CASE STUDY: MY FIRST RENOVATION PROJECT – PART 2 (SUBSIDENCE AND INTERNAL RENOVATION)

In my previous article I talked about the process I went through for acquiring 103 Hamilton Place, which included raising finance from others; known as ‘Other People’s Money’, a concept we now adopt for our larger developments.

In this article I’m going to talk about the actual work that took place to rectify the subsidence and renovate the internals. In an upcoming article I will share my experience building a timber framed extension. Throughout the post I’ve highlighted key lessons I learnt and these are summarised at the end.

Once I had taken ownership of Hamilton Place, I was raring to go so while still making arrangements with the building contractors, I got started on the work I could do myself such as clearing the overgrown garden, pulling up carpets and marking out the new internal layout.

ARRANGING THE TRADES & PLANNING THE WORK

Following the one month completion delay, the contractor who had advised me during the appraisal stage – and who I’d lined up to do the work – was no longer available. I was forced to look for someone else, but because market conditions were so buoyant, finding an alternative contractor was difficult. I hired one credible building firm but they pulled out six weeks later after dragging out a conversation about the schedule of work. I was back to stage 1. Luckily by this time the original contractor had become available so we finalised a quote and schedule of work, and work began on 10th November 2014.. I felt rushed to start my project as there had been delays acquiring it and I was also unfortunate that the demand for builders was so high at the time, I was struggling to get anybody to even quote, let alone do the work. I therefore proceeded with my only option.

Make sure you get at least 3x quotes for any building work and make sure the quotes are comparable. Builders provide quotes in all kinds of formats and include/exclude various elements. Be persistent until you get comparable quotes. This process alone will help you weed out bad builders. Irrespective of how long this process takes, you should persist until you are satisfied, I was too keen to just get started.

The first task was to carry out works at the front of the building to rectify the structure. At this stage I had a firm quote for removing the bay window, constructing a new foundation and rebuilding the bay window with new window frames and glazing. This work was shared 50:50 with the owner of the upstairs flat, as his flat was also affected and he would benefit from the uplift in value from remedial work. I also had a ‘rough’ quote for the internal work to level the floors, but nothing firmed up for the extension. This was my most valuable learning point from the entire build process and something I now often see other people not doing;

It’s easy to get pulled along with the excitement of it all, and builders are always keen to get going so they can keep their teams busy, but – as with any project – up-front planning is key.

The project was split into three distinct phases:

1. Structural work on the front bay window.
2. Internal renovation of the existing building; including levelling of floors.
3. Extension.

I was happy to proceed without a firm quote for the extension as this was a self-contained and optional piece of work. So far so good, however not having finalised drawings for the internal works was a mistake, which I’ll come to later.

THE WORKS

A) PHASE 1 – SUBSIDENCE: RECTIFYING THE STRUCTURE

The prevailing theory on the structural issues with the property was that it was built without proper foundations on soft ground, that had been put down to backfill an old quarry. Instead of proper foundations built off the hard ground below, large blocks of granite were put down and the building was laid down on those, as was normal in that period. As a result, it’s likely that all four external walls of the building sank together. This would explain why there was such a height difference between floorboards in the center and edge of the building, as the central partitioning wall was not bearing as much load as the external walls and therefore didn’t sink.

The bay window had subsided slightly more than the rest of the building. All the evidence I could gather, including input from various structural engineers and neighbours who’d lived in the street for years, concluded that the movement was historical and it was no longer an issue. The only way to know this conclusively would have been to measure any movement going forward, but that would have taken months, possibly years; we were convinced enough to proceed. Since there had been no actual risk to the integrity of the building, the work was really just aesthetic and helped recover value that had been lost as a result of concerns over the subsidence.

The instructions from the Structural Engineer were to build a ‘raft’ foundation, tied into the blocks that the existing building was sitting on. Despite the delays getting started, once there was a full team on site things moved ahead well.

The bay window was dismantled block by block using a crane and the raft foundation was installed, as per the engineer’s specification. It was checked by the engineer at key hold points throughout the process to ensure compliance with the specification. Meanwhile work internally to relevel the floors started in earnest.

