Do the good things about this house outweigh the (many) bad things?

[LadyCroissantAuBeurre]

Moved into this Victorian terraced house over a year ago and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that it almost caused me to have a complete mental collapse*.

*We found two massive leaks when we finally figured out how to turn the water on, the floor by the front door collapsed while the removal men were carrying our fridge in and we soon realised the neither the boiler nor the oven were working. And this was just Day One!

HOWEVER, the good things about this house are really good... so I'm finding it difficult to decide between staying and fully committing to doing the place up or just cutting our losses and trying to find somewhere else (although that of course would very much hinge on someone else being silly enough to buy this place...).

Here is a list of the good, the bad and the downright bizarre (yes, I am attempting to outsource this decision - please help).

The Good

• The location (it absolutely could not be more perfect for us)
• The number and size of the rooms, particularly the really decent-sized kitchen which means we can have a kitchen table
• Two bathrooms, one of which is upstairs (not always a given in this kind of house)
• The size of the garden (and the general vibe back there)
• Loads of natural light throughout the house / really nice 'feel'
• The fact that it's an old house (pretty much all the original features have been ripped out when it was 'renovated' but, if we decide to stay, we can always add stuff back in)
• The ground floor layout means that we could easily live downstairs when we get older if going upstairs starts to prove difficult (hopefully that's many decades away but we're the type of people who like to plan ahead)
• It now has a decent, functioning roof (which we know as we spent a lot of money sorting this out in the first few months of living here...)
• Extension / loft conversion potential should we ever be mad enough to consider this.

The Bad

• There are areas of damp, some of which (we think) we know the reasons* *for and others we can only anxiously guess at (damp proof surveyor was very little use and this is such a contentious issue that it's hard to know whose advice to trust)
• The whole building is covered in concrete render (which - naturally - we didn't realise was a potential issue until we'd moved in and started googling 'nightmare Victorian houses'). I worry that if we get someone in to remove this, they're going to discover that the bricks behind it are unsalvageable.
• Whoever renovated this place was obsessed with concrete. There's so much concrete in the side alley way that someone has dug out a load of it to free the air brick (thus providing a convenient 'slide' for rainwater to get in...). The garden is several layers of concrete deep and raised above the level of our neighbours' gardens. Sometimes I worry there are bodies under there...
• Some of the floorboards feel/sound incredibly dodgy. I know I'm* *still affected by the small matter of the HALLWAY FLOOR COLLAPSING WITHIN MINUTES OF US MOVING IN but I can't shake the fear that all the dodgy areas of floor in the house are just teetering on the brink of full or partial collapse. I know lots of old houses have uneven floors but I really worry that ours are all rotten.
• The downstairs bathroom is a small, single story extension on the back of the house that would have come under permitted development. There are no building control records for it and we got no info from the seller (probate). I worry that the huge amount of concrete back there and the raised ground level is all down to this extension - judging by the 'work' done on the rest of the house, I don't trust that this was built correctly / within regulations. Sometimes I wonder if it's only all that concrete that's holding it up...

The Downright Bizzare

• Two windows, covered by plasterboard so you can only see them from the outside. WHY?
• A weird smell emanating from the understairs cupboard. But only sometimes. Other times it's fine. This doesn't appear to be caused by anything in particular (e.g. when it rains). Fills me with absolute, irrational dread when it happens.

I'm probably missing some other stuff <cry-laughs hysterically> but hopefully you get the gist. WWYD in my situation? I'm finding it hard to commit to further investigations or works when I'm still undecided.

Our house is like the money pit, 7 years later we are still plowing money and stress in, however I've never felt more at home somewhere. When we were viewing I walked in and felt 'home'.
Stay. Make it your own. Unless you feel uneasy there- then move.

I think in your place I'd stay and try to deal with one problem per year, in some sort of sensible sequence. Did you have an L3 survey done, and if so did it give indications of what should be dealt with first? Perhaps getting in a chartered surveyor or structural engineer would help to work out a schedule.

