Nearly ten years ago now we bought an Edwardian Terrace in London not dissimilar to most in our little corner of the capital except that ours was a bit of a disaster zone.  We do love a project, but this one ended up being much bigger than we probably originally anticipated.  The electrics were all shot, the carpets were too revolting to stand on and the bathroom was something else! There were certain things that had to be done immediately and we have also added lots of square footage by doing a loft conversion, but there are still loads of things left to do on our home improvements list.
I haven’t really written about the renovations as since we had the children most projects went on hold. Now that they are a bit older and we have stopped haemorrhaging cash on nappies we are looking at the house again. We want to finish what we started. So are looking again at that home improvements to to list. There are some big changes ahead!
Over the past 10 years I have learnt that with old houses it is often the things that you love the most that need the most work. We bought the house because of the period features such as fireplaces, original doors, ornate tiled floors and sash windows. I love all of these details, but when those who went before haven’t looked after things they end up needing to be top of the priority list when it comes to home improvements.Â
Window and Floors
Take the sash windows, for example, they are stunning and give me joy whenever I see them. I always wanted a house with sashes but you need to look after them and unfortunately our house was in disrepair when we bought it. The windows had not been treated kindly at all and some of the wood was really damaged. As a result all of the windows need to be restored and updated so that they can meet the needs of the modern family. We don’t want to loose any of the detail, but we do need to make the glass more efficient and repair some of the frames so that they provide a better protection against the elements. Once renovated they will really be the crowning glory of the house I think.
The next priority will be the tiled floors. They are lovely to look at, but entirely impractical as they were laid directly onto the earth essentially so are freezing and more important very susceptible to the movements caused by tree roots and therefore are cracked left right and centre. At the moment we are looking into options, but it seems we may have to replace them. Â
The Big Build
The biggest wish on the ideal home improvements list is knocking down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. We will also slightly extend the house to create a big family space. This is a huge project which could see us without a kitchen for something like 6 weeks! We have decided to do it in stages.Â
I am planning to share this project with you as I am bound to learn some useful stuff, but in the meantime do any of you have any pearls of wisdom to share with me about how to manage a building project when you are living in the house? I would especially love to here and ingenious ideas for handling the huge amounts of dust that will no doubt be descending on us.
