn’t want him to. We’d completely lost confidence in him. Difficult conversation ensued.

30. The builder got defensive. He did not like the fact we would not let him fix the issue. He threatened to walk off the job.

“I don’t understand what the problem is. Either you’ve got an ulterior motive or you’re getting bad advice”

Another confrontation. I REALLY don’t like confrontations!

31. In the meantime, we are trying to solve this ourselves. We’d found some bricks on Facebook marketplace. Dad bought and collected them for us. That’s 100 in there!

32. We then found our own bricklayer which was not at all easy!! and asked him to finish the job.

33. We told the builder we wanted to use our own bricklayer to help him fix the issues. We didn’t want to be out of pocket so we knocked the bricklayer’s price off the builder’s fee. The builder very reluctantly agreed. He wanted the job to be over as much as we did!

34. The bricklayer arrived and was genuinely appalled at the quality of the brickwork. He told us that the builder had only put mortar on the front edge of the brick and had made no effort to tie the new brickwork to the existing internal or external walls. No big surprise, all the builder’s brickwork needed taking down and redoing.

35. So the builder turned up and got an earful of abuse by the tradesmen there. He defends himself by claiming he’s a *joiner* not a *builder* (despite what the website says). He got very offended and left. I was accused of setting up an ambush for him. 💥 Another confrontation I don’t like!

36. Our brickie replaced the brickwork; patching in the missing bricks and adding the column of bricks…

37. … he rested the steel directly on the padstones and packed them with slate. The padstones are sat on cement bricks. All as it should be…

38. He even bricks up our back door for us!

It’s not perfect – apparently the bricks we bought couldn’t be used on the external wall for some reason so these are from the internal wall. Also, it’s a little wonky due to one side of the house having dropped over the years but that can’t be helped. It’s done. 😅

39. The mortar set, it was time to take the acrows out! The brickie tried and tried to get the final acrow out, hammering and hammering it to unscrew it. Eventually, after a good hour, we realise the acrow was put in upside down (parting shot by the builder?) and we had been screwing it the wrong way. 🤦‍♂️

40. We invited the building inspector out again. He agreed that everything is kosher. 👌

41. After reporting this all back to the builder, we once again requested the structural survey. To our amazement he actually sends it over!

42. He also accidentally sends the email thread between him and the structural engineer. The structural engineer had offered two prices; one as a foreigner and one through the company. There’s also a warning ⚠️. If he goes for the job as a foreigner, any insurance the engineer or builder holds is voided. Any damage would have been uninsured. We don’t know what he went for in the end but we have our terrifying suspicions! Imagine!

43. We paid the remaining fee, breathed a huge sigh of relief and got rid!

44. The building certificate could only be signed off once the steel had been covered with fire board. So we were asked to send pictures once this was done to claim the certificate. Only we weren’t planning on plastering for a good few weeks! More time passed with no resolution!

45. Eventually all plastered, we send off the pictures. Looks good huh?

And… no reply.

46. I try again a week later. No reply.

47. After trying in vain to get some kind of response through email, I decided to book another site inspection. That way, they would be guaranteed to meet with me within two days.

48. We wait in all day. 10am-4pm was the window. 4pm comes and goes. I phone up and the inspector is not at the office.

49. Eventually, I get a call from the inspector. He says that he signed off the work months ago and forgot to tell us! 🤦‍♂️ We’d waited in for nothing BUT …

50. We got our certificate ANd our kitchen-diner! Phew! 😅

Well done if you made it to here. The stress of it all has meant that we haven’t wanted to work at the house or blog about it for a long time, but it feels like we’ve turned a corner at last, and writing it all down in this way feels like closure on that particular saga!

We are super pleased with the kitchen-diner space as well. It feels big and light and airy! 👌

Onwards and upwards eh? Or maybe not… we still have Week 18 to tell you about!! A whole other batch of stress!

This was the week our electrician started. All the electrics were taken out, so we’ve been left without ever since! This means no lights! 💡❌😬 As a result, our working day has been limited to daylight hours for the past couple of months. This was especially frustrating in early February, when it was going dark around 4pm!

We were also left with just a single live socket (for the kettle of course! gotta get your priorities straight after all! ☕️😉).

It took a while to plan out where we wanted all the switches, lights, sockets, appliances and fuse spurs to go – it isn’t easy anticipating where we may one day need a socket or a switch or a security light, but we’ve done our best!

The electrician has started chasing out the plaster for the cables and sockets with strict instructions of symmetry to appease Hayley’s OCD. You can see the progress below. However, he can’t complete until bathroom 🚽 and kitchen are out! So … until then… power’s out!

