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Nice !! Fo use a phrase from my home town I bet he didn't know "if his ar*e was bored or punched" by the time you'd finished with him, 😁😁😁😁 (Don't you love it when a total prat who thinks he's clever gets his comeuppance,) Nigel My standard response to someone who claims to be bored is to ask whether they'd prefer to be punched, drilled, and countersunk. or reamed or broached 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 |
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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Hm, can it be, You enjoyed this?  Of course! Not only did I take control of the situation and steered it to the conclusion I wanted, I learnt a lot doing so. What’s not to like? |
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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Sometimes a verbal beating is remembered best..😊👍 Although a nice manual beating would also have been properly deserved by this type of person.😅 One thing I’ve learnt over the years is if you’re gunna choose a weapon to beat someone with, the law is probably the best one to choose, as you essentially win twice. Once legally and then again financially. Plus you get into less trouble doing it 😂 |
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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You’ll all be pleased to hear that it’s not the very last we’ll see of him/them on this thread, but their next feature instalment is a way away yet. With the house back solely in my control, thoughts turned to what to do next. Was I going to keep renting it out? I was a little undecided at this point, my mum rents a property out and tenants have a habit of being terrible people, especially in lower end properties. I figured that no matter what happened the house was going to need a serious decoke, so I figured whist I was here I may as well go round, assess the condition of the place fully, and remove anything that needed to go. Tbh I’d not really had a proper look at the house without it being full of junk and having someone else living it it, so although I new it’s layout I’d never really had time to fully appreciate its details. Everyone loves rooting round in old houses it seems, and I was as keen as anyone to see what I’d got myself in for. Thankfully the ‘nicotine lounge’ (the main front room downstairs) was entirely covered in a mix of wallpaper, polystyrene ceiling tiles, and hardboard wall cladding. This was great as I could just peel it all off and Chuck it all in the skip that was sat outside 3/4 full but wasnt being collected for two days 😬   A good sweep up and everything bagged, and this is actually a fairly large room. It always seemed a bit pokey but that was because Harold had at least twice as much furniture in here than the room required. It’s 17ft by 12ft. That stunning fireplace is the last discernible ‘home improvement’ to have happed to the house, I’m guessing in the ‘60s. It was also the last time this room was decorated!   It was at about this point I decided to spend a week up there sorting out as much as possible to fix the house up with a view to rerenting. So this so when the exciting discoveries started! First (with some help) I stripped all the wallpaper to see the condition of the walls beneath. Every room was fully wallpapered except the ceilings, although a lot of it had been there for so long you didn’t need a wallpaper stripper, it just peeled off once you find an edge. This was great as it removed the years of dirt and grime in one hit, even if it was a bit of a health hazard! But of the stuff that didn’t peel straight off, quite a lot of it was that stuff with a thin polystyrene backing on it for insulation/damp proofing though, which is a real sh1t to get off as it’s like sticker glue on it (I assume it was ‘self-adhesive’ rather than pasted on). The other downstairs front room was the most difficult in that it required actual steam for most of it. The ‘panelling’ round the bottom half of the room was old fashioned fibreboard nailed to tile lats. This is usually done as an attempt to hide damp, so I had a look what was going on behind it in the corner where it looked a bit blown. I was greeted by some absolutely out-fking-standing art deco wallpaper!    (And some cement tanking and a lot of trapped condensation). This would require further work. The fireplace in this room was old, but obviously not original as it was clear where it had been retrofitted to the surround. It was of a fairly standard Victorian pattern, but rotted away at the bottom from burning coke.  To make it usable it would need replacing really. Another thing on the list. One very notable feature though was the walls themselves. Other than a bit of patching in around the fireplace and a couple of mudded-over cables, there was t a single bit of gypsum plaster anywhere. It’s all lime plaster, which shows this house hasn’t anything major done to it for some considerable time. |
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Last Edit: Mar 3, 2023 23:03:19 GMT by Dez
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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After I’d cleared out all the wallpaper and skipped it, when sweeping up I noticed there was no hearth stone. It was just a single expanse of concrete that ran right up and into the fireplace opening. Looking at the rest I new this had to be a later addition, concrete was way too new for everything else going on in this room. so I had a poke around in the fire damaged and cracked area inside the fireplace. My suspicions were confirmed, I could see a bit of York stone under the concrete. So I got a hammer and chisel and went investigating 😂 Not only did i find a very nice and probably original to the house stone slab, I got to the edge of it and found some very nice, very old quarry tiles. They’re not glazed Victorian ones, they’re hand made ones nearly 2 inches thick, so they had to be really quite old.   Also, whilst tidying up outside finding anything and everything that could go in the free* skip, I found this down the back of the garage.  At first glance it’s just an old slate fireplace. It’s got many layers of paint on it and you’d expect it to be Victorian, as they made anything and everything out of slate. Except the proportions are very large for a Victorian fireplace, which would likely date it earlier. Fireplaces were huge at the start of the Georgian period and got progressively smaller through the Georgian and Victorian periods as fuel sources and fireplace technology changed. On closer Inspection the header has a black glass boss in the centre and is quite nicely engraved.  Although the corbels are quite simple, they’re nicely done.  The real interesting thing is this. The mantle isn’t slate. It’s crinoid marble. Now of you know anything about this stuff, you’ll know of it’s old it’s rare. These days you can get modern imports from Italy, but historically it only came from one place in England, hence its other name- Derbyshire fossil. To find this in an obviously old context meant it was something a bit special. The quarry this has to have come from was originally opened for the building of chatsworth house in the 1830s, so it’s a status product, usually the reserve of stately Homes and particularly lavish townhouses. Even by buying a modestly sized and simply cut piece like this, you were making a statement.  The next question is where did it come from and why was it chucked down the back of the garage forgotten about? I couldn’t see it having been brought here from Anywhere else, but it was a bit odd it hadn’t been disposed of either. I wonder? Some tape measure work determined it was exactly the same width as the chimney breast in the house, and assembled would sit exactly where the gypsum plaster patching-in around the ‘new’ fireplace stopped… |
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........the plot thickens!........
