One real renovation, filmed as it happens.

Hi, it's Julian. Again, here at Westwood. It's the 25th of September. I'd you say a nice sunny day at the end of the uh September. Um I'm just out the front. It's actually moderately clear. Um We've also just cut back some of these uh bushes just so we can get another car parked on there. So, I've just been away the last 2 weeks. Though, I was back at the weekend in the in the US. Um so, a little bit jet-lagged today. I had zero sleep last night on the bumpiest flight I think I ever come back in the jet stream, but at least that made it a bit shorter. Um so, I'm just going to show you around. We've had some pretty big developments uh since I've been away. Um so, I'll just uh turn the camera around in a second and take you uh uh inside. Okay, so part two on the 25th. Um So, no real changes uh outside. Oh, I see we've actually taken a We've got a hole in the wall there. We've started to take things out. Um I think we've cut back a lot more getting ready for putting the gas meter moving it from over there to on that other wall we just looked at. As we move inside, you can see we've got the floor material down. Uh still a little bit to finish off on the floors. We've obviously now taken the uh the boiler out. Not quite sure why we've left the uh sink in. Um which I hope we've got enough of the glass stuff because we look like we still got a few rooms to do. But, the big thing is is that the the floor has gone down in part anyway. So, here we go. This bit of insulation is just there. We're only use We're not using that in the house. We're just using it in the the garage. Um I'll just move it. This floor is still a little bit wet. It's been down a couple of days. Um We were just looking at the Aga. Uh but I'll come back to that in a second. But there's the Aga. And obviously no change. You just had to go around to look at that. I'll explain that in a minute. Um we've got various pipes and holes still to be finished off. But the floor's been done in there. Um the floor's also been done in here. Look, we've still got some tidying up to do around that thing there. Um and you can see I won't walk on this one cuz it's still a little bit damp. Um And we've got to leave this. We should really have more windows open I think, but security issue. And then this one I am going to walk on cuz it's definitely dried a little bit further. And you can see we've got the floor in. This is where the underfloor heating comes out. We're going to put a manifold there to cover this side of the building. And as you can see down here, um we've put this layer of cork um all around. So, this is when this pad is heated up, um it's insulated and doesn't go out of the walls. Um We've also I think Maybe I showed this last time. We put in the soil pipe for a bathroom up there. And there's a soil pipe in this room which is going to be a basically a cupboard. And there's going to be a bathroom in this gap up here. Um and the soil pipe will will join into this one, so it's not in not showing in the hall. Um So, and the same in here, you've got this black line. Looks like a dirty brown line actually, but it is this cork. Uh it was sort of intentional. I think it goes the whole way around. I've got a great big gap there under the door. So, lots of detailing to sort out here. Um So, that's good progress. Um It's interesting how low that floor is compared to the um I think the what I can't remember what you call those things, the architrave type things, skirting boards. So, again, more work to be done. So, the job really now is to finish these floors off in the next week, um and then we can get on to uh next stage. And again, we want to do some of the structural work, which is looking at some of these beams, um and knocking through the door there, couple of walls to to knock through. So, the Aga, which I just showed you, that is a flue Aga. Now, there is a potential flue there, cuz that's an old chimney goes up there. Um And we could have put the Aga there, and we did loo…

Hi, it's Julian. It's the uh what time is it? 3:00 on the 20th uh of September. Um nearly all of these videos have been lovely and uh sunny day. Um so everything's dry, which is great. Uh things are looking nice. Uh I'll just take you on a tour of what's been happening, which is mainly continuing the stripping out and just around the uh floor. So I'll turn this around and uh describe what I'm seeing as we go. Okay, so 20th of September, part two. Not too much to see out here, but when we go in, we can see we've now dug out all of the entrance hall. And apparently [snorts] that was hard work. And he's only down to these bricks. Um So we've got bricks down here. I think we're going to take those out. Um There's the water main. Just check that that's off. It's supposed to be off. Yep, it's off. That's going to come out, this lovely sink. The boiler's coming out. We've got a little bit left here. We're not going to do underfloor heating in that porchway. That's been dug out, also ready to go with the underfloor. And then you can see the big change now is that we've actually got the floor down. It's been tamped down and we've got the underfloor piping in ready for the screed, the lime screed screed to go on next week. Um also the Aga. We've got a guy coming in Friday to check that out. I think hopefully make sure it works. And then the plan is to move it. That's a couple of thousand pounds. And it needs another chimney. You can't put that on a a balanced flue. It has to be the same type of exhaust. So, in here, uh we're going to put the manifold in that old chimney place there. Uh and this goes through into the kitchen. Um and then as you I think I showed that before. That's obviously a window there, but sort of under that's where the the Aga is going to go. So, we'll have to just knock through that wall uh to put a flue on the outside. Haven't done the roof of this yet cuz we're planning to make that a vaulted ceiling. And pretty much decided to Again, where these are okay is leave them, but this is rotten. Probably cut this out and put a brick in. Um and we'll have to investigate again all of these just to I need to stick a bradawl in or something to see what they're like. This one's a bit dodgy. Um but they're probably sort of healing a little bit now that they've got the air getting to them. Um all these light switches and everything is going to come out. Um and will be completely bare. And then once the floor's down, we'll be starting to build back up again. Um that's been repaired because the bricks collapsed there. Um I'm not sure if he did exactly what he wanted. And pinned them in so that the top of the weight Um and here's the sitting room. Here's Anna looking at colors, which we're looking for the window paint. Can't really see them against the light, but variety of different colors there. And there's some floors for the flooring. Yeah, go put all of outside the the door. Um and nothing happened in the uh conservatory. Uh other than here, we've got these cork and we're going to cut these down here. And this is then going to go around the edge. Oh, in fact, you can see it here on the outside walls. Um so, this is the In fact, I see he's done it. I hadn't noticed, actually, but uh they decided to do it all the way around the outside walls. So, that's an insulation, so that again, any heat in the concrete pad doesn't extend and go out into the walls. This is an internal wall, so we're not going to put it on here. And there's base around this um uh stove, wood burning stove, um which is quite nice. Needs to be We need to sort that out and really take the tiles off, at least. Um so, yeah. Um I don't think Oh, yeah, there's a little bit of changes upstairs. We'll just go and have a quick look at that. This is really hard to work on cuz it hasn't been packed down yet. There's another [snorts] six or eight bags of this stuff being delivered this week. Um So, that's a s- That's a slope there, and we've got this sort of platform. …