We bid adieu to our 1930s junior Hoover this week and that marks the end of our little selling phase! We have tried to make a teeny bit of money to assist the renovation costs 💰, but mainly we just didn’t want to see things go to waste!

So here’s a celebration of some of the items we have rehomed over the past few months!

We managed to sell these on facebook marketplace or donate to family. We really like them all but had to be ruthless in order to make some space in the house!

We also sold some clothes on Vinted. Here’s a selection:

Whilst house-hunting we were always been drawn to the period properties, so Cherry Tree was right up our street! However we had no idea how rich the history was!

The house is Edwardian, built in 1902, before the days of electricity (which explains the battery-powered maids bells. See here; Week 8 – Call the Bomb Squad!!).

Cherry Tree Lane was a busy thoroughfare connecting Dialstone Lane with the A6 so it was full of small businesses. There was also the hospital and sanitarium directly opposite the house, so very fortunately for us, there is a fair few records about the road!

This is a postcode from 1925. The little girl seems to be stood outside our neighbour’s house! There’s a steam roller in the background!

This is from 1965 and there’s our house in the background! The shop is a bakery here 🥯 but went on to become a piano shop 🎹 with a cigar-smoking polish proprietor!

These are all from 1965. Pretty cool huh?

And then… there’s the creepy Cherry Tree Hospital and Sanitarium!

Shrouded in shrubbery…

Guarded by the lodge…

There she stands!

It looks like the stuff of horror films inside…

1934. Look at the creepy toys on the left 🧸

The hospital was abandoned in 2011 and left to the elements for a while. Urban explorers had a field day!

Now the annexe is the Devonshire unit of Neurorehabilitation and the main building is being turned into apartments. The future marches on!

Thank you to Jo and Chris who sent us these pictures! The rest were from the Stockport Image Archives or urban explorers website https://www.aworldinruins.co.uk/cherry-tree-hospital

When we were buying Cherry Tree House, we felt the only downside to the house was the small kitchen. So the plan was always to knock through to make a kitchen-diner.

A view from the serving hatch:

We were expecting a ‘nib’ would be required on each side of the removed wall to support the new steel, but the builder told us we only needed a nib on one end, and we could have it flush with the outside wall on the other. What’s more, he said it would barely change the price and it was almost no extra work! Ho ho ho! Famous last words!

The structural engineer was to throw a bit of a spanner 🔧 in the works. (Fascinating guy btw!) He told us, with the high ceilings and high pitch in the loft, there was a LOT of weight on the soon-to-be-gone wall. He wasn’t happy with the steel resting on the corner of brickwork as the bricks could potentially crumble. His suggestion was to build another column of bricks where the backdoor is to support the padstone (the concrete block that the steel rests on).

The padstones and the steel:

Work began. First of all, as the wall was being knocked down, part of the nib collapsed and had to be rebuilt.

Secondly, as we cut into the external wall to place the padstone, we quickly realised the timber lintel above the window was in the way. That needed cutting to make space for the padstone. Now, of course, the window lintel needs supporting by a prop until the new column of bricks is in.

Building in a column of bricks isn’t usually too much of a problem, but there is currently a back door in the way! This will eventually be removed, but we haven’t received a quote from a glaziers that we’re happy with yet. And we definitely haven’t agreed a date that they can begin work! It seems to be taking ages!

Meanwhile, the acros/ props are hired by the builder ( 🕰 =💰 tick tock!) and they are currently holding the house up!

I’ll end with a quote: “In hindsight, it was a bad idea to go without a nib” – Builder 🤣 🙊

It was New Years Eve 2018. We’d been busy working at the house all day. Eventually we succumbed to hunger and reluctantly headed home for tea. We were all snuggled down ready to see 2019 arrive from the couch when Hayley asked if we could go back and strip the third bedroom. Why not? We sped back, put the tunes on, boiled up the steamers and got to work on stripping the several layers of wall coverings.

We were making good progress when midnight approached. I called Hayley as the countdown began and went out into the garden as the count hit 1. The sky lit up with fireworks. It was spectacular! The were explosions in every direction. But something was missing… where was Hayley? I looked back to the house and through the windows I could see her running from room to room! What was she doing?

Turns out she’d got lost trying to find me and was unable to see me in the dark garden. Haha! I went and found her and we enjoyed watching the new year fireworks together in our new garden! We broke for a quick brew, and then back to it to finish stripping the walls at 01:30am New Year’s Day. Not a typical New Years Eve maybe but wouldn’t have wanted it any other way! 👌

Anyway, seeing as we spent most of our Christmas holidays stripping walls, let’s roll the photos and show you some of our handiwork!!

