Restoring/ refurbishing/ redecorating an Edwardian house

As it looks like BG is not coming back any time soon I'll start documenting my ongoing Big Project here.

It's been a work in progress for nearly two years now and I reckon there's at least another three to four years work ahead of me, just to get the bare bones finish done.

It's a two bedroom end of terrace house which was built in the Summer of 1905 and comprises two reception rooms, kitchen, bathroom, hallway, two bedrooms, front and rear gardens (the rear garden I refer to as the paddock as it's technically large enough that I could comfortably keep livestock on it) and a double garage.

Interestingly the garage is contemporary with the house, so probably started life as a backyard workshop or wash house or something in that line. I would imagine that somebody with the wealth to keep a horse and trap would be living somewhere more upmarket, which would discount the idea that it was a stable.

I'm not proposing to exhaustively review the works undertaken to date- the old thread ran to nudging 50 pages for a reason- but a quick precis before moving on is I think in order so that we can pick up where we left off.

~2020~
-Moved in in late February, by the time I had settled in and was in a position to start the project it was mid-March and then we all now what happened immediately afterward.
-The reality was in March/ April/ May that the DIY stores were shut except for 'emergency' tools and materials, you could buy (for example) radiator covers but not paint.
-I did manage to buy a couple of saws and shovels so, as nothing else could be done, I started in the front garden which at the time was a bit of an overgrown mess.
-Ripped out and cut down a very large thorn bush, three tall conifer trees, a couple of small conifer bushes and a dead tree stump.
-By the time this was done I could at least get paint again so I repainted the sitting room.
-I found the original Ruabon quarry tile floor in the hallway was still insitu, so I spent a lot of time uncovering this (someone had decided to cover up authentic 1900s material with cheap vaguely Vicwardian floor tiles) and cleaning it up.
-I started stripping down the hallway and found that the plaster was completely life-expired, so that had to replaced.
-I took the carpet off the staircase and stained the timber.
-I had the guttering around the garage and the rear of the house replaced.
This took, all told, from about the March to the October of 2020 and by the end of that I'd managed to roughly lick the front garden into some semblance of an order, redecorate the sitting room and get the hallway looking decent, at least from the front door to the foot of the stairs.

~2021~
-I picked up where I left off and in the January I had the top half of the hallway replastered, the January and February I largely spent finishing the hallway.
-I had the guttering around the front of the house replaced, also some small areas of the roof locally re-tiled.
-New front and back doors
-New sash windows to the front of the house
-Dealt with a damp problem in the dining room
-Installed a new access to the roofspace so that you can't fall from top to bottom of the house.
-I broke out a lot of slabs and concrete to the patio in the paddock to bring the ground level slightly lower as it was just about level with the damp proof course and I thought that was part of the issue with the damp. It wasn't, but it was still a good worthwhile thing to have done.

So the bits I have done as of December 2021;





The sitting room, as it was when I moved in.



And the same room now.





The front garden, as it was.



And- not as it as now, but about five or six months ago before a growing season. There's more green in the borders now.



The hallway before I uncovered the original tiles and took out the crumbling plaster.







And again, after a lot of work.

Great photos! looks like a lot has been done, both on here and at your house!

Nice recap of work done, good luck in 2022 and please do keep the updates coming.

Thank you.

Plans for 2022- well the problem with 2021 was that the work I did was expensive (but necessary). Also, because it was necessary, it ended up being in the nature of 'a bit here and a bit there' and consequently once the budget was gone and my patience was exhausted, there was nothing really to show for it.
But having done that and got at least some of the major expensive bits done in one go, means that I can spend 2022 concentrating on just one or two things.

The first one- and I want to get this underway just so soon as the Christmas and New Years festivities are out of the way- is to have a wall built in the attic space. I had a proper ladder put into there last Summer, went up and found that the attic is basically a long open space that spans over at least me and my neighbour, and possibly (we couldn't see very far into the gloom) as far as four houses along the terrace. I'm not so much concerned about security- all my neighbours have said the same thing, 'we daren't go up in the loft because the ceilngs are so high and the hatch is right over the staircase' (which is why I had mine moved)- it's more the safety aspect. I don't want a fire three doors down to destroy my home. Alternatively, don't want a fire in my house to destroy three more.