Hi, it's Julian. Um, and this is the first of the sort of uh home recorded uh recording from the camera uh videos as [clears throat] part of the Westwood project. And this one I'm going to do a detailed cost breakdown really. Um, you know, a lot of these things uh are hidden, I think, and it can be frustrating. I think it could be useful to know what the the true costs are and what we ended up paying and and I was talking to a friend of mine and he was talking about this and how much you spend and he said, you know, you can go and spend 1x, [snorts] you can spend 2x, 3x, 4x, it's almost unlimited, but if you really want to get quality, he reckoned you could spend like 1.2x. And I think that was my sort of watch word, right? So, you look around and you see a high street chain and it's uh £5,000 for something. Then you go somewhere else on Fancy Shop in Chelsea and it's £25,000. The truth is you're never going to get maybe quite the same as the £25,000 for 6,000, but somewhere in that 6 to8,000 range, you you'll probably find something that that suits you. So, I had that mentality in mind. Second thing is I don't like paying for stuff that um I could do myself. Obviously some things you need a qualification and there's a lot of bogus qualifications I did. You know it's like the ecology you need to be for the bat surveys. You need to be an ecologist. You can see the bats but can you identify the 12 different varieties of bats that were in the vicinity of Westwood? Probably not. though I'm sure AI within a year frankly could do that because they take the pictures with the infrared cameras and they analyze the squeaks the sounds that the signals that the bats make and undoubtedly you could do that sort of stuff for you know a fraction of the cost and that was one of the most expensive things. Um I'll give you the details later. Um the second thing is things like heating loss. It's like well it's not rocket science is it? You've got a wall, you've got a window, is it outside or inside? You know, those things. And it's it's pretty basic calculations, but they get wrapped up in mystic, right? And then the other thing was the damp. And and I got told I heard about a guy and I bought his book, I don't know if you can see it here, The Warm Dry Home by Peter Ward. This guy's a bit of a controversial figure because he reckons that the whole damp industry in the UK, which is a multi-billion dollar pound industry, sorry, is is a scam. Um, and nearly all of these things where you see a damproof course and then they put these holes where people have injected chemicals, it's to sell the chemicals. It's not solving the problem. And we used a company will remain nameless for now. It was recommended by the surveyor. I thought the surveyor did a good job, but I'm a bit disappointed with this. And I went to this specialist in Henley for damp because the mortgage company had said, "No, we won't lend you the money unless you do a dampened timber survey." And they then came back and basically said for £20,000 and spray all the timbers, which is pointless. Uh, and secondly, they said for the first 1.5 m of all the ground floors, um, all the walls, I think, put this mesh. And this mesh basically stops the water coming through and it drips down inside the mesh and goes out in a gully and it runs out somewhere. So they're not fixing the problem, they were fixing the symptom and damp would still be there. So if there was leaking things or as a damp coming in for because in the one case in ours we had a concrete render so the damp couldn't escape into the outside. So it escaped onto the inside. So I totally ignored all of that advice. It cost me only £300. It was one of the cheapest surveys compared to the bats which is probably the most expensive. Um, and it's, you know, if you're in damp, read the guy's book. Uh, read some of my I'll do another video on it and and because I believe it now is 10 years old and maybe things have moved on, but it's like rising…

Hi, Julian. It's the 5th of September at 4:00 p.m. Uh just quick update on what's been happening. Just out in the garden. Here's a pile of very modern insulation. We're just doing some of that in the the garage, which is over there, and that's been stripped of all of the greenery that was on it, so we can now see it, which is good. Um Outside, not any real change. And then the one thing I'll show in a second, I'll just stop and take you inside. So, here we are, 5th of September again, part two. This wall has been we stripped out the uh any cement and everything, as you can see, ready to put some nice and neat lime plaster on that, which is really good. Um inside, just the stripping out has continued. Nothing too major. This was the bathroom, it's going to be another bathroom. Again, some interesting walls there, but no timbers, so we know that that lintel over there was just pretty rotten. Um still lots of stripping out to do. Um but this floor, I don't think was done last time. Got found all these pipes now, so um I'm assuming they're water pipes, but I'm not sure. We got the same in here. Uh need to speak to the the builder. Um I think I did show you some of this room last time, but it's cleared out a lot more now. It's been stripped mostly back, apart from some cables, some lights, and uh and and the fireplace is still there, and the ceiling hasn't coming out yet. Um So, yeah. So, this is going to be the whole kitchen. It's quite a nice uh big space. Um that's the door that's going to be into the pantry, and then hopefully a new door there into the um sort of uh, made your room snug to to go through to the rest of the house. Um, no major changes upstairs in the last few days. Just a little bit more clearing out and we were just measuring up where could we get the bed. We're going to put the bed just show you this room here. We've got a little alcove there. Little alcove there which Anna wants for chairs sitting. And we'll put the bed there and then over here we were just measuring the room and the bed would end up with a table to finishing to the right of where that socket is. So, somewhere above that we're going to put the opening into [snorts] the dressing room. It's not going to be door, it's just going to be an opening. And then this will come into here. And then this will be sort of a wardrobe on the left. You'll come all wardrobe all the way along the left and then you'll come through another door and then this will be [snorts] toilet, two sinks and a shower over there somewhere. We'll obviously a partition wall uh, here. So, uh, little crack there, but I don't think anything to worry about. So, yeah, so not a lot of change up here. Um, part three on the fifth, um, I've been chatting to, uh, people to try and get them to come and look at these timbers. Um, and it's a question of whether it's the current engineer we've been dealing with, uh, or new one up the one up there. Uh, obviously ceilings in some of these rooms need to be replaced. Um, but we haven't done that because that would risk exposing the the loft up there, the loft void where we still don't know 100% about the bats. So, um, yeah. Good progress. Lots of paint stripped off high up in the the hallway there. Um So, it's good. I'll just pause and then we'll continue on in the garage. Okay, part three is this or four on the fifth? Just looking at the garage loft. We're just doing some basic conversion here. Just doing some insulation and uh putting the floors in. Um nothing downstairs. Um and this will need to be obviously changed into a a staircase, but uh at the moment we haven't gone for any any planning permission or or anything on this yet. Um so, we may have to do that, but that was just some sort of filling work really to keep the the builders occupied. Um this is the second pile of muck that's going to have a grab. And then hopefully here on Wednesday we're going to get 28 bags of foam glass delivered. They're massive bags, the one-ton type bags. And …