‘This wall was wallpapered in the year 1968’

Thanks to everyone who lent a helping hand! 👍

Seeing as we live on Cherry Tree Lane (as per Mary Poppins) and it was the season of Santa 🎅🏻, we thought we had best sort out the fire places in case of a visit from Dick van Dyke and/ or St. Nick!

We both love the fireplaces in the house – just look at them! 😍 Aren’t they flaming grate?

Hayley has been lovingly researching fireplaces on instagram and getting very excited, so we decided to see what was behind this one in the dining room (modelled by Joe below)!

This is the oak fire surround. I’m not sure I like the mirror and am leaning towards replacing it, but maybe we should give it a chance with a white coat of paint 🎨. What do you think?

This is the de-tiling of the fireplace. Very excited to see a lovely brick arch behind.

Let’s hollow her out! Paul and Hayley did the grafting here with lump hammer and crowbar!

And this is what we’re left with!! We’re both pretty fired up about it!

We’ve gone about as far as we can for now, because;

1. The copper fire weighs an absolute tonne
2. It has a back boiler and so is attached to the central heating system!

Nerd section 🤓

Back boilers are a nifty idea. They fit on to the back of the fire and warm up water which can then travel around the house in pipes to warm the other rooms! Some people use back boilers in place of a boiler/ central heating system (dad knows a guy) and they do still sell modern versions for around £3000!

This probably explains why the house has a single pump central heating system. The boiler that was fitted in 2015 was probably just added on to the existing system to save replacing the whole lot 💰.

1. After three days of living under the house, the joists and the bottom of the floorboards are now all sprayed with two and a half cans of pesticide. The little buglets will perish when they emerge from the wood in the spring. Here’s the arsenal;
2. We removed the worst affected floorboards …
3. … and measured, cut and fitted the new floorboards. The old floorboards were imperial (3/4 inch so around 19.4mm) and the new are metric (18mm) so we had to raise the new ones a little with some old lino to make them flush.
4. We nailed them down and voila! A new dance floor! #saturdaynightfever

And so the battle of the woodworm in the back room is raging, but future battles await west over in the kitchen and hallway. Newly discovered colonies threaten the integrity of our timber in these areas…

And it’s not just woodworm we need to worry about, we found a whole new infestation last night… !!

We took a little Christmassy break 🎄 from renovating this week to watch Christmas films, put up our tree, and attend the work Christmas do!!

However, we have made lots of progress from the comfort of our sofa 🛋 planning out where our radiators, sockets and light-switches will go and how our windows will open! I feel all warm and tingly and bright and breezy!

Under the house, beyond the cellar, is a crawl space. Dark, dusty, full of cob-webs and rubble. When my torch light first swept across the area under the kitchen, something strange appeared through the gloom…

Two jars side by side on a little plinth. And inside…

These! Written on the side: W. Bentley, Cheadle Hulme, 7/2/19. (That’s 1919!!!)

What are they? Time-capsules perhaps? I showed the electrician. He didn’t know either.

However, late last night, after carrying out some research, he sent me an alarming message. “I don’t want to worry you mate BUT… ” and linked me to a load of photos of old WW1 Ceramic Hand Grenades!! 💣 Yowzers and yikes!

Surely not? I turned to the Team Science WhatsApp group for answers. After much umming, the consensus: 100-year-old ‘wet’ storage batteries or ‘Leclanché cells’…

Looks pretty close I think? But if they are batteries, what did they power? Following the ancient wires up the wall, we get a possible answer…

The old maids’ bells!! Case closed… maybe!? What do you think?

Update: the maids’ bells have ‘W. Bentley’ and ‘Cheadle Hulme’ enscribed, just like the ceramic pieces in the jar!

Look what we found under our dark brown carpet and coffee coloured walls!

The survey raised a few issues with the roof and chimney and when we poked our heads in the loft, we had a few bonus skylights! Time to get the roofers in!

1. Roofer 1 – recommended that we drop the unused chimney that used to serve the kitchen as it was looking a bit shaky.
2. Roofer 2 – told us we didn’t need to take the chimney down. “I’ve been a roofer for 35 years and that chimney ain’t going nowhere!”
3. Roofer 3 – quoted £thousands more than the other two.

