Lots of pictures

[Sonyaclegg]

Forgive the quality. I've mastered iPhone to here for pics but not pc to here so copies them on iPhone and posted. Any instructions on uploads from pc will result in better photos. The size of pic was too much for the upload. Various pics and some of the stonework around the windows I was asking about

 

[Sonyaclegg]

More pics

 

[Sonyaclegg]

And more

 

[Sonyaclegg]

More

 

[LadyArowana]

Thank you for sharing, we all love pictures. If I need to post pictures from the laptop I resize them through a photo editing programme, I believe others use one of the web based hosting services ( photobucket, picasa? ) and then post the link to that external site which overcomes the size limitation. Someone else will be along shortly with more helpful information I'm sure.

A wonderful project you have there, very exciting. I wonder how much consultation the previous owners had with the CO, I suspect insufficient. Looks like they have cut into the fabric of the building to put in the rads, presumably so they could then put a grille over the top flush with the wall, and I would be surprised if that had been allowed, but maybe I am not reading the pictures correctly. Short of time travel though what's done is done, it's unlikely that you can replace any missing historical fabric, so the important thing is to make sure that what you do going forward preserves the building. You will find lots of helpful people here.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, what a fabulous place Chateau Sonya is, thanks so much for putting the piccies up. You really can have your dream family home there, I think! You must be beyond excited

This is just my amateur opinion and I appreciate you never really know what something's like until you've lived with it for a couple of years, but I think the stonework in that house has a real beauty and charm, bashes and all. I don't know if you've visited Stamford in Lincs, one of England's prettiest towns, much characterised by crumbling stonework. I had a day there this week, wandering about various shops and restaurants, with ample opportunity to look at many battered mullions. If the interior is nice in other respects the atmosphere is welcoming, loved and cared for despite great gouges out of the stone.

If I were a CO or somebody at EH I'd be very unhappy at the thought of those being filled in and painted over. All I can say is please live with the stone at least a year before acting.

It's going to be an astonishing place to live, and wonderful that it becomes a family home.

Jocelyn

 

[Feltwell]

I'd echo Joce's comments. That stonework looks fine to me - it has "character", if it looked new then it wouldn't be nearly so appealing. Admittedly we can only see a very limited view from your pictures, but if they are not seriously structurally eroded - which they look far from being - then I'd leave them alone. Please please don't be tempted to steam ahead without LBC, that will potentially land you in a lot of bother and may even be part of the reason why you picked the house up as a reposession.

It's been discussed on here several times before, most of us have changed our minds about what we want having lived in an old building for a while - it really is amazing how much your views can change. My honest advice would be to do the essentials, i.e. any works to sort out structural problems / water ingress / make electrics safe etc, but then as much as possible live with the rest for a while and see how it pans out. You do at least have the advantage, unless you have a truly huge family, of having a new home so large that if you have to live in one part of it whilst builders work in another that should be possible.

You've the makings of a truly beautiful home there, now is not the time to rush decisions that you may regret later.

For pictures, I find photobucket is very good and is free - you can resize, rotate and generally fettle pictures very easily for linking to this site.

 

[worms]

Looks good! You could almost get my whole house into one of your fireplaces! And good to see that you have transport to get around in the place! I think I'd more than happily live with the mullions in as-is condition.

Can I ask... Do you have the whole building or a wing/section of it?

 

[Sonyaclegg]

Ive just written a very long post and lost it!
This one is shorter...
The house was build in the 1607 ish on the site of a 12th century property with evidence of a motte.
The previous owner rebuilt the house from an empty shell with no roof and no origional features save stone work and some beams. He did a good job in some areas and bad in others. He put in ornate plasterwork but did not put a spetic tank in. Wrong way around for me!
It was on the at risk register, the council could not secure funding for the work and he saved it. He tried to sell it but no one wanted it as a family home. All who came to view wanted a change of use to commercial, restaurant, apartments etc. Consents were granted for the works, retrospectively as that was the way of the previous owner. We have met with him. He has all the internal doors, locks etc and wants to sell them to us. He took the heating system and all the rads out before handing the keys back.

We have approached this a different way. Consents applied for the only works we want to do which are to install a septic tank and demolish runious outbuilding. We are near to agreement on the septic tank. Planning should be granted with a watching brief to document any finds recovered whilst digging. My only concern was if we have to have a watching brief at every dig, ie for soakaways, french drains and for garage footings, then it gets very expensive. I did suggest agreeing an area to dig and then anyone and everyone can come and survey and document etc but thats not the way forward.

We are to have a photographic survey done on the outbuilding before demolition if permission is granted but I discovered yesterday that one had been done by a Univerity in 1986. I'm hoping to speak with the Uni on Monday and go and look at what they have. Then I will bring this to the attention of the PO and CO and see if this is sufficient rather than having it done again.

I was surprised when the PO suggested putting a garage on land and we don't own and the reasons for it, to protect the view of the house from the South, when PP had been granted to build a much larger structure within the garden area of the house which is where we propose the garage to go. Is that because the PP has not reviewed the previous agreed plans? It seems like a very big departure from the previously agreed PP.

The local link for life centre were great yesterday when I called in. They have lots of old photos and one showing a crack in 1924. The surveyor suggested wall ties to rectify lateral wall movement. We will be leaving that wall alone given that the crack has been there for all those years.

