My own house, back to brick, Scawsby

The job

This one's mine. I bought this house in Scawsby as a rental and took it back to brick, room by room, on evenings and weekends while I was still working a forty-hour week. Start to finish it ran from August to the fourth of December. It's rented out now.

It's put about £50,000 on what the house is worth, and it hasn't cost anywhere near that in materials, because the labour in it is mine. I'll say now that I had plenty of help from friends and family on the grim jobs — stripping wallpaper, filling skips — and I'd have been a lot longer without them. Every trade in it is mine. It's the house on the About page, and it's the reason I know what I'm talking about when I tell a customer what a full renovation actually involves: I've done every trade in it on my own house first.

What I did

Kitchen. Stripped out completely, floor levelled, replastered, new units and worktop, island in, tiled, grey LVT throughout.

Bathroom and toilet. They were two separate rooms. I reconfigured the layout and knocked them into one proper bathroom. Walls down, new stud walls, new waste pipes, an extractor put in where there'd never been one, ceiling reboarded and the joists planed level first, the whole lot tanked, then tiled floor to ceiling and fitted out.

Bedroom. Stripped, replastered, redecorated.

Pantry. I built the units myself. Every wall tanked, insulated, plasterboarded and skimmed, so it's a dry, warm storage room rather than the cold cupboard it was.

Landing. New doors throughout, new banister, carpets, and a large cupboard built into where the old boiler used to sit.

Garden. Heavily overgrown when I got the keys. Cleared right back, levelled, 38 linear metres of new fence, new turf, and every windowsill on the house renovated while I was outside anyway.

What was awkward

The water main. The original lead pipe had corroded. That meant a new main run in before anything else could be signed off as finished, which is not the job you want to find at the start of a renovation, and it's exactly the kind of thing that doesn't show up on a viewing.

Asbestos floor tiles. Common in houses of this age and nothing to panic about, but they get identified and dealt with properly rather than ripped up with a bar and a bin bag. If I find them in your house I'll tell you what they are and what has to happen, rather than quietly covering them over.

Every floor needed levelling. Not one room was flat. That's a whole stage of work most quotes don't mention, and it's the difference between LVT that looks poured on and LVT that telegraphs every dip in the boards underneath.

The window reveals. The brickwork behind them had collapsed. Each reveal had to be built back out in bonding before plastering, which is slow and completely invisible in the finished photos.

What I'd do differently

The bathroom's tiled floor to ceiling in 600×300s. It's flat and it's straight and I'm happy with it, but that many joints in a small room is a lot of setting out and a lot of cuts for the look you get back. If I used those tiles again I'd go large format, or half height with paint above. I'd rather tell you that than pretend every decision I've ever made was the right one.

Cost and time

August to the fourth of December, evenings and weekends, around a full-time job. About £50,000 added to the value of the house for a materials bill nothing like that figure. That gap is the labour, and the trade labour in it is the same labour you're buying if you get me in. Send me photos of yours and I'll cost it properly against your own timescale.