Roofer 1 went to town on the chimney. Turns out he didn’t even need a hammer 🔨 and bolster, he was able to take the chimney down with his bare hands. Yikes! Jenga Chimney! 😅

So now our ridge tiles are repointed, the missing/ broken tiles replaced, the 3rd chimney was dropped, the back chimney was repointed, and all the flaunchings and flashings fixed up! Some of the old timber has been replaced too! Should do us for a few years!

Behold the before and afterness!

Thanks to Head Gardener Tim for his work on laying the patio! A big improvement don’t you think? Also, look at those air-bricks breathe!!

Before

During

En fin!

Thanks dad! 😋

So following a week of research on woodworm, today we sprung into action to rid ourselves of the pesky bugs! I’ve included my ‘boring’ woodworm research findings deep at the bottom of the blog if a lack of detail is bugging you! 🐜

First job today was to clear the air bricks so that there is good ventilation under the house to keep our wood dry and prevent reinfestation.

Secondly, I quickly brushed down the joists and floorboards to remove dust and cobwebs.

Finally, I sprayed my insecticide on the joists and floorboards using a gardening pressure spray bottle (about £3).

I’ve managed to spray the whole back room (where the infestation appears worst) but still have the rest of the house to go! 🏚

It was tough, down on hands and knees in the dark, dusty, cobweb-filled crawl space spraying insecticide around. 🕸🕷 I got pretty filthy; but thanks to my protective suit, knee-pads and mask, not only did I spray like a pro, I looked like a pro! Or a ghostbuster, depending on who you ask. 👻

I can only imagine the surprise of the two students who saw their Science teacher pouring chemicals in this get-up. 👨‍🔬 I’m praying they haven’t seen Breaking Bad or I may well be getting reported!

Sam x

So here’s my exciting woodworm research!Feel free to wriggle out of reading this if woodworm facts bore you!

• Most infestations (around 75%) are caused by the Common Furniture Beetle. Other types of woodworm are the Longhorn and Death Watch Beetle. The Death Watch bores deep in wood and is therefore most destructive and hardest to remove.
• The beetles lay their eggs in wood. It is the grubs or larvae that are referred to as woodworm. They eat themselves out of the wood, causing the wood to weaken and leaving a little pile of frass outside the hole.
• The beetles emerge around May/ June time. They can often be found dead on windowsills around this time.
• Most specialists use Permethrin (insecticide). It only penetrates 2mm into wood, so you have to wait for the beetles to emerge before it kills them. You can also apparently use white spirit/ vinegar. If you have deeper infestations such as Death Watch beetles, you usually use boron injections.
• Best way to prevent/ cure woodworm is to keep your wood dry.
• Costs – usually looking at around £500-600 to get a specialist out to diagnose and treat.

The woodworm needs treating as I’m not waiting around until May to see if the infestation is active!

So armed with the above information, we had a decision to make; do we get a specialist out or do it ourselves? The specialist provides a certificate if we ever find ourselves selling the house. They also provide a 30 year guarantee. However, we are not planning on selling, and the guarantees can be problematic – there is usually a 7 year fly-off, which means you have to give the insecticide 7 years to work! Even after 7 years, it still isn’t easy to claim, you have to prove it’s been reinfested.

Needless to say, we’ve gone for the DIY option. I used two 5l cans of Lignum Woodworm Killer from Stax @£19 each which contains Permethrin. Fingers crossed it works, 🤞 or maybe the phrase ‘touch wood’ might be more appropriate… 👉🚪

Last week, we found a hole in the floor. The armchair leg had gone through a floorboard. So we pulled up the carpet and found a few dreaded woodworm holes!

Paul, Hayley and I climbed into the crawl space from the cellar to see the extent of the infestation from below. It looked bad!

We started to cut away the worst floorboards. These were the ones that crumbled under a screwdriver.

In total, we’ve removed about a quarter of the floorboards in the back room. We used Paul’s jigsaw and a crowbar (from Yu&me). There are still some boards with lots of holes in (the woodworm beetles clearly have their favourites!), but they felt strong enough to keep. Luckily, the joists themselves had very few holes in and so remain strong.

Sam x

Hello there! Welcome to our little blog about our BIG project!

After two frustrating years, we found and bought our dream house on Cherry Tree Lane in Great Moor!

We completed the purchase on 15th October 2018. This blog aims to document the transformation from house to home. We’ve got a lot to learn and a lot to do but we are very excited about the adventure and can’t wait to see how it develops!

We are currently 6 weeks in, so we’ll try to keep up to date from here on in, and we’ll throw in some flashbacks to the earlier stuff (buying process, getting the keys, clearing the house etc.) when we get chance.

We hope you’ll join us on our journey!

Sam & Hayley x