So, hi. It's Julian here at Westwood on the 11th of September. Got Memorial Day for um September 11th. Um Lovely sunny day, but wet on the ground. Uh big things happening at the premises at the moment. Um It's nice and wet here. I've got a bit of noise coming from next door. This is the field. You can see that clearly in the part zero, the uh drone shots. Um They're obviously doing some very early prep work cuz they're going to build about 10 houses in that that field. So, we'll have some new neighbors, which is a a real shame, but we knew that. Um So, what's been happening, and I'll take you inside in a second, uh is the floors. And I'll take you through that in a second. And we've also got the a bathroom set of designers just measuring up and looking at the what we call the three and a half bathrooms. Three upstairs, that's two en suites and a in quotes family bathroom. And then um the downstairs sort of cloakroom. Um So, I'll just go and show you the uh the roofing materials and what's been happening inside. So, here we are again, back on the 11th September, part two. This on the left is the geotextile. It's a mesh that goes down on the the ground. Uh I'll send some links to I'll put some links in the comments to the the lime company. And there's the grid that we attach the pipes to, the underfloor heating pipes. Uh and then, if I just take you back to the drive on the way in, we had a big delivery on Wednesday. We got rid of the grab. Uh and here we've got I know, I think we had 20 foot 20 bags or something of this clay pour it's called. Um And it's uh It's called glass foam and uh or glass gravel. And it's uh very lightweight, full of air. So, it acts as an insulator. And as a um moisture level uh barrier barrier for the water. So, let's have a look at what they've been doing inside. You can see bits of it knocking around. And we got rid of this post and just put a whatever these things are called. Prop, I'll call it, like a pit prop. And we put this down. This is about half the level at the moment. This is going to get whacked down. And then it will be another layer done on top. And then this is the pantry room. And we go into the kitchen. And uh it's a bit hard to walk on this, but you can see the effect of it. Uh and there we can see the breeze blocks behind that fireplace. Obviously, there must have been a a bigger window there, but they decided to change it to this slightly strange setup. I'm not quite sure why. Um I know they've also got a wooden beam in there. So, this is going to get whacked down, and then another layer of that geotextile that you see around the wall will put on top of it. So, that stops dust and layers mixing. Then they'll put the grid, then we'll put the pipes for the underfloor heating crisscross, and then we pour the lime concrete, and that will give us the the surface, which takes a little while um to finish. So, it's interesting that quite a lot of these walls, even these more recent ones, have got some of these beams, but that's rotted there cuz presumably it got wet at some stage, whereas this bit here seems fine. So, I'm going to have to have a look at all of these timbers, and I think you can basically cut them out in sections and repin them, cuz they were often put in there. What I understand is so that here you could attach the window frame, so here you could attach the window frame or or door to it when this material was taking longer to cure or harden than you know, normal sort of cement. Um So, that's really the uh big change uh at the moment. Um Still a little bit of the stripping out to do of uh electrics and uh things like that. But, it's good to get the flooring, cuz that takes a month or two to cure before we can put any additional layer on it. It seems a little bit damp here. Need to understand Yeah, that's damp. Need to understand where that's coming from. All right. Uh I'm actually away next week, so there probably won't be anything for a week.

So, hi, it's Julian at uh Westwood, Monday the 17th of September. Um just here to see um the gas person. She's from Cadent, who delivers the gas. It'd be good to find out where the gas mains go, if they know, but we're about to move the gas meter. Hold up. Doing an inspection for moving the gas meter today, to be honest. Um I'll just turn this round. So, you can see what's happening. Set up the 7th, uh part two. Excuse me. So, this is the garden. I think I showed you those before. Not much change here. Um I keep forgetting what I've shown you, but uh Got a nice repointing started here. Cleared out all the all the rubbish. Um cement had been used there instead of lime plaster. I think we'll leave that, cuz it's on the new extension, et cetera. But, the gas the gas main's in here, and we're looking to, you know, move it around here somewhere, or somewhere on this wall. >> [clears throat] >> To be determined. Obviously, this is attractive, so we're on trying to remove all of these holes and things like this that have obviously been put into the wall. Uh which is a bit of a mess. >> [cough] >> We started to take some of the wiring off on the outside, as well. But, there's still a bit of a way to go there. Um anyway, I'm just going to open up, and uh Uh also, we're seeing a a window uh person. Unfortunately, I've booked them both for um 9:00. Here we are again, on the 7th, part three. Um I'm not sure if I showed you this. So, the windows, um these pipes um I assume they're pipes. Uh I need to investigate [clears throat] that. Um but we're hoping to get on with the floor. Obviously, we've left this sort of protective surround, but we need to start digging that out as we do the rooms. And then, as I mentioned to you, one of the window suppliers that does these replacement units um is is coming in, but not exactly sure uh how they're going to fit and work because if it goes on the the very inside of the panel up against the other glass, um it's going to basically block out I don't know, 5-10% of the light, which maybe isn't ideal. Um so here we are again. This is I think this is going to be a really good >> [clears throat] >> room when it's done. Uh still quite a bit of sort of stripping out work to be done. We're going to replace those two windows there with something more sympathetic to the wooden style. And And that one there in the corner. And these doors are in theory both going to become uh double doors, uh which should um I think be really good. And then, the conservatory, ultimately, the plan is to replace that with a sort of garden room that will be probably more match what we've ended up with uh in there. So, uh yeah, looking forward to that. Um no massive changes, I think, since the last year. Uh again, all the floors, by and large, have been prepared. Um I haven't done anything in this one yet. We'll we'll looking at that one today because there's the old boiler there and the gas point came in there. I think I showed you this one. >> [snorts] >> Strange little window or something maybe being locked up there. It's like something happened down in the corner. So yeah, a little bit. I mean, it's not a good progress. It still looks a complete mess. But in theory, we should start building up the floor pretty quickly. It's all been delivered on Wednesday. And I suspect we'll be starting in this room. And I'll put a link to the supplier. It's called Tai Mawr. That's probably a hopeless pronunciation for for a Welsh name. I don't know if that means lime in Welsh. I hadn't got to that stage. Oh, I see we're starting to take some of the electrics off, which is good. But

