Although we have renovated houses before, this seems a very different renovation. In our very first house, we did change it a lot, but we did nothing structural. Mostly, it seemed to be constant decorating and moving things around, which we did ourselves. When we sold this house, we moved into a massive flat on Burton Road in West Didsbury, above one of the shops. It was the perfect rental at the perfect time, in the most perfect location. Opposite what would become Folk Cafe Bar, we moved in as the area started to develop and so we benefited from all of the fabulous bars and restaurants and shops being on our doorstep. It also meant that we could keep an eye on properties for sale in the area, as this was definitely where we wanted to buy. We eventually spent two years in the flat. The letting agency were awful – didn’t care at all about their properties, but this did work to our advantage, as we had freedom to decorate it. We probably shouldn’t have done anywhere near as much as we did, because we were only renting, but we wanted to live somewhere lovely, and by the time we left, it was pretty smart. Again, only decorating, but we did do the whole flat – stripping all rooms of wallpaper, painting, sanding and varnishing floors and generally turning a dilapidated flat into a bright, cheery, clean and well decorated home.
We then bought our house on Arley Avenue, just around the corner from the flat and we were here for sixteen years – and this was our first serious renovation, the first phase done between us and various builders, electricians and plumbers. We put in French doors, a new kitchen and a new bathroom and did most of the decorating and floor sanding ourselves, as well as turning a dump at the rear of the house onto a really lovely enclosed garden. Then in 2014, we embarked on the biggest renovation yet – and this time, we turned to the professionals, as we wanted to create a completely open plan living space, in our three bedroom terraced house. And this involved weeks and weeks of horrendous demolition work, as we watched our home literally being smashed apart…
The project grew and grew as walls came down, and this is when we started to learn a very, very valuable renovation lesson. It seems blatantly obvious, but find people you can TRUST and who understand your vision. We did strike largely lucky with this project, as it started off with a trusted friend working with us, and as it grew, he brought in his trusted circle of workers. I say we were “largely” lucky, because one of the guys, who started off well, seemed to go off the boil and things deteriorated with him. He was a very key part of the renovation – the electrician – and unfortunately when started things started to unravel with him, we ran into quite big issues. He would go AWOL, not turning up when he said he would. He always had an excuse for no-shows, but when he did turn up, we felt he was there under sufferance and work seemed to be not done to the standard it had been. So trust became a big issue – and eventually, the inevitable happened. He just disappeared, leaving work unfinished. And, we had stupidly made payments to him to try and ensure that he would complete jobs. He was very difficult to get hold of – only contacting us when we levelled with him about our disappointment and listed the jobs which had not been completed. He refuted this aggressively and was clearly not happy with being held to account – and in the end, we decided to draw a line under everything and got in another electrician to finish off the job. An expensive lesson to learn.
In hindsight, as soon as problems became apparent we should have taken action immediately and addressed the situation. Looking back, we let it go on for too long, hoping that things would just right themselves – but these things don’t. We’d demonstrated that we weren’t forceful enough and we believe that the electrician took advantage of this, especially when he admitted he’d been busy doing other jobs, having also pocketed our money. We knew what we should have done – listened to our inner, nagging thoughts – and taken action earlier. Ultimately though, the trust had gone and we weren’t going to get it back, so we had to move on if we were to get the project finished.
But it did teach us a valuable lesson, and our eyes were a whole lot more open, when we took on our next renovation. In a different country. But that’s for a new blog…