B) PHASE 2 – RENOVATION OF EXISTING SPACE

STRIP OUT & INTEGRITY WORK

Work on the front bay window moved extremely quickly and some of the trades moved inside to start work on levelling the floors. When the first floorboards were cut, they jumped up about six inches due to the amount of tension that was stored in them from the movement of the building. Once the floorboards were all up it was evident how much the heavy, load bearing external walls had sunk in relation to the internal walls. We also found that the ‘dwarf walls’; the small, low level walls that support the joists had completely crumbled. This was the first cost that hadn’t been accounted for. This was also the point at which I realised how rudimentary buildings like these actually are.

This is not to take anything away from those in the building profession; you definitely need skilled workers to complete a successful renovation, my point is, buildings by design, are not complex structures. I am an Engineer by background and I am used to working on complex engineering projects so I was surprised to learn that there was no mystery to buildings; their structure and how they are put together. This was reassuring.

Underneath the floorboards there’s just dirt, nothing fancy. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I hadn’t really appreciated that a house like this is really just four walls, a floor raised off the ground and some internal finishes to provide insulation and a surface to paint/wallpaper.

REBUILD

Once the integrity work constructing new ‘dwarf walls’ and replacement of the joists had been completed, the rebuild could start. This was completed to meet modern building regulation standards with respect to sound and heat insulation. Glass wool was hung between the joists under the floorboards to provide heat insulation while high-density foam board was used between the wood framing on the walls, with plasterboard installed on top. Using plasterboard on the ceiling added a layer of sound insulation.

Working away for four weeks out of every seven meant that even though I was getting regular photo updates, every time I came back big steps forward had been made. I really enjoyed the feeling of coming home and seeing the next stage of progress.

LIVING ROOM / KITCHEN

The wall between the existing lounge and room 3 was removed to create an open plan space for the new living room / kitchen. The existing floor boards were Baltic Pine solid wood and fortunately most of them were reusable so these went back down. It saved money and also looked great.

I used a company called DIy-kitchen.com for my kitchen. They supply some of the high street suppliers so if you know what layout you want, /i advise going there and cutting out the middleman.

LOUNGE

BEDROOM & BATHROOM

The existing bedroom was so large that, by putting up a partition, it was still possible to carve off enough space for a main bathroom and still have a well-proportioned bedroom. This would eventually become the second bedroom.

Up until now the building contractors had been working without drawings. The architect was on the case, but the situation wasn’t ideal. For the front bay window, we had the Engineer’s specification to work from and it was also clear what needed to be done to the floors once the boards had been lifted. However, once the rebuild began, not having finalised drawings started to become an issue and we eventually became unstuck. I was working abroad but still trying to get my head around the building regulations for new bathrooms which dictate a certain amount of space for disabled access. When I learnt that the partition wall between the front bedroom and the new bathroom was in the wrong place (not leaving the required access – a miscommunication between the builder, the architect and myself,) I had to ask the builder to stop work until I was home and we could all agree the way forward together.

This was a major turning point for the project. After this, the momentum was lost and it never picked up again to the same level.

To keep his team busy, my builder deployed his workers to others sites and started taking on other projects. Without a full-time team of contractors on site, communication with my builder diminished.

To compound this, whilst the structural work on the front bay window had been completed, the windows still hadn’t been installed. I later learnt that part of the reason why my quote for the front bay window work was so reasonable was due to the low cost of the windows, but it transpired that the manufacturer my builder had planned to use had gone out of business. I ended up having to have new windows built from scratch, which took longer and cost more. To expedite this, I paid for them myself – and the builder and I shared the additional cost.

EXTERIOR WORK

As work on the interior continued, albeit at a slower pace, I would often get stuck into some of the external work myself. I would try my hand at anything that didn’t require a skilled trade, especially if it was outside as I really enjoy this type of work.

SHED REMOVAL – ASBESTOS

The shed was built onto the end of the kitchen and had an asbestos roof. There are professional companies that can remove and dispose of asbestos on your property, but you are also within your rights to do it yourself and your local council website usually has information and advice about it. You should wear all the right Personal Protective Equipment, including a full body suite and a face mask. The asbestos must be double wrapped in clear plastic and disposed of at the official location; there is often a charge for this.