Hi, this is Julian. It's the 13th of September and rather than an update on the uh project. Um, for the first time, I'm doing a demo of the Reurbly app, which hopefully you can see on the screen here. And this is what I'm using to manage the uh the project. And I'm just going to spend 10 minutes uh and take you uh through the project. I'll finish up having a look at the referably website uh at the end. But what I can see to start with um is a dashboard where we get an overview of the timeline. Um I'll come back to that in a second. And we have an on-site mode which is designed really for when you're on your mobile and a few basic things like I want to add a a photograph or a take a video. I can just do that here. I could just quickly report a snag. Um, I could set an action for somebody. I could see what's due today. Obviously, I'm a little bit behind on things there. I could actually request a quote um, you know, for on on something and so on. Right? So, designed to have just few big buttons that I can do a few of the key things that I want to do uh, on site. Um, down at the bottom here is a setup guide. There's a quite a lot of functionality in the app, but essentially it takes you through let's get the basics done, a little bit of configuration, uh, and then it takes you further and further till you end up with a sort of a comprehensive system. Um, so that's the setup. Um, this is the a short view of the sorry that was the short view of the timeline. this to the full view of the timeline and we s have have all the sort of um phases of the project here. Um and uh you know we can see how we're doing on uh any of these phases. This is the uh um on the floor heating phase just expanded on and we'll come back into the minute. But when you start out on a project or the way I started was sort of in the the feasibility. I'm not going to go through the whole lot, but again, the property is Westwood, and that's what these videos have been about. And then we could have multiple projects, but I'm mainly just talking about the main refurb. And I can put in some rough numbers. And if I look at the budget, I could say, well, what's it going to cost me to purchase, including the stamp duty and the legal um what's all the things that I need to do like architects, design, conservation officer. Right? So, there was thousands, what £15,000 of that, which is probably more expensive than I was used to. And then what are the the the plans for the refurb in actual fact it's significantly more than that I need to update as always and then some incidental costs which am I cost of rent and um removals and storage whilst I'm uh in in storage and then where's the funding loan from the kitchen company various ISES and savings and and things like that um and it gives me some final and we put a you know a modest postreb value. So if I spend 600, spend you know 120 plus whatever how much do I gain? Probably won't be quite that much but it looks we feel there's quite a lot of leeway uh in this project but the property is westward. Um there's a picture of it and I define the property and I can have as many projects as I want on this property. I have some data about the property and then I define all of the rooms in the property. Okay. So, um, you can see all of the the different ones here. I can also manage the building elements. We'll come back to that later. And I can have loads of photos and videos about different parts of the property. These pop up in different places as well if if I've got them. But, uh, uh, some of them are shown here. And also, you know, one of the key things these days is looking at social media. Uh, we're integrated with um, uh, Pinterest. So, anything you see on any social media, save it to your Pinterest boards. you can pin it to those boards and then those can be imported uh here um and we can use that. Um so if we look at the the individual project this main refer one the project oop sorry the project itself then takes you uh ba…

Hi, it's Julian again. Uh, it's the 1st of uh, September, 11:00 in the morning. Just back on site. I was here again yesterday and the the builders were here. You'll see [clears throat] one of the builders in a minute. Um, I'm going to swap this round so you can you don't have to see me. Um, and just explain uh, what we're doing today. So, one of the first things um was to try and look at these electrics, and we've worked out that this is the armored cable that brings the supply in. We're not exactly sure what route it takes across the garden yet, and we'll need to know that before we put the new drain in for the water. Um, and then this one going across here goes through the conservatory and then comes out the other side for these for these lights with these gray wires. You can see a light up there. And there's one on the corner just through the conservatory there. You can just about see it. Um, so we're working out where we can put the um where we can put the consumer unit and the meter. So, we're probably going to leave the meter there and then if you can see through here, but then go through and the stairs is the other side of that wall and put the consumer unit and then all the distribution wires from there. And then for the gas, there was a discussion about where we put the gas meter. Uh, and I think we're going to put it on the other side of the porch wall there. It's just on the inside of the porch. Put it on the outside. And then we can run a pipe into where the boiler's going to be inside the utility room, the other side of that wall, and then run a pipe outside to the ARGA in the new kitchen. Um, so that's really the the plan. I'll just show you what's been happening out the front. We had a grab has taken the stuff away, so it's a bit clearer, but it's still a mess. And we're probably going to need one more grab with all the rubbish taken out from not the rubbish, but from the floors. Here's one of the guys doing the wheelbarrowing. Um, and then once we got that next grab, we can get rid of all this in some skips. Um, and start to get back to being a little bit uh tidier um in obviously what's a a pretty big mess here. Just building up this again um as we speak. And that's where all the original gravel from the drive has just been swept. This is uh Laddyy from Matrix Builders. Uh we used Laddyy at our LA last place. He was introduced to us uh on a quite a big project certainly for us, but this is two or three times the project. And um you know Latt is pretty relaxed, pretty laidback but uh at the end of the day uh as you can see largely um Indian nationalities and they work very hard. They turn up reliably every day, work through till 6:00 regularly and if I want to meet at 5:30 or 6:00 they're good. So shout out to uh Laddyy and uh Matrix Builders. So, um, thanks very much for watching and that's all for now.

Hi, it's Julian again at Westwood. It's uh quarter to 7:00 on Thursday, the 27th of August. I've just had a quick chat with a builder. It's been a bit We've had showers, which is why everything's a bit damp uh at the moment today. It's getting quite dull. But, I'm mainly here just to say hello to the the bat inspector. Um he's just been up in the main roof void for this huge roof here. Not found anything. Remember last time they came 3 weeks ago, they didn't find any evidence of bats in the roost inside or in any of the cracks in the roof, and none flying around that came back to the the house for for a roost effectively. So, that was good news, and from what he just said there, fingers crossed, hopefully today we won't see uh any more. So, I'm going to head off again soon. I'm not going to hang around for that cuz they're going to be here for probably a couple of hours. They It's not dark or it's not dusk technically till I think about 8:00. So, they're going to set up their cameras uh and everything. Um I've just had a look at all of the beams that were scaring me last time, and I guess I've got used to it a little bit now. Um and I've watched enough YouTube videos about how you take the weight on strong boys or geckos or whatever they're called, and then you can pull out the bricks and the beams underneath it. So, I'd like to know what's happening, so I know what my builder's going to do. And that all seems quite reasonable. Um obviously, it's quite a lot of work, and I'm talking to the engineer to come and look at all of the uh all of the beams. And and hopefully for the light for light, where we're just going to replace it, that's not a huge calculation or anything. Um but, you know, who knows? Uh the end of the building here, this has all been cleared off by one of the workers today. So, it looks really nice, actually. Um, and then I go around here onto this side. Uh, it's a bit of a mess with some of the stuff that's that's here, and hopefully we can but this was all covered in plants and things and it looks much better now, and you can clearly see this flint patch. And that continues where that water bottle is on the window. It continues on the other side, so I suspect probably this was and in fact, if we maybe pulled off the plaster down there in the conservatory, um, we'll probably find something. And there is a crack in that wall and above it up there. And the engineers are going to come again and give me a quote for replacing that. And I suspect maybe because of these differences in materials, I don't know, that's why that's sagged. We're not going to do that immediately, but we're going to get everything drawn up. Um, just finish off around the side of the building here. You can see all the rubbish being taken away, and that was covered in some creepy crawly crawler climber, uh, and that's mostly gone. There's a bit more to do here. Um, uh, and And there's the Union fireplace just under the light. There's the black sort of dark tile. It actually says Union on it, but there's no number. So, that's a bit of historic fabric that we we need to keep. Uh, and this entrance had these, um, obviously posts that had maybe bigger posts when there wasn't a silly hedge here and a new housing estate, um, and probably a view over to the village and the church. So, that's really nice that that's cleared up. I've also spoken or got quotes from the electricity board. Um one of those is the electricity in. It obviously comes through the garden somewhere. We'll have to discover that. Or it comes in from there actually. Probably not exactly sure this weird-looking what wire not weird, but not very professional. Uh so, we're going to reroute that. Um I'll have to maybe have to reroute it in the garden as well. But, we're going to reroute it probably to come on this side, which is the utility room. Um and then we're going to have all the fuse boxes and things in there. And then currently the gas meter is in here. And to move it to the o…

