100 year Old House

joeglum

Hello all,

We're thinking of buying a 3 bed terraced old house circa 1300 sq ft..

The engineer said it needs to be dry lined and treated for minor woodworm but apart from that it's sound enough.

The wiring has been done recently.

The dry lining / plastering is what concerns me, I've had wildly differing estimates for the work.

Has anyone experience of this and or advice on it.

Greatly appreciate any replies.

antoinolachtnai

I don't know the details, but for an old house, it really just depends.

First thing, I would be more worried about the woodworm, even minor woodworm, than the dry-lining part. Wood worm, rot and all those evil things are the big enemy.

How much the dry-lining/plastering will cost just depends on whether you do absolutely everything or just the bad bits, how it is done and to what standard.

The house is unlikely to fall down for lack of dry-lining, it's cosmetics and possibly insulation. It's a matter of what you can live with as much as anything else.

I am assuming that your engineer is not the sort of fellow who would suggest dry-lining the walls just to cover up serious issues like dampness. Obviously this is not a good idea.

My own idea would be to do the minimum amount of work required, but to do everything you do actually do as well as you can.

My engineer told me that a lot of my plaster was 'dead' and needed replacing when I bought my current house eight years ago. He was basically right. But I just dealt with the trouble areas. I will do the rest at some stage when there is other work going on. There's no point tearing the place up just to do it.

The Hill Billy

antoinolachtnai wrote:

First thing, I would be more worried about the woodworm, even minor woodworm, than the dry-lining part....

...I am assuming that your engineer is not the sort of fellow who would suggest dry-lining the walls just to cover up serious issues like dampness...

^^^ What antoinolachtnai said. ^^^

First things first - the woodworm needs to be sorted before anything else. Deffo!

As for the dry lining - Did the engineer give a specific reason as to why it had to be dry-lined?

I ask because when I renovated my place (169-year-old stone cottage) I removed most of the original plaster & instead of replastering or dry-lining I used the exposed stone- & brick-work as "features." I only dry-lined where I felt that acoustic or thermal insulation was required.

If you're on a tight budget you may want to give this option some consideration.

jhegarty

Don't even think about buying a house like that this time of year..... I bought a simular house , but made sure to get the survey done in the worst of winter when all the damp problems could be seen....

The Hill Billy

jhegarty wrote:

Don't even think about buying a house like that this time of year..... I bought a simular house , but made sure to get the survey done in the worst of winter when all the damp problems could be seen....

That's all very well, but if the OP wants to buy this house I'm sure that the vendor won't wait around for 9 or 10 months just to have the survey done in bad weather. :rolleyes:

joeglum

Thanks a lot for the replies.

The eng knows his stuff he's an ex city eng who does a lot of work on old places himself. He's not one of these raze it to the ground types.

He suggested the dry lining as theres 2 spots of damp, one in the living room and one in one of the rooms upstairs.

There is about 500 layers of wallpaper on the walls and when you tap it you can hear the plaster crumbling a bit.

Is the dry lining work very invasive i.e is does involve ripping holes in every wall and is it pricey?

Also does anyone know the woodworm treatment is that pricey aswell.

Thanks again for the advice. It's a lovely house but we dont want it to be a burden. We can initally probably afford to spend 20k on rennovations i.e structural etc.

Are we mad?

antoinolachtnai

You aren't mad.


Dry lining is not a cure for damp (and I'm sure the engineer didn't suggest it was).

This all sounds pretty-run-of-the-mill for an old house. We don't know the specifics though so talk to the engineer and ask him your questions, then listen carefully to his answers. Re the work being pricey, it really depends on what is involved, and what you can live with.

cormacmccann

My parents got a house about 20 yrs ago with a bit of Wood worm in it. We removed all the old furnature and basically anything wood not nailed down and got it dipped and treated. The ceiling upstairs was riddled on one side but the roof was not too bad, so we sprayed all the timber several times to kill off any wood worm and then replaced the rotted joists with new ones and then put up a plasterboard ceiling to replace the wooden one that was there originally.

We did this work ourselves as the house is my Dad's pet project, so I don't know how much it would cost to get professionally done.

On the damp, did your engineer identify the cause of the damp upstairs? I'd get that sorted before dry lining, We had a similar problem due to a crack in the chimney breast letting in rain water and then when this was fixed the tiles didn't overhang the new plasterwork on the outside and caused the problem to persist.