The next bit- and this needs a bit of careful thought and planning- is to refurbish the dining room. This also serves as my home office, so a lot of the work will have to be planned in around holidays from my 9 to 5. I had to decamp the office into the sitting room for a week last Summer- and that didn't really work- and some of what I want to do might entail having to disconnect my internet and turn off the mains power, which isn't really conducive to working from home.

This is what it looked like when I moved in and other than having a damp patch on the wall under the window put right last Summer I've done nothing with it, other than obviously get some of my furniture in there.



Fake fireplace- it's a gas fire- it's never worked in the two years I've been here so this will be disconnected and thrown out. I want to have the flue cleaned up and 'restored'.



Kitchen door and a rather nice period-appropriate light fitting, the plan is to keep both of those.



Pretty awful plastic window, this will be replaced with a sash window. There's also a stone cill that has cracked right through that needs to be replaced, we filled the crack up with a silicon mastic last year but I'm taking the view that that's very much a temporary measure that will get it through this Winter but no more.

The plasterwork in there is suspect and I won't be surprised if it all needs to come down, I'm expecting at the very best that it will require at least reskimming. That can't be done at the moment because a radiator needs to be taken down to do the thing properly and there's no way I'm turning off the heating in there right now (December/ January)- like I said, home office and I spend most of my time at home in there.
No, heating will probably come off in about March, then I need to have the radiator taken down and the gas fire taken out and the gas pipe to the fireplace cut back and capped off. Then I can have the plasterer in, then I can get the window and the cill replaced (I'm not doing those until the plasterer is done because I don't want an expensive new window splattered with plaster...)
Then redecorate, have a new floor put in (I'm thinking of a wooden parquet floor rather than the pretty nasty laminate vinyl that's there at the moment), then put in a new radiator in time for when the heating needs to go back on (probably in the November).
Realistically I think I need to be saying the plasterer needs to be doing their work by Easter (when I'm planning to take a week off) and the flooring/ radiator in October (another week off) and everything I'll be doing myself- the redecorating bit- in weekends and snatched evenings here and there in between.

But the aim is that eventually I'll end up with a room that hopefully looks something a little like this.

Progress report. I've spoken with a builder today about getting the loft space walled off, they'll be coming around to have a look at what needs doing in the next few weeks. By the time this is built (say mid to late January for the builder to have a look at it, a few weeks to get the materials/ until he has space in his diary to do it, a few days to a week to actually build it), probably looking at early to mid February.

More Elisabeth Sonrel prints were bought, framed and now take pride of place in the entrance hallway.



It's quite difficult to get a good photo of this space as it's quite long and quite narrow.

Putting some prints up in the hallway has definitely improved the somewhat sparse feel of the space, which I was expecting anyway- it's one thing to redecorate a room, but then it takes time to get the homely lived-in feel- the last 5 or 10% of each little project takes a couple of years longer than the rest. It's the time needed to acquire the fixtures, fittings and furnishings to complete the look, and until there's a critical mass of those in place then necessarily it's only going to look half-finished.

Even with those now installed though it still looks a little blank, and I think I've identified another part of the issue which is the block mass of colour. Yes, the Edwardian fashion was for lighter tones and a step away from the mid-Victorian mores of masses and masses of dark colours and detailing, but that was still present. Put another way, what was avant-garde for the 1880s was passing as normal by the late 1890s/ 1900s.