So, uh hi, it's Julian again here at Westward. It's the 24th of August, and the stripping out is continuing. Um you'll see the little trial pits that we dug out in this wall here. Uh That one's not too bad, but inside, this is really bad. Uh and the brick actually is not too damp, but um So, this is another form of the lime. We're going to put a lime render on here. Hopefully, we can take this off, but it will damage the bricks a little bit, and the conservation people are not too keen. And as you can see, it's quite a big area. Um But it's causing damp issues on the inside, and I think that's why that that timber has uh been destroyed. Um but what I'm going to do is just show you the progress and talk through what we're deciding as we go into the house. Um I'll just stop the video and turn it around, so you won't see me, and you'll see the rest of the house. So, here we are going into the house on the 24th of August again. Uh a ladder out of the garage has arrived. Um Not a lot of change in here, just just collecting copper pipe. The boiler's disconnected. And in here, we've had a bit of progress in here. Uh just stripping out what was that weird avocado bathroom. Um this plaster's going to come off. All the outside wall plaster's going to come off, so we can uh get back the brick and then re-plaster with lime plaster and some insulation. There's various bits of concrete on here. All the pipes are going to come out. Cuz we're going to start again. Um So, that's not too bad. Um. The living room here or sitting room, they're actually digging down now to the sort of level uh, we're going to end up with to put in the glass foam and and the lime crete surface of 100 mil 150 mm of the glass foam for its water wicking insulation capability and then 100 m 100 mil of the the lime crete um some bit work being done. We're leaving the outside to the concrete just for structural reasons until we get closer to putting [clears throat] in the actual new floor. Um. This was the old kitchen. The kitchen's all out. I think that was out last time. That's hopefully [clears throat] where we're going to knock a doorway through. But I had the heritage assessment and he'd forgotten to mention that, which is like the most crucial thing, frankly. Uh, I know I see there was an email just while I was out, so uh, coming here from the architect and the heritage guy. So, we need to take off plaster on these outside walls. Um. And then this is what it looks like. Actually really quite a nice wall finish. Um. There are some issues. We've got embedded uh, I guess that's part of a lintel that probably goes the whole way across there, but and and over there. Um. Otherwise, this is we're going to repoint these to I think get them structurally sound and then obviously to get plastered and and insulated. We haven't done anything with this yet. That's an old chimney fireplace. We're going to probably put some heating manifold in here. And this has been cleaned out. They've they've stripped the walls here. There's an air brick that's been sealed up. Um. And obviously that was a bit stickier the plaster there cuz it's not come off as well down here maybe cuz maybe it was who knows damper it's it's come off a bit better. This was the old library. We're going to keep the plaster on the internal walls. Haven't really done much in here yet. Um this is all still to be treated. So modest progress but I might have showed you some of this before but we'll just have a look upstairs. This is what's sort of scaring me a little bit to be honest. Um we're going to take >> [clears throat] >> this little raised funny level up there and we're going to take I think most of the ceilings off because the ceilings are pretty rubbish but we saw the outside wall gable end wall. This is the other side of that. Uh and this is a bit scary to me anyway but there's a pipe there some sort but this is all rotten again so I think our plan is to replace that with brick and repoint these walls then p…

Hey, it's Julian here at Westwood on the 22nd of July. I got my hat in this crazy way cuz I keep banging my head on doors and things when I was doing a scan. In Refurbly in the app, there's an ability to scan. I do a LiDAR scan. It's built into the pro phones. So, I'm just doing that to try and get accurate sizing all the rooms. So, I think maybe it was last year we showed you some of the digging out. As you can see, the sort of kitchen's all been done. All pulled out apart from the Aga, which we need to look at. Little bit good work in here. We've got this wall. This wall actually not looking too bad. We've got these timber lintels floating around we're going to have to look at that. Brickwork looks quite nice. Um just a quick look upstairs. Sorry, lost it. So, this It's a shame we pulled off the lath and plaster on the inside, but that had tiles on it, so it was seriously stuck to it. And it's going to be It's going to that that wall door is Sorry, wall is going to be taken down. Um this is the main bedroom. And you can see this wall, which looks a bit scary, I must admit. And the lintel lower down, I'll show you in a minute, is completely gone. As for that one up there, we don't know. This was the wall that theory had damp, but in actual fact, it doesn't look too bad. Just a bit scared about the worried about these Obviously, some of this is completely rotten. I'll have to replace those Uh uh bits of wood. And same in here. Some pretty random brick, but I guess if that's I don't know whether we need to repoint that. All those holes or just be replastered to be determined. So, that's really been the the main change, I think um since you last heard is going down the stairs. So, that's a bit of an issue. And I'll just take you outside. Hey, yeah. This is Anna. Anna's going to have a quick look at this. We took off the render down here. And it's not actually too bad, but this is obviously as you say crumbling I guess cuz it's got damp. But the brick themselves doesn't look too bad. Uh too wet, but pulling off this concrete is damaged the brick. Um but up here as you can see, that's pretty bad. This one here not as bad. That's the one we were inside a minute ago looking at that wall. And there's another one over there. So, lintels and things probably need to uh be replaced.

