House renovation

After a long search, at the beginning of the year we finally found our dream house in Harringay - over in the warehouse district, to be more specific. It was exactly what we were looking for; all the charms of an unmodernised Victorian house, near the tube, very spacious, reasonably priced... and semi derelict. We like a challenge. We snatched the purchase from the jaws of a property developer who we suspect would have taken the usual route of converting the house to flats without permission, letting it out for four years until the objection period had passed.

Built in 1895, the house has had two owners - the builder / landowner who owned and let most of the houses in the street, then the family we bought from who moved there in 1901 and saved up until they managed to buy it in the 1960s. Ancestry.co.uk has provided a good insight into the history of the property thanks to the electoral records and census returns - we know that it was a decent working class street populated by carpenters, bricklayers, piano assembly workers, dressmakers... probably not the respectable middle class clerks that the builder would have been aiming for, but decent honest folk nonetheless. The 1901 census shows that there were seven people living here and in 1911 there were eight sharing a three bedroom house - which was by no means unusual for this street which at the time had a population of around four times the current level long before the intervention of today's HMO landlords.

We peeled away the layers of paint and paper - generally three of them, 1890s. 1930s and lastly the 1960s. In the 1930s electricity had arrived, courtesy of the North Metropolitan Electric Supply Co which used spare capacity from supplies to the tramways to light up the homes of north London. Shortly afterwards a bathroom was installed with a cast iron bath and a gas fired geyser to supply hot water, avoiding the necessity to fetch it from the copper in the scullery. The house survived the blitz, even retaining the slightly rippled Victorian glass in the windows while so many were broken by nearby blasts. In the 1960s the proud new owners followed Barry Bucknell's lead and encased the stairway and door panels with hardboard, took out the scullery copper and kitchen range, changed some of the coal fires to gas, and did some decorating.

That was how we found it; leaking roof, ancient faulty plumbing, dangerous wiring, broken windows, no heating, crumbling stonework, bits of floor that weren't safe to walk on - but an old house in its original configuration, never converted, messed around with or spoiled by modern builders.

There's no shoddy extension on the back, just the original outhouse divided into toilet, coal store and larder. The kitchen still occupies a space between the pantry and the scullery. Without any modern intervention it's fascinating to see the level of detail and thought that went into the original design; the way the windows line up with the hall and the doorways to let the light through to the back of the house, the quality of the materials and construction and the thought put into the function of the house given the expectations of the time.

On the ground floor, the relatively expensive and expansive hall and parlour with larger doors and fancy mouldings giving way to the less ostentatious drawing room, then to the more modest and functional areas at the back of the house that guests were not expected to see.

On the first floor, bedrooms built to a size that shames the hutches built to today's standards, an indoor toilet (becoming an essential item rather than a luxury in the late 1890s) and separate room for washing, complete with butler sink and bath. Draughty sash windows and big fireplaces in every room to provide the copious ventilation that would deal with the fumes from the gas lighting and which was considered to be essential for the health of the occupants - look online for "The Principles and Practice of Modern House Construction" to get a feel for the emphasis that was placed on good ventilation and sanitation at the time.

We've spent the last 10 months or so putting right the neglect of the past 50 years - we've replaced the roof, wiring, plumbing and windows, installed a new kitchen and bathroom, added insulation and central heating for the first time, rebuilt the crumbling bay - the whole lot, while aiming to stay true to the original look and feel of the house, keeping the original layout and proportions. It's been an enormous challenge and a huge amount of work but very enjoyable and I'd recommend it to anybody who is lucky enough to be in a position to do the same.

While we've tackled a lot of the work ourselves, we've had a few contractors and suppliers helping out - I'll share the good ones and a few of the disaster stories in a later post. When I started writing this it was going to be a whinge about the latest lot of decorators but it turned into something which I hope is a bit more inspirational. Sorry to go on a bit.