Have name changed for this as my house history is known by so many friends that it would be outing.
in my 50’s I also fell in love with a historically important house, designed by a relatively famous architect and set in a beautiful location.
Newly widowed, I figured I should sell up and throw all my money and passion for old properties into saving this gorgeous rotting pile, preserving it for the future. It would be my forever home.
i knew quite a lot about the historical aspects of properties like this and worked for a charity focused on their preservation. I figured that what I didn’t know, I could talk to colleagues about and at least get pointed in the right direction to locate the necessary tradesmen etc.
WHAT A NIGHTMARE
Buying it was easy. The vendor accepted my relatively low offer and ran, chuckling, to his solicitor.
The surveyor charged his enormous fee to spend a day crawling round the building and sent me a 200 page report, waxing lyrical about my ‘Dragon Beams’, while ignoring the rotting floors (covered in old carpet), the rampant woodworm (it had an active 19 year old certificate he referred to), the rotting windows (well camoflaged by paint), the dangerous boiler (it was Summer and not working) etc. etc. He mentioned the Bats in passing, but not that there were two colonies, one of Horseshoe, and lightly tripped in the Ice House in the grounds, which I later discovered was on the Buildings at Risk register.
I read the report, had a wobble, but figured my passion would see me through.
Skip to 5 months later, winter, with rotten floor boards exposed, a non working boiler and ice on the inside of the windows.
The listing officer called again to insist that no I couldn’t fit the internal condensing flu needed to replace the boiler, because of the impact on the roof line. The boiler would have to move to my living room. No alternative.
She was followed by the Bat people, advising me that the only way to sort the woodworm would be to move the Bats temporarily, but not yet. That had to wait till February.
Then the house upped the ante. To a terrible rumbling one night the tank from the airing cupboard crashed through the floor to the kitchen below, knocking out several water pipes on the way. The plumber sucked his teeth. No point doing anything other than stopping the flooding water, until the Listing Officer agreed a resolution on the boiler.
The listing Officer called again and again and again,
This was the start of 10 years of sheer frustration, phenomenal cost and more grey hair than you could imagine. I could bore you all night with stories like this. Practically everything I touched cost quadruple the initial estimates and involved considerable hassle.
At the end of my journey, the house was saved and looked beautiful, but I had poured all my equity and love into something that left me tired and unable to manage the ongoing £20k a year plus, needed for just the most basic maintenance.
I now live in a tiny cottage. The sale of my vanity project nowhere near covered the costs of buying and renovating it and I will have a much, much, leaner old age as a result.
While I smile and feel proud of the house every time I drive past, I am mightily relieved I actually managed to sell it at the end of the work, that it is no longer my rotting pile to fund going forward.and that I never have to see the Listing Officer again.
OP please, please, listen to all the warnings you are receiving !!!