Now that gives me not only another line of enquiry when I'm looking for inspiration for my own work but it also gives me an idea I could put to use straight away. I've shown what I want to do in the dining room and although I could get reproduction wallpapers to achieve that look, I don't have the money to buy them. They retail for £50 a roll upwards. Even if I did have that sort of money, it would grieve me to pay it because there's so much else that I think it would be more effectively spent on- or saved for the 2023/ 24/ 25 programmes. The alternative to wallpapering is to stencil, which I can imagine would take... a very long time. I don't mind that (he says right now), this has always been more a marathon than a sprint, but before I launch into potentially treating a whole room I think it would be a good idea to trial it first.

Which brings me back to my comments on the hallway. Looking again at some colour prints in an Edwardian decor book, yes there are the large blocks of light colour but there are also stencilled patterns and borders. I wonder if something like a border taken around the entrance hallway would make it a little less stark.

I think we discussed before on BG, but a good way to divide a space is a picture or dado rail, giving 2 or 3 distinct areas for different colours/ wallpaper/ wainscotting options.

If I remember the problem was ending it at the staircase so it didn't look odd as you didn't want to carry on up the stairs and landing area.

If you could do that to your satisfaction you could use the front door colour and let it flow in various shades into the hallway using the prints as a contrast.

Yes, I remember a bit of a discussion (was it in 2020 or last year?) with the hallway decor.

I think really the key with it is to get something that can logically end (or begin) at the archway. The archway has a structural purpose in that it is supporting a wall above, but also an architectural purpose in dividing the hallway into a 'public' area (the corridor from it to the front door) and a 'private' area (the circulation space for the house behind it).

Then you've got two contrasting spaces that meet at the arch; one the narrow entrance passage, which is of 'normal' height (normal for the ground floor at any rate) and the other the staircase, which is not only massively tall but opens out much wider at first floor level.

The open nature of the arch of course means that any decoration treatment (or at least the basis of it) has to be common to both areas. Unlike a doorway, I can't have one wall colour in front of the arch and another behind it- the joint between the two would look very odd.

So anything that is done upstairs, if brought down the staircase, really has to be taken to the front door. Vice versa anything that is done in the entrance passage has to be taken up the staircase, unless it's at a level where the arch can block it.

Now, for the staircase and back hallway the final design is still being roughed out, I know I had a few ideas for dado or picture rails last year but not the money, maybe this year we'll see some progress on that.

For the entrance corridor though I've been having a go this afternoon at something that will just finish it off...

Just before Christmas I bought a reprint of a stencil catalogue from 1918, now as I mentioned this morning I've recently been having a look through my Edwardian house picture books again and I've noticed how stencilled paint details feature, so I started to think about maybe having a stencilled frieze below the cornice- at that level it can pass across the top of the arch so it has a logical route just around the entrance corridor without needing to consider how to carry it on up the staircase.

So I had a look in the catalogue and I found one that I thought would suit, and I copied it out. Then I found that it wouldn't scale nicely to suit the run lengths in the hall (975mm one one wall and 3700-some-odd on the other two), so I drew a design of my own based heavily upon the one in the book.



This was just on detail paper, so it was quite flimsy and any idea of actually using it as the stencil quickly died a death. So I copied it out onto a piece of thick card, the back of a notepad.



This took a lot of heavy work with a stanley knife to cut it out. I suspect use of a scalpel would have resulted just in a broken blade. Then it was off to the local DIY store and I picked up a couple of tester pots in likely colours.



And ultimately after a few hours with a paintbrush this was the result.

I reckon I've done probably in the region of a fifth of the work, which is enough really to start drawing some conclusions. It's certainly effective and I think it looks really good, but it's a lot of effort and it is time-consuming. I'm thinking of using this technique when redecorating the dining room and I've already said that there are time constraints for that project- two hours to do one corner of a frieze doesn't bode well for the time necessary to stencil a whole room. I think it might be necessary to aim just to get the dining room in the base colour I have in mind and then do the stencilling in odd spare time here and there in the next few years.

Well I got the stenciling completed- over the course of the week- and this is the result.





It's going to need a second coat- freehand- to get the full effect, and then if I get some smaller brushes and some more paints I can work it up with details and highlights and whatnot- but I'm not decided on this extra work yet.

