We live in a late Victorian brick terraced house. It's in good nick cosmetically and we would not be spending any money doing anything up, but there are some signs of damp issues that we don't want to ignore for too long so hoping to find out the best approach to tackle them.
The survey flagged concrete render as an issue that would likely be causing / in the future cause damp, though there are generally (with exception of the below) no signs of damp on the inside bar a couple of corners that could also be condensation damp. So while we would like to remove the render at some point it's not a mega rush (and would require some saving up / a loan).
The more urgent seeming issue is in rear extension of the house - there was a gutter here with no downpipe, which has now been fixed but clearly caused a fair amount of water to get into the walls. This is manifested in signs of damp on parts of the kitchen (ground floor) and bathroom (first floor) external walls. And most concerningly (I think? Or just because they're gross), we are now seeing a lot of woodlice in the first floor bathroom. This makes me wonder if there is one or more rotting floor joists in the bathroom as a result of all that water pouring in to the wall.
Neither of us has any DIY skills and we're fairly short on time also. From limited research / anecdote it sounds like a damp survey might cost £500 and tell us some of what we know already so I'm thinking rather than a survey the best course of action is to get someone who can (a) take up some flooring in the bathroom to identify if there is a problem / what it is; (b) quote to then fix said problem (I assume this might involve ripping up the whole bathroom if floor joists need repairs, which would be a pain as it's in good condition but may be unavoidable?)
Does this make sense? Would you go for some kind of damp specialist or just a regular builder? This is our first home and we haven't had to do any work so far so am really clueless...
Also, if the joists are rotten is there any point in replacing them if we're not going to take the render off anytime soon? Planning to get quotes for that also but I'm fairly confident we can't afford to do it all right now, and I don't want to leave the floor getting worse / possibly unsafe while we save up to do the render.
WWYD, in what order and with what kind of tradesmen / specialists?