Okay, hi. This is Julian. It's uh quarter to 7:00 on Thursday the 20th of um My hair's looking a bit flyaway here. Um didn't put any gel in it today. Just visited the builders. They're on their Oh, I don't know, third day of work, I think. Second or third Yeah, third day of work. Uh so, I'll just show you some of the progress and some of the issues we found. I'm just going to turn this away. And hopefully you can hear me. So, I just see that's been falling down, but that's really not a big issue. Uh you can see we've taken a lot of the greenery away since you were last here. And we're planning to take this concrete render off. Um So, we've been having a look at it. Couple of couple of holes we drilled into it. Um And this is uh Yeah, taking it off is ruining some of the bricks. And some of this stuff is seems quite dry, but some of it has obviously I guess got damp at some stage, and the advice has been to take all this off. Um Which is a pretty big job, but I mean that I mean that means a day or two. But obviously we've found that that this is completely rotten lintel. Maybe it contributed some of these cracks here. This one's actually still seems structural. Uh but obviously this needs to be replaced. And I suspect that's the same with those up there as well. Um Yeah, um there's an actual air brick with some breathing going on. So, that's a bit of a Yeah, it is a little bit of a shock. Um this is stuff like the kitchen's being cleared out, and the um water tank. Well, let's just have a look inside what we can see. Um So, this is the utility room where we had the boiler. Well, the boiler is still there, but there was hundreds of pipes going up here, and I know it's probably a little bit dark. Um all that's now in a pile, I guess for reclamation. All of this stuff will come out. The electricity is off. All the electricity is starting to come out. Um there's not much to show down that end. That's the bathroom uh downstairs cloakroom, and that's starting to come apart. Um So, a lot happening in here. This is the floor we've taken out. Um This lower level here we need to go down about another inch or two for the insulation glass foam where glass foam that's going to go down as the base layer on top of some mesh and things like that. Um but what we're going to do the architect was worried about oh if you take the structure out, and obviously this wasn't built. This is concrete probably post-war. And there you can see effectively the depth of the foundations, which are not very deep. And they're worried that if we take all of this concrete out the structural integrity of the walls is gone. Uh so, we're going to dig this out to the correct depth and get ready for putting the And then when we get the uh foam glass, we'll cut this back to probably maybe 6 in or something, and sloping down to the floor. So, we'll dig it all out, but we'll leave a couple of feet like this temporarily just in case there is any structural problem, and then we'll put the foam glass, which is sort of like a like hardcore. So, it's sort of semi semi-structural is the way I would think about it. Um So, hopefully that's going obviously all these floors are going to come up soon. This is the kitchen as was. Obviously, the Aga is still there. I need to get that looked at separately. I'm going [snorts] to move that. You see this is actually much bigger room now with everything taken out of it. And this is going to become some sort of a snug. And and the idea is with a plan. I should show you the plans at some stage, but that wall ideally we're going to go through into the kitchen, the new kitchen. There's a doorway. I think we're going to block that off properly. Um and then if we come down here >> [snorts] >> um This again haven't done much on this. There wasn't much to major to take out. Um And then this will be a This will be a pantry and a cloakroom. Not cloak Well, ideally a room for cloaks. And then this wall is going to come down. This was the sort of libr…

So, here we are today. It's the 15th of August. I still haven't uploaded one of these videos yet. I must do that this weekend. We're just at the property again. Uh some of the upstairs windows and in fact the downstairs windows have been opened just to air the place out and we have got a bit of a damp problem. Uh and one of the biggest issues is this concrete render. What I've learned about has been the whole damp. It's obviously in a bit of a poor state up there. And what happens with using these modern hard materials like concrete uh is they're not porous and so any water that gets trapped behind it can't come out into the air. So, if it goes anywhere, it's going to go inside into the interior wall and and look like damp. Um there's a whole industry on damp proofing that is essentially unnecessary and there's no such thing has been never any single case proven of what's called rising damp. So, that's all a big scam. But, we need to take this off. And that's going to start on Tuesday. Um it's probably going to have wrecked the bricks. Who knows when we pull it off? Um if the bricks are wrecked, then we'll have to put a lime render back on. Um to to allow it to breathe. Um I think my preference is to go back to the bricks. Um this cottage has had two previous names. One was Star Cottage, I think. And one was White Gable. So, maybe they thought they had to put this on in white. Down in this newer part here, I think this is just painted. Um there's a little mini sundial there. Um not sure if it works. All of this foliage should be taken down in the next few days. Uh again, it's causing a damp uh and not lying not allowing the you know, the building to breathe. Um I was just looking on here because the conservation officer said there was a plaque. A union fire plaque, but I frankly can't see anything. I'm going to go around the corner and we're just digging some trial holes. All this foliage going to go very soon. And here's another little hole that we're doing um just to look at the foundations. And as you can see there, it looks like it goes down probably what, 18 in at most. Um so I think that's pretty typical in these old buildings. No cavity walls, fairly limited foundations. Uh but it's pretty standard. Nothing to worry about. This building's been here 200 years ago. Yeah, they mentioned there was a plaque at the entrance, but I can't see see anything unless it's on this entrance here. There you can see. Sorry about this video is a bit random. There's a light we switch off. >> Did he? >> Yeah, 1 minute. Maybe there was a plaque here somewhere, but it's hard to see. Anyway, um I'm just going to go and speak with the builder. Um but the main reason for being here today was to see the electrician um and just discuss putting in all the lighting, alarms, electrics, whatever, and we'll need to move the consumer board, consumer unit, and meter from this very far end of the building and probably move it somewhere more uh >> [music] >> central. So, the builder's here digging those holes and he's had the electrician in and hopefully that'll put us in a good position to get some quotes um on all the bits and bobs we need electrical. We've also had this week I was in here, I think I don't know if I did a video with talking to the lime guy, had a consultation with lime person about supplying lime plaster for the walls uh lime mortar to replace the pointing outside. That hole outside there you could see the the mortar had actually come out there, but there's areas there where it's been replaced with concrete. We need to re-replace that with lime. And then this floor a whole floor um is going to go uh to a a lime crete floor um and I'll talk more about that in the future. Anyway, that's it for now. Bye.

