Where it all started...our renovation story

lifeslittlething
Nov 3, 2016
2 min read

StartFragment

We purchased our beautiful Victorian era cottage just over 8 years ago. At the time, it seemed almost perfect - a 3 bedroom home in a great location in seemingly good condition.

The reason we fell in love with this particular home was because despite its age, it still had many of the original features such as baltic pine floors, ceiling roses, ornate cornices, fireplaces and even some of the doors! True, this meant not everything in the house worked perfectly - some of the doors would get stuck when the weather was damp, we had a few creaky floorboards etc. but on the whole it seemed to be a sturdy and cosy home.

After living there for about 4 years, inclement weather resulted in the rear extension of our house being completely flooded. This would have been ok except that further investigation revealed that we actually had a severe rising damp issue caused by a combination of poor workmanship (mostly this) and a lot of rainy seasons in Melbourne (partly this). The first clue was during the flood clean up, when while mopping up the floor my husband’s foot went straight through the timber boards leaving a gaping hole in our living room! From here, we discovered a whole host of other issues with the house; rotting timber stumps, borers in the floorboards, issues with the chimney and the list goes on!

For a while, we covered up the hole in the floor with a bit of timber and sticky tape from Bunnings, but after talking to building inspectors, damp experts and construction companies about how to make our cottage safe, it was clear that it would need a lot more than just a patch up job. So after about a year of keeping visitors and furniture away from the 'damp and dangerous' areas, we made the heartbreaking decision to pretty much gut the entire house with a massive renovation project in order to address the damp and future-proof the home from having this issue again in the future.

Once we made the decision to renovate, well that's where the real fun begins!