Rp0thejester wrote: 12 Sep 2023, 18:01
Matt, why are you always doing dump runs on a Sunday? Are you slowly demolishing someone's house?
Ah there's the question. About, gosh! 13 years ago we got the keys to our first house, a 1929 semi in sunny Leyland. Unfortunately it coincided near perfectly with having to work at the other end of the country 4 days a week.
House needed "a little modernisation" in that it basically hadn't been touched since the 1970's. Wood chip wallpaper on every wall and most ceilings, polystyrene ceiling tiles on the rest.
We then set to knocking it into shape with an ever increasing job list. Top tip: woodchip wallpaper was generally popular as covered up crap plaster fit for nothing else! So wallpaper scraping led to knocking plaster off.
So all external walls insulated internally, then plasterboard and re plastered. Rewired and new heating system at same time. Did almost everything we could ourselves pretty much every hour when not 200 miles away or asleep!
Just about 2 years till it was habitable upstairs (comfortably so, we didn't want to be completely immersed in the grime and dust). Downstairs in contrast still bare brick, no ceilings!
Carried on and finished off. Comfortable and happy with our lot.
Then next door (the other half of our semi) was first vacant then eventually put up for sale.
So partly as we knew what it would likely need doing with it (i.e. everything, same as ours had!) And partly as fearful we could end up with an inconsiderate new neighbour knocking the house next door into shape whilst we were trying to get newborn to sleep - we hatched a plan.
Long story short, I'm doing all the same jobs I did a decade ago, again! Quite a bit slower than last time as fitting in around two little boys.
So currently in the bashing plaster off,ceilings down stage. Ceilings down in a house old enough to have had a few decades of coal soot deposited on top of the ceilings = one of the dirtiest jobs.
Plan initially was just fix it (then rent it out or sell it) but since then have decided it's a load of work not to then get any benefit from - so intent to create one big house and it'll have everything we could need for two you boys to grow into full grown (stroppy teenagers, then hopefully leave that behind!) Men over the next couple of decades.

- Glutton for punishment
I think other folks go on holiday, watch TV / football etc etc, but that's not really me!
Thankfully that's not really my lovely wife's favourite things either, so arguably we're both as daft as one another - certainly made for one another for definite!