It looks good, I'm certainly pleased with it. Just not sure it's the right technique to use for an entire room floor to picture rail.

James Harrison wrote:Well I got the stenciling completed- over the course of the week- and this is the result.





It's going to need a second coat- freehand- to get the full effect, and then if I get some smaller brushes and some more paints I can work it up with details and highlights and whatnot- but I'm not decided on this extra work yet.

It looks good, I'm certainly pleased with it. Just not sure it's the right technique to use for an entire room floor to picture rail.

That is superb work! Definitely warmed up the hallway.

James Harrison wrote:It looks good, I'm certainly pleased with it.  Just not sure it's the right technique to use for an entire room floor to picture rail.  

I agree, on both counts.

Thank you both.

Well, the whole point of my effort in the hallway was as a small-scale experiment before launching into the dining room later this year, and I think off the back of it I can draw a few conclusions.

1. Yes, stenciling can give a good result.
2. Yes, it is a viable method, provided you have the time to see it through.
3. It's better suited to large, simple, bold patterns.
4. The stencil needs to be in a decently robust material- mine I cut in 4mm thick cardboard, which was hard work to deal with and even then by the time I was finishing up it was showing signs of distress near the edges.
5. You can create multi-coloured patterns or motifs with it- unlike say printing- but the more colours used the longer the process takes.
6. Paint caked into the corners of the stencil and then allowed to dry tends to pull at the paint already on the wall- so if I were to do it again I'd probably use only one or two colours to get the stencil on, used and off again that bit quicker to avoid this.
7. Accurately placing a small stencil on a large wall to create a repeating pattern takes a fair bit of luck and judgement. You can't notice it too much, but the gaps between the repeats vary. There's a limit to the length of wall which you can look at and decently judge where the stencil should be placed for a regular pattern.
8. You can't expect to do a large amount at any one time. I was finding six or seven uses of the stencil could easily take an hour.
9. The paint needs two or three coats to give a decent even finish. I now find myself with a follow-on task of retouching the pattern freehand to achieve this.
10. Yes, I would do this again- but I wouldn't use the technique to do a whole room.

James Harrison wrote:Thank you both.  

Well, the whole point of my effort in the hallway was as a small-scale experiment before launching into the dining room later this year, and I think off the back of it I can draw a few conclusions.  

1. Yes, stenciling can give a good result.
2. Yes, it is a viable method, provided you have the time to see it through.
3. It's better suited to large, simple, bold patterns.  
4. The stencil needs to be in a decently robust material- mine I cut in 4mm thick cardboard, which was hard work to deal with and even then by the time I was finishing up it was showing signs of distress near the edges.  
5. You can create multi-coloured patterns or motifs with it- unlike say printing- but the more colours used the longer the process takes.  
6. Paint caked into the corners of the stencil and then allowed to dry tends to pull at the paint already on the wall- so if I were to do it again I'd probably use only one or two colours to get the stencil on, used and off again that bit quicker to avoid this.  
7. Accurately placing a small stencil on a large wall to create a repeating pattern takes a fair bit of luck and judgement.  You can't notice it too much, but the gaps between the repeats vary.  There's a limit to the length of wall which you can look at and decently judge where the stencil should be placed for a regular pattern.  
8. You can't expect to do a large amount at any one time.  I was finding six or seven uses of the stencil could easily take an hour.  
9. The paint needs two or three coats to give a decent even finish.  I now find myself with a follow-on task of retouching the pattern freehand to achieve this.  
10. Yes, I would do this again- but I wouldn't use the technique to do a whole room.  

I've used stencils for walls, but they were made out of a thin, smooth, flexible plastic stuff that doesn't die. I would forego the cardboard and buy some cheap, plastic table mats and cut the stencil out of that. Shiny side against the wall.

That would be something worthwhile further investigation, perhaps allied with using a sillhouette cutter rather than relying upon brute force and a stanley knife.