Create a GANTT chart and tackle the jobs one by one. You can improve most of your list there, but you need to plan it out carefully so you aren't going back on yourself as it were (i.e., fixing the floorboards to only have to rip them up again to sort a dripping pipe or something similar).

Your list of pros is an excellent one, and worth keeping going in improving the house over time to get it how you want and need it.

Two things….

The Good

• The location (it absolutely could not be more perfect for us)

This is the one major thing that you can never change about a home, and so should really be the driving factor in your decision.

However…how much money have you got? Cos it sounds like all the things you can change are going to cost a fortune.

the concrete is probably the root of most of your problems, but also difficult, messy and expensive to rectify.

old houses often have damp, and sometimes you just have to manage it and live with it. if your roof, gutters and down pipes are in good nick that is a bonus. if you have a ground level which is higher on the outside than in, this is another common cause of damp. easy to deal with if it is soil, far harder if it is concrete.

water finding its way through cracks in the render and getting trapped behind (as it's concrete so it can't go backwards, must go forwards) is another common cause of damp, and again difficult and expensive to rectify because of the concrete.

we have the second and third issues, can't afford to do anything about it so just have to live with it, it's very common and your house won't suddenly collapse, but the damage will be incremental and ongoing

This sounds just like our house, Solid, period, great location, but like you we uncovered loads of issues which despite throwing money at them have not all been fully fixed.

We’ve decided it’s not our final home, and we know we’ll have to take a lower than market value offer when we sell. But for now, until the kids don’t need to be near everything we have close by, we will stay and make superficial improvements. My kids are teens though, there is light at the end of the tunnel and we will have pretty much paid the mortgage off when we’ll move in 5 years ish so can afford to take a bit less money for it.

I think, as others have said, you should stay and plod through the issues and not stress about stuff that’s insurmountable. The pros probably outweigh the cons!!

I think the pros have more ‘weight’ so I would commit to staying and making it my dream forever home.

It sounds like a hell of a lot of the problems are going to be all connected. If you've had a leaking roof letting water into the structure, that'll increase the humidity levels inside, which could create condensation which might then cause damp in slightly unexpected places - especially if you've got concrete render preventing the structure from breathing. Similarly, if the concrete outside is redirecting rainfall towards your building and preventing the structure breathing, that's also going to lead to dampness inside. Obviously there is a chance that your floorboards are rotten if there's been a lot of damp in the building and it's worth checking sooner rather than later - but if you fix the damp, then that stuff is all also fixable. Personally, I would start by fixing the cause, then worry about the symptoms. You've done the roof, that's good, I'd get that render off next. Assuming the other houses in your road aren't rendered and their bricks are in good condition , it's most likely it was put on as a modernisation thing in the past - like those people turning their houses into grey blocks nowadays - so won't be hiding anything shocking - just needs to be done properly so no damage is caused in the removal.

I wouldn't worry too much about the extension - I'm assuming it was done a while ago if this is probate and probably predates the need for modern building regs. If it seems structurally sound, don't let the lack of paperwork both you.

The understairs cupboard and the concrete garden do smack of buried bodies though - have to agree with you there. Possibly the boarded up windows were from when victims were chained up?

I assume from the surveyors report that you must have got it on the cheap and were well aware of the issues before you bought it ?

So the stuff you are having to deal with is not exactly unexpected ?

We paid for a full survey but the surveyor didn't mention anything about the render being a potential issue or the air bricks or the ground level. Said nothing about the roof (we now know it would have been obvious if he'd bothered looking in the loft). He did say there was damp in the kitchen but we weren't surprised to see this in an old building (our previous place had had some damp issues so we were probably a bit too blasé about this). He actually made a point of saying 'the floor feels solid' which I find retrospectively hilarious. Devoted quite a lot of his report to trying to persuade us to use his company's 'design service' to plan an extension...

So no, we didn't expect any of it (apart from what looked to be a small amount of localised damp just in the kitchen).