 

[Sonyaclegg]

We have all the building. There are not any showstopper job save the septic tank, rainwater provisions and the garage. Everything else is little and lots of.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

The first thing to say is that the previous owner seems to have been something of a cowboy. If he is trying to sell back to you the doors etc that he removed (without listed building consent), he has no legal right to do so and should give them back to you. You may find it helpful to enlist the support of the conservation officer and English Heritage in order to achieve this.
It would be useful to know roughly whereabouts in the country you are. Just "south west" or "north east" would do. I'd certainly suggest going and having a good look at other houses of the same sort of date and quality in the same area.
Looking at the plasterwork he's done, it would appear that most of the window and door surrounds sit below the plaster line and may well have been covered originally, or at least not as fully exposed as they now are, without the awakward ledge effect where plaster meets stone. It's also likely, given the date and status of the house, that some interiors would have been panelled.

 

[Feltwell]

If he is trying to sell back to you the doors etc that he removed (without listed building consent), he has no legal right to do so and should give them back to you.

I think they must be new Gareth - the house was apparently a roofless shell with no interior fittings when the previous owner took it on. Mind you, if he'd fitted them with LBC then taken them out........

 

[Sonyaclegg]

Everything he took was new so I don't think it's an issue with LBC. We may buy the internal doors from him if they have been stored correctly and have not warped etc. We are off to see the doors next week.

 

[robgil]

I would have thought they would need LBC to put them in in the first place? Would that not mean you also need concent to remove them?

 

[tycarregydwr]

My comment is just about posting pictures, because I'm a bit of a techno-dunce with a crappy smartphone, the easiest way I've found is to take pics with my phone, then upload them to facebook directly from my phone, and then I can go on FB on my computer and download them to computer. When I do this they miraculously end up the right size, or reasonably close, for posting on here and in other places - not sure if it's my phone re-sizing to send or FB resizing them. I have also sent them from my phone to myself via email and this does the same trick though takes longer.

Your house is amazing, but I have nothing useful to say about it so will just watch with interest

 

[Sonyaclegg]

Thank you for the tips. I want to post better quality pictures as we go along with it. Everyone is so helpful with all the advice. I'm finding it a little stressful at the moment but I'm sure when I've asked the CO about all my concerns and worries, then I will relax. I know I can put a kitchen in, but I have this daft notion that the CO will say no to the plan. I want to make a huge feature of the kitchen inglenook and it is so deserving of it. We have a wonderful stonemason who is repairing it. It was badly damaged on one side so he did some surgery on it and is coming back with matching stone and will fit it into the areas he had to cut back with stainless steel rods which will not be visible and we will have a hairline crack where the join is. Then the fireplace gets its lines and original shape back. A farmer kept cattle in the kitchen for many years hence it all got knocked about quite a bit. What stage are you at? As I'm new here, it would be interesting to know what type of building everyone has and in material and age and what stage you are all at

 

[Feltwell]

You'll find a wide variety of houses on here Sonya, one commonly occuring theme though is many of us are in Year 10 of our 5 year renovation plan, or similar!

For me, it's a large late Victorian red brick semi, once home to the company secretary of the Shropshire Brewery which was behind the house. It was never lived in by an owner until Greenall Whitney sold it off in the '80's, so most of what was there originally survived until then - and lack of funds after then meant that not a huge amount of change happened. It lost it's kitchen range and some fireplaces to gas fires, the old scullery has been knocked about a bit with extra doors and windows, other than that it's pretty much as it was when it was built but it's had 100 years of neglect.

We've got it to the stage where it's watertight, has functioning kitchen and bathrooms and heating but there's still a lot to do cosmetically, sash windows need restoring etc. Others on here have far more ambitious projects than mine, mine is now more ongoing maintenance & repair and gradual improvement than major building works.

 

[JoceAndChris]

It must be very stressful indeed Sonya- is it your first rescue of a period property? You might enjoy reading Flyfisher's fascinating thread on his kitchen, I'll see if I can find the link.

Of course you'll be allowed a kitchen; all my reading suggests they want the properties to be sensitively adapted for modern living, and don't mind undamaging covering up of features. I've got a very funny thing in my kitchen, it's so pretty but a proper pain unit wise - a kind of low arched meat-smoking (?) bench that runs all round one end - one day will hopefully apply for LBC to have units created around it as we're short of cupboards down there.

It sounds like your stone mason is doing a really good job, how clever that process is! So glad to read you've got one you like and trust - finding good tradesmen is one of the hardest things.

What stage - similar to Feltwell, I've been at Beacon Cottage, a stone built but cement rendered, roofed in ofiginal slate, Regency lodge type house, completely isolated with no neighbours, for four years. It was rescued from a near- ruinous state by the previous owner in the 80s, and overall he did a wonderful and sensitive job, making my life very easy. He had the same attitude as me of preserving as much original fabric as possible even down to putting Georgian nails back in place, I love him for that. But he knew nothing about lime, so there's a lot of picking out of cement, still to do, as well as a full redeccy and the development of a small holding. The small holding idea is kind of changing as I realise I dislike growing vegetables, I fall in love with my animals, and I'd sooner have roses and ornamental lakes and follies than farming type things. The house goes very slowly as we just redecorate one room a year, taking it back to its bare bones, altering the wiring and lighting, fixing everything, restoring the woodwork, fireplaces and floors, and then having a go at some fairly elaborate decorative scheme. So far I've made a Georgian style Print Room, a music room, the red dining room, blue bedroom and we're now working on a tented Campaign room. Oh, and this summer saw the successful end of a real campaign to get it listed.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Hope Flyfisher doesn't mind me posting the link to this interesting thread, which I think really shows battle with how to get modern convenience (in the form of a kitchen extension) into a period building without ruining it:

http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13234

 

[Sonyaclegg]

Thanks for the link which was interesting to read. If buildings are to be preserved, lived in and loved then they need to evolve just like they have done in previous historical alterations. As long as what makes the building special is not lost, then I feel happy compromises can be found