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braaap
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,750
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Nice gesture of those molluscs not to smash it to pieces.
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logicaluk
Posted a lot
Every days a school day round here
Posts: 1,373
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Wow, what a nice find
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It’s grim up north. ballbagbagins
@ballbagbagins
Club Retro Rides Member 164
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That looks exactly the same as the fireplace I fitted in my house recently. Good find as my modern copy was £1200.
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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........the plot thickens!........ We’re barely at a medium consistency yet😂 There’s lots more discoveries to come… |
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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Nice gesture of those molluscs not to smash it to pieces. They didn’t know about it or they probably would have! Technically it was on another property at that point though. |
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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That looks exactly the same as the fireplace I fitted in my house recently. Good find as my modern copy was £1200. Yeah even now with foreign import materials to get costs down a bit they still pretty spendy. |
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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I decided that abomination of a fireplace was going to have to go for me to get my answer, but I figured I was doing the world a favour by destroying it. It was in rough condition anyway, more than half the tiles on it were damaged. And who would want to rent a house with that thing in it?  Some hammer time later. Bloody hell that’s a big fire hole! And it was entirely backfilled with bricks and rubble.  And some shovelling.  Suspicions confirmed. Fire hole is pretty much exactly same size as the surround. It was definitely going back on.  This first round of discoveries lead me to question a lot of things about this house though. Like it’s age and purpose. The valuation flippantly stated it as ‘probable 19th century’ which just didn’t ring true with the discoveries id made. I needed to do some research and educate myself further on some things before I dug further though. And as a last little exciting discovery, let’s see if you know what these are for. They’re not water pipes…   |
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jpr1977
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 658
Club RR Member Number: 18
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It’s grim up north. jpr1977
@jpr1977
Club Retro Rides Member 18
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Gas lighting...
My old house (1820's cottage) had the pipes everywhere with similar discrete pipework...., think it only turned over to electric in the 50's...
I'll have to try and find my old hard drive with the pics, i think i can top trump your fire place, with a 80's quarter-brick fire place, come tv/video faux oak beam anaglypta combo., that really was as terrible as it sounds...
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Last Edit: Mar 9, 2023 10:03:44 GMT by jpr1977
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This first round of discoveries lead me to question a lot of things about this house though. Like it’s age and purpose. The valuation flippantly stated it as ‘probable 19th century’ which just didn’t ring true with the discoveries id made. I needed to do some research and educate myself further on some things before I dug further though. Is there any evidence of the exterior being modernised or being given a new facade? In the village where I grew up, many of the old houses in the centre appear to be Georgian, with only a few older & timber framed ones. However most are all actually the same age as the older / timber framed buildings, but just had new facades added in the Georgian era to update them. Wondering if it might be a similar situation here? Looking forward to reading more, especially regarding any further period features that you uncover. |
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Been a while since I was in this thread, nicely caught up.
Seems Forest's Mother was right, Stupid is as stupid does.
Looking forward to seeing the renovations progress (I love renovating old house's as they always have something interesting hidden)
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Hi, Given the size of the fire hole do you think that there was a range in there? Because at that time most of the occupants would have cooked and lived in that room, plus the kitchen that was there in your memory was a rear extension to the property. The fireplace that you found was a fairly common alternative fixture for another room or house.
Colin
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thomfr
Part of things
Trying to assemble the Duett again..
Posts: 694
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Are the pipes gas pipes for light in the pre Edison area?
Thom
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73' Alfa Giulia Super
64' Volvo Duett
65' Volvo Duett
67' Volvo Amazon 123GT
09' Ford Focus 1.8
20' VW ID4
71' Benelli Motorella
65' Cyrus Speciaal
The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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Mar 22, 2023 20:41:29 GMT
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Gas lighting... My old house (1820's cottage) had the pipes everywhere with similar discrete pipework...., think it only turned over to electric in the 50's... I'll have to try and find my old hard drive with the pics, i think i can top trump your fire place, with a 80's quarter-brick fire place, come tv/video faux oak beam anaglypta combo., that really was as terrible as it sounds... That sounds truly awful, had changing rooms been round? 😂 |
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,790
Club RR Member Number: 34
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It’s grim up north. Dez
@dez
Club Retro Rides Member 34
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Mar 22, 2023 20:44:25 GMT
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This first round of discoveries lead me to question a lot of things about this house though. Like it’s age and purpose. The valuation flippantly stated it as ‘probable 19th century’ which just didn’t ring true with the discoveries id made. I needed to do some research and educate myself further on some things before I dug further though. Is there any evidence of the exterior being modernised or being given a new facade? In the village where I grew up, many of the old houses in the centre appear to be Georgian, with only a few older & timber framed ones. However most are all actually the same age as the older / timber framed buildings, but just had new facades added in the Georgian era to update them. Wondering if it might be a similar situation here? Looking forward to reading more, especially regarding any further period features that you uncover. I’ll come round to that, but the facade is ostensibly as intended. The pictures don’t give a great deal of scale, but the gutter height is only about 10ft. I’d describe it as ‘cottage’ dimensions but I’ll explain why that terminology would be wrong later. You’ll be pleased to hear there’s plenty more interesting period bits to appear yet though. |
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