If we'd wanted a project house, we would have bought a project house. This house was very much pretending not to be a project* *house.

Sadly the L3 survey didn't tell us much of anything and we didn't have the knowledge (that we now have) to realise this. Getting in a structural engineer sounds like a good plan - thanks!

Ha! Finally a realistic explanation for those boarded up windows - thanks @Tupster 😁

OP,

Location. Trumps everything else. Everything is fixable, another's have said concrete is probably a major factor in the damage based to the floorboards via damp.

Take your time to make it yours, unearth those bodies and enjoy your victorian home!

Heyyy, I also bought Victorian Disaster House, except if I told you mine was worse than yours you wouldn't believe me!

A year on, it's starting to feel like mine and the worst of the nightmares are (TOUCH WOOD) getting solved. I hadn't planned on major reno at all but it forced itself upon me.

I don't have the dilemma you have, though, as I can never afford to move again! Every time something else costs a grand to fix I tell myself it needed doing and I DO have a great location....

@LividSummers oh wow - worse? Really?! Poor you (although I am now extremely curious...).

I feel like we need a Victorian Disaster House support group!

Selling and buying would likely cost £25,000.

That’s a lot of money that could be spent rectifying your current house .

The problems seem overwhelming, but honestly, the nain impression I have from your post is just how much you love your house.
My victorian house is likewise shabby, with creaking floorboards, damp patches, and the like, and yes, when the electrics trip yet again or the miner Bees visit our sandstone blocks and carve out their little homes, costing us 3k, I cry and tell it I hate it, but truly, it would break my heart to lock the rickety front door for the last time.
Would it break your heart? Or are you ready to leave?

It doesn’t sound that bad. Get the concrete in the side return dug out and see what you find. The rest of the house will thank you for it.

Join Your Old House UK - Repair And Conservation on FB, the experts on there are fantastic.
We bought a patched-over damp Edwardian money pit 20 years ago and we’re still working on it 🤦‍♀️ BUT we took bad advice at the start and had a modern damp course put in, which added to the problems.
DS fell through the kitchen floor once (he was ok) and I do regard untouched floor areas with suspicion since. Nearly ended up with the bath in the dining room too, but had the bathroom refurbished in the nick of time.
We did have a surveyor in just before Covid and he started with low level solutions like new airbricks and removing the plaster in the living room, letting it dry out etc. I suspect we need the full concrete removed, windows replaced not with foam-held PVC, move out for full rewire, all singing and dancing refurb now though. I have a great fondness for this house, even though it has driven me to tears at times!

I'd go to Heritage House's website for advice about damp.

🙄🙄🙄

I was also going to recommend the Facebook group Your old house - conservation and repair. There are a load of pretty obvious likely causes of your damp, so in theory, it sounds like you might well be able to sort that. The Facebook group has loads and loads of posts you can search on dealing with damp in Victorian houses and you can posts photos /questions about your particular issues and get expert advice.

Spoiler - DO NOT get injected damp proofing, whatever you do!

That's a very good point.

And - oh God - moving was so stressful.

I'm not sure if it would break my heart but I do think I would be gutted that we didn't get to do it up and see the finished result (especially the garden, which I'm obsessed with - despite all the concrete and the giant hogweed and the broken down fences...).

I had a look on Rightmove a few days ago but even the really expensive places near here weren't as perfect for us as this house is (in terms of location, layout, etc). If we'd got the house we thought we were buying (i.e. not a project house), I would be happily expecting to live here for the rest of my life and it wouldn't even cross my mind to move.

My main concern with it all is that something will come to light that is too expensive for us to fix. I worry a lot about 'throwing good money after bad', getting a few years down the line and saying 'why didn't we just move?'. But I appreciate that expecting to know the exact outcome of choices you make years down the line is magical thinking.

Oh my gosh @MorriganManor, your poor DS falling through the kitchen floor! Glad he was OK and also that your bath didn't fall into your dining room.

Thanks for the FB tip!