KITCHEN STRIP OUT

The existing kitchen, located in what was originally the washroom, was to be replaced by the extension, although the design, plans and cost for this had not yet been decided. Keen as ever to get my hands dirty during my time off and with the help of a friend (who is now my business partner,) we took our wrecking bars and sledge hammers to the kitchen internals. Many trips to the dump later and we were just left with the structure. We stripped the slate tiles as they had some resale value, which we later sold via gumtree.

KITCHEN DEMOLITION

As it was summer, I was able to convince a bunch of friends to come help demolish the kitchen – the chance to build their muscles in return for pizza and ice creams. Various friends dropped in over the weekend to lend a hand and it was a really enjoyable process.

We set about pulling down the kitchen manually until my builder neighbour turned up with his mini-digger. That moved things forward significantly and all my friends and I had to do was clean up the rubble.

It’s hard to believe how much rubble and sand is left when a building like this is demolished. Buildings from 1900 were cemented using just lime and water and it took me days to clean up the mess. Gumtree to the rescue again. I advertised the lintels on Gumtree and was able to sell those. The remaining small bits of granite I advertised for free and a gentleman who was building his own house came and collected them over a series of days.

As the renovation work started nearing the end, I was spending more and more time preparing for the extension. By January 2016, the renovation was completed and the flat was painted and furnished. The oil price had dropped to $36, a 10-year low which heavily impacted the Aberdeen housing market. Combined with the cost escalations, this meant that all my likely profit from the value added had been eaten away, and I still hadn’t completed the extension.

I had a number of estate agents value the property as a fully-renovated one-bedroom flat and whilst the feedback on the style and finish was very positive, the value was estimated to be £220-250k, well below what I’d spent buying and renovating the property. However, with the renovation completed, I was now able to mortgage the property. I borrowed £130k against the property to pay back my debts, including the agreed interest, leaving a healthy 50% equity in the property.

LESSONS LEARNED

1. Get multiple quotes - I was unfortunate with the timing of my project as the Aberdeen market was busy with lots of people having work done, so getting builders to quote was difficult. That, compounded by the fact my completion was delayed and I was keen to start meant I went with the builder who was available. The schedule of work we had was very loose. I should have nailed down the drawings more accurately and used that to get multiple quotes. This process takes time, so start early.
2. Finalise all plans with drawings before you start - This is my biggest learning from the whole project. Take the time up front to decide exactly what you’re going to do. Get the input from a good architect and finalise the drawings. There will always be some changes and tweaks, but the more you can minimise these, the better. You can use the drawings to clearly articulate what is to be done, get accurate quotes and have something to refer to during the work.
3. A well-resourced team with clear intentions moves quickly – Don’t lose momentum - Good labours move fast once given clear instructions. Provide clean guidance, remove obstacles and get out of the way. If the job stops for an extended period, your labours will be deployed elsewhere. These guys are not on a salary, are paid weekly and will take whatever work will pay the bills.
4. Building work is basic - Unless you’re building a skyscraper or a grand design, buildings are on the whole basic. There’s something structural to keep it up and the weather out, there’s some wires for electrics, pipes for heating, insulation to retain heat and plasterboard to paint onto. However, having good tradesman is key managing multiple, conflicting work flows is where the skill is lies. A good builder and project manager will help with this on bigger projects.
5. Asbestos removal - Asbestos is category 1 carcinogen, and if the small fibres become loose they can be breathed in, which can lead to lung problems such as Asbestosis. There are a lot of companies around that will charge a small fortune for removing asbestos, but often people don’t realise that a lot of work relating to asbestos does not need a Licensed Contractor. To quote the HSE website “Most work on asbestos cement can be carried out without a licence providing workers have had appropriate information, instruction and training”. We removed the asbestos on the small outbuilding ourselves using the guidelines provided by the local council.
6. Demolition results in a surprising amount of mess - If you’re knocking down a building, especially an old one, where lime is used as a bonding material, there will be a LOT of waste and rubble. A Staggering amount. I just include this as this surprised me and I was clearing up for a good week after the fun bit of knocking down the outbuild was done and my friends disappeared.