How authentic do you keep renovation work? Whats the limit?

[Sabee]

Hi!

We are currently making a list of things to fix in our house (long list!). With the budget tight, it will be a matter of addressing things slowly. But thats fine!

My question is, when refurbishing an older house, victorian, edwardian etc, what would you spend money on to try to replicate original features and what would you overlook?

For example, we are looking to fix some of our guttering. Some of it is authentic (which is a bit rusty, needs attention) other parts of the house have black plastic guttering which needs to be replaced entirely.

The costings of plastic vs cast iron are vastly different!

So what things do you save on and what do you spend on?

My husband said maybe get cast iron guttering just for the front part (that is damaged and needs to be replaced) and replace the other parts with black pvc... as a compromise.

I dont think we can afford to keep everything authentic so I am conflicted.

And then theres the repointing... which ideally should be lime mortar? The house is a little over a hundred years old (so not hugely old, but still older) but this would be prohibitive to do in lime!

Just want your thoughts on this

Is it listed?

No, its just your average older property with character.

We live in a Victorian house but the guttering is mainly plastic; it’s not something you give a lot of thought unless it’s fallen off or leaking. We did have the roof replaced and used the older, good, tiles on the front and a cheaper equivalent on the back. Our house was not built to be fancy, so cheaper materials would have been used in construction anyway. I suspect that only you as the homeowner would know if you replaced the mortar with lime mortar rather than something modern, to be honest.

Knittedfairies thank you - yes, ours is mixed cast iron and part of it has been replaced with black plastic over the years - it is in need of repair so that is the reason I was thinking about what we should go for.

The cast iron guttering looks nice, even the brackets look nice (its not a fancy house) and the thought of having to put plastic there and take out the iron feels sad - although I dont think we could afford to replace with cast iron.

The lime mortar issue is more of trying to keep it 'breathable' - I know people do replace with normal mortar but I also read it can cause problems in the long run.

I guess a good compromise would be to keep the frontage as authentic as possible?

You can get plastic guttering that looks like it's cast iron - it's more than plastic but not as much as cast iron so could be a good compromise?

The breathability is mostly an issue for the ground floor. Higher up it shouldn't cause as much of a problem but non lime mortar can damage the stone if you have stone rather than brick.

Hi OP, are you planning on staying there, or making money ?
I think your DH is spot on, do the front guttering, plastic the back.
Reclamation yards are your friend.
I personally think, it's always a good thing to preserve properties, you certainly wouldn't lose your money.
Take your time, if you can afford to, don't worry about the pointing.

In the long run you will recover your investment in restoration when you sell. And it’s absolutely fine to use second hand!

oreosoreosoreos I will look into that! Ideally, our roofer guy should have talked through these options with us (we did raise we did want to keep it authentic as we could), so we will discuss this with him again.

Geneticsbunny it is just brick - most of the work is needed higher up, so maybe I can get away with it.

Sugarpiehoneyeye we are considering staying here at least 10 years (if our plans don't change!) we want to keep it as original as we can (out of principle and simply enjoying the process) but don't want to spend so much on it if its not a sensible choice as there are numerous other tasks to do as well.

user1499173618 I hope that would be the case!

Lime mortar allows the stone/brick to breathe. It could cause problems if there has always been lime mortar and you suddenly change for cement, you could trap moisture and in frost etc they could 'blow' and the front of the brick/stone could shear off.

You can definitely get guttering/downpipes that are plastic but look very realistic as cast iron.

It's always a compromise. Some builders will like the conformity of modern materials.
Our house is Edwardian. When we had an extension we had to compromise . We bought old tiles for the roof and tile hanging. We couldn't match the bricks which were imperial sized and their colour had faded . We bought modern bricks as close in colour as we could from a local brickyard but don't have them adjacent to the old ones. We also bought local dressed stone which is either mixed in with e siting or built not adjoining old wall.our new guttering is plastic. ( cost)