Hi, here we are today on the 10th of August. Just been at the Westwood today just to do an online consultation by a Teams with a a lime company in uh in Wales. Uh which worked out really well and we're looking for the sort of lime mortar for this sort of thing here where it's been repointed in the past with concrete with with which isn't good uh for the edges there of the roof. Um the walls, I'm not changing the walls obviously, and then all of the floors where we're going to use probably a lime crete floor. So, we're going to go overboard with all of the breathable material. So, we're just talking through all that. I learned a lot. Um and uh we're going to try and work out the price for that, all the things that we need, which I'm sure is going to be crazy expensive. Um we've also got to get it from the front here to the house, which is going to be a lot of wheelbarrowing, or we may be look coming over the sides. I'm not sure yet. Um and also we've got to um think about the timescales cuz apparently before you can put wood down on the lime crete floor, it needs 3 months to you know, truly settle and dry out. Though we can put wood tiles, sorry, uh stone flaggings and things like that down after about a month or so. So, I have to admit I hadn't really considered that. Um so, the timings on all these things is yeah, messy or long I should say. Um what are the good bit of news? Well, two other things that we just found out yesterday. If I just move away from the road again. Um we had the first emergent bat survey on Thursday. And I said could nice nice couple came out and did it with a bunch of cameras and infrared lights. Um plus they'd seen no evidence of bats with the preliminary roost assessment assessment, the PRA. And this was a BES, the bat emergence survey, and we have to have three of those. Uh at I think it was about just under 3,000 lb. Um I'm going to set up in the bat business. It seems like really good money for pretty much all broke, though you've got to be a trained ecologist. Um and the initial findings were there were no bats. I was they were flying around, but none of them were going in and out of the house. Now we have to have two further surveys, one in basically another 3 weeks. Um and then 3 weeks after that. So then we get a report. Um if there's no bats, fantastic. We in theory can pretty much go straight ahead subject to the listed building consent to repair stroke replace the roof. Um So that was really sort of good news. Uh the other sort of more bad news was we had the report back from the conservation officer. She came around. We booked in a session for 500 lb. She had a look round, uh made the appropriate noises, and then wrote back and said, "Well, we don't want you to change any of the internal stuff. We don't want you to do this. You can do that. You can do so." That's really potentially a bit of a blow. Um And the other big thing I should have said is we now own the house as of Friday, so we completed. Um so we do now want to get things done so we can move in rather than paying for, you know, two houses. Um so we may be having to come up with plan B, plan C, who knows in terms of what the structure is inside. Um So yeah, a little bit disappointing on that. So some good news, some some bad news really. Um And uh there's a lot of independent or dependent factors that are going to affect the timing on this quite a lot. Um Anyway, so here we are back at the front and our car uh we're going to try and cut some of this back um so that we can turn around, get some more cars on, and obviously we had the gardeners starting to come in and clear the foliage off the building and and they'll pile up here and then we'll go into a a skip um in in the near future. Um so that's it for today. So I'm going to head back. I've got some work to do. I need to get moving. Cheers.

So, here we are again um at Westwood on the What are we now? 6th of August. Um everything's [clears throat] looking very dry here. But, I'm here tonight because um the bat survey people are supposed to be coming in a few minutes. And this is so we can get the uh the roofs done. The roof done, I should say. I'm just looking around in the corner here. I've never been up here. And loads of trees just all sort of a bit overgrown to be honest. Um and tomorrow we actually complete on the property. Um I'm not sure if in my last video we'd exchanged, but that was last, I think. So, the Thursday. So, we will own this pile. And the roof's one of the things we want to do. So, we need to get it checked. So, we'll probably do a short video tomorrow to come up and just have a little celebration that after all this time and effort we own this. Um and then on Saturday I'm back here with the gardener. We're going to try and just trim down these bushes and and frankly get rid of all of this stuff on the walls because not so much this one, but it was it's quite attractive. Um it's causing damp on the inside. Uh the other thing I'm going to do tonight is just take some close-up pictures of the windows because these frames are actually generally not too bad. Um I don't know how old they are. They don't look 200 years old. Um and obviously this has got a few little problems with a little bit of rotten wood there, but in general, it's not too bad. So, I'm talking to a friend of mine who's a good handyman about refurbishing all of those windows, sort of spend a month, probably camp here. Um and I'm also talking to some window companies about some replacements as well as some uh refurbishments. So, we'll uh have to see how that goes. Now, I'm just walking back to the front and I'm going to find the back people.

Okay, so here we are at West Ridgeway again on the 30th of July. Um, hopefully today we're planning to exchange. Um, and I'm just here at the front. There was a bit of road noise there. Trying this with a new uh, microphone set up on the camera. Gradually getting there. Um, I'm just going to go into the garage today. Um, you can see it behind me. Um, I'll swap around in a minute, maybe in the other way. I'll just go up the ladder here and show you the the loft up here. This is what we're going to convert into an office. Um, hopefully that's a pretty straightforward thing to do. Today, but I'm sorry, immediately. Um, so the story is we're hoping to exchange today. I just need to dash back and sort out the uh, insurance. Uh, which was a journey in itself because of course doing insurance for a house like this which is unoccupied um, is apparently something very different to normal sort of insurance and the best deal appears to be around 2,000 pounds for a year. But if I then cancel that in say four or five months when we actually move in, when standard insurance would do, that probably looks like the most flexible and and cost effective. Um, the other thing I've been doing today, I don't know if you can just see them here. Um, I've just got some sample tiles. Um, and in fact, I'm going to go up to a a reclamation yard in Stoke Church, which is nearby in a minute and just see see what they've got. I was just comparing the these existing tiles um, or sorry, these new samples to to to see how they looked and uh, frankly, they all look pretty good. Uh, uh, uh, a mixed bag of those uh, um, when you actually look at it closely, there's quite a wide range of colors and styles in the loft. Uh, sorry, on the roof. So, I'm going to go and do that in a minute um, and just come back see if they've got some samples. Uh, they match up with the samples that were just left in the in the garage. So, I'm going to do that and I'm just going to measure the inside of the garage in a minute just to make sure I've got the measurements for the for the plan for the builders, though they apparently came in and took all the details they needed yesterday. So, it's a big day really. It's the uh, deposit going to be paid, insurance on and then it's sort of ours, though it will be completed in about uh, about a week, probably next Friday. And then my first job is going to be to come in and basically, while some of this is very attractive, uh, I'm going to essentially cut back a lot of this green stuff around the property. I'm going to cut back some of the trees uh, a little bit because they're over shading the conservatory, which is probably a good thing given the intense heat we've had recently, but obviously it's not good to have that sort of dripping. And a lot of the building, as you can see there on the edge, is covered in foliage, which is helping to cause the damp. Um, so, I'm looking to get rid of that and I and have a good trim of the garden, I think, because it whilst they've attended the lawn and the lawn is not doing too bad compared to many. I think partly cuz it's in in shade. Uh sorry, I've just seen some orange thing up in the tree. It looks like something that's blowing, a bag or something. So, um a quick update. I'm just going to go and um measure the garage now. I didn't bring the tripod, so I'll do that on my own and then I'll go and get these uh sample tiles and uh we'll see where we are.

So, hi. The setup here is not great, but this is me, Julian. Going to introduce this Westwood project to you um and the journal on the Refurbly uh website uh and I'm using Refurbly to help me manage this project. This first couple of videos will just really give you an introduction to the site um and and show you around it. Um and this is a property called Westwood um in Lane End in Buckinghamshire. Um I'm it's about 200 years old um and it's got plenty of problems and hence it's a big sort of refurb project or it's big to me. Um but I'll show you that uh in a few minutes. Um I'm going to be fairly transparent with the cost because a lot of this stuff's in the public domain, how much we paid for the property, um and the sort of costs and and some of the issues that we're dealing with. Um I'm here today with the Batman uh doing a bat survey. Um that was a price of 750 lb. He's going to be here half an hour apparently. Uh I guess we're going to get a really nice quality report. And we've also got the conservation officer from the council and the architects who are really for the first time trying to work out whether we can do all the things that we want to do with it. And I'll mention some of those as we go through it. So, today's a a pretty crucial day. Uh also by the way, my mortgage company who were holding the mortgage told me today they won't uh they won't lend on this property. So, uh plan B uh is now being accelerated and I'll maybe talk about that a bit later. But that's the intro. I'll stop at this one and then just start to show you some of the uh some of the features from the from the front by the road um all the way around and then we'll we'll go inside. Thanks. So, here we are at the front gate. Um you can see called Westwood. And there's a few cars here today um as we got the surveyor and the architect or the architect, sorry, the conservation officer. So, we have the double garage with a pitched roof and space up there for an additional room. Um this nice path probably be a bit gloomy in winter. Um but it's quite nice at uh present. Nice and cool in the hot weather we've been having in the summer of 26. I'll just start off with the this garage just briefly. Um cuz hopefully this is the one of the ways we can improve the property. Um keys being left in and we can go inside. And we've got a nice side of the double garage. And then up here I can climb up and do this at the same time. We've got work to be done but a decent bit of space and if we move these joists, I'm not sure if that's the official name, these diagonal ones, then we can make a nice bit of space in the middle and that's probably going to be my office. So, let's move up. And now we can see the garden. And as I say, it's lovely with the shade in the trees. Some of these need a little bit of cutting back. There are a couple of TPOs on one or two of the trees. Um I'm walking over the drains here. I'll talk about drains at another time. Um we've got this slightly out of place 1990s Antigua conservatory, but it's sort of okay. It definitely needs a paint, probably some of the panels replacing. And then this is the the main roof. The cat slide roof is as called, as I now understand. Plastic guttering, which is probably not in keeping. Essentially, a lot of things have been done to this house that are not in keeping with a period property. Um And here you can see at the end we've got these concrete tiles that are also illegal. Um lots of foliage, which is helping contribute to the damp. And then a sort of an extension that was done uh a more modern extension. And on this end gable wall, they put concrete render, which hasn't helped with the damp on the inside. The cottage was called Gable End Cottage at one stage. Um You can go around the side here. Some decrep- slightly decrepit sheds, so they've both got leaks. I'll probably get definitely get rid of at least one of those. And then this is the old really the what was the front of the house, but with all the…

So, hi. This setup here is not great, but this is me, Julian. Going to introduce this Westwood project to you and the journal on the Refurbly uh website. Uh and I'm using Refurbly to help me manage this project. This first couple of videos will just really give you an introduction to the site um and and show you around it. Um and this is a property called Westwood um in Lane End in Buckinghamshire. Um I'm it's about 200 years old. Um and it's got plenty of problems and hence it's a big sort of refurb project or it's big to me. Um but I'll show you that uh in a few minutes. Um I'm going to be fairly transparent with the costs because a lot of this stuff's in the public domain, how much we paid for the property um and the sort of costs and and some of the issues that we're dealing with. Um I'm here today with the Batman uh doing a bat survey. Um that was a price of £750. He's going to be here half an hour apparently. Uh I guess we're going to get a really nice quality report. And we've also got the conservation officer from the council and the architects who are really for the first time trying to work out whether we can do all the things that we want to do with it. And I'll mention some of those as we go through it. So, today's a a pretty crucial day. Uh also by the way, my mortgage company we're reporting the mortgage to me today they won't uh they won't lend on this property. So, uh plan B uh is now being accelerated and I'll maybe talk about that bit later. But that's the intro. I'll stop at this one and then just start to show you some of the uh some of the features from the from the front by the road um all the way around and then we'll we'll go inside. Thanks.

Hi. So, this is Julian. You'll see me in a minute. Um, and this is the start of the journey with uh Westwood. Uh, it's a listed college and hopefully you can see that on the screen. And we'd been looking for trying to sell, I should say, for a couple of years on and off with a house we had up in Northamptonshire in a little village. And we eventually sold, but the place we were buying, which was on the waterfront in Abington, fell through or we sort of pulled out because of issues and frankly wasn't quite right in the end. So, we started looking around and we're looking at all sorts of options [sighs] sort of around the highwickham sort of area. Um, and then this one popped up which was a cottage and my wife said to me, "Oh, do you know Llay End?" And I did because this was the first place I'd bought a house when I moved out of London uh basically 40 years ago and uh we weren't particularly looking for something you know old. Um but this [clears throat] came up and had a lot of space. So originally a plan for a downsize um sort of slightly went out the window. Uh hopefully you can see these pictures. These are from the the agent and it looks quite interesting. Um, you know, it's got a library. Um, [clears throat] nice bits of garden. Uh, it's a great two-listed cottage as you can see. It's very old-fashioned. Um, and these were really the the best bits. Um, quite a lot of space. I think we'd had 2,400 ft including a garage before. This was roughly 2,400 plus a garage. uh which also had a pitch roof and space above it for for conversion. And so we looked at that and thought uh yeah, that looked really uh looked really interesting. Um so but they said to us, well, you do realize it's uh it's got a lot of problems. Um so I'll show you some pictures now. Saviles in Marlo. Shout out to them. They were really really good. And we went and had a look and this day I think we took some photos and I show you these and we we really liked it uh to the extent that we actually put an offer in it on the day that we're going off on a holiday. I was cycling in Morca uh and we put in the offer um and we got accepted uh which is great. And because as I'd mentioned we'd moved into rented I think anyway that um we therefore pretty much cash buyers though we ended up with a small mortgage um we got a good offer u and our offers accepted course we were ready to move and we've been living in rented since April in Maiden Head. It's now September and we'll be here for basically three more months until hopefully this is refurbished. So let me you know we looked at this and we thought oh this is really attractive. Um, I was slightly worried as looking at these windows. They obviously, you know, need a lot of work. Um, this is at the top here is the Union Fire uh plaque just under the lights. Um, the shutters turned out to be plastic. Um, bit messy, lots of undergrowth. A lintil needs replacing. That was the least of the the worries in the end. and obviously very overgrown. So, sort of hiding all manner of issues, no doubt. Uh particularly on this wall, which was a that's when we were looking for drains, this gablem wall um and has actually been a cause of a lot of problems recently. Um all this has now come off. You've seen some of the later pictures. And then this huge sort of uh cat slide roof, a normal roof with finished just below those dorma windows, but this one comes down to a much lower level. Um, and many of these tiles are in pretty poor shape. So, the recommendation from the surveyor pretty quickly was, um, we need a new roof. This is a bit of a mess at the top here. I haven't really looked at this closely, but clearly it needs a repaint. And we're going to refurbish this completely or probably rebuild as a garden room at some stage. And there's a nice garden there. Down there is looks like an annex, but it's actually a a double garage. You can see right through there. I think two windows just and uh again this is all now been cleared and we're…