Victorian Workers Cottage renovate and extend

Well I had not expected to start the renos until the tenants moved out (which they have now) but a winter storm did the old side fence in and brought forward the construction schedule.

What should ahve been a straightforward job started out tedious as I realised the large tree in the backyard stood exactly on the middle of the boundary line After spending 4hrs trying to work out how to build the fence around it I did what i should have done in the first place and called a tree lopper, $400 and a few hours later and the tree was gone and I was ready to start (I also now had some afternoon sun in the back yard).

I spent the rest of the day and the next getting the holes dug, posts in and rebated and the rails on and that was the end of my weekend. Coming back the next weekend didnt take long to get the palings on tidy up and dump the old fence. I thought I better replace the old gate as well and decided on a prefab steel frame from bunnings $110ish and then attached a few left over palings. Made for a very quick improvement to the look of the property.

Here is a more detailed explanation of building my fence which is 1.95 high with 3 rails.

Materials required:



Plus a couple of thousand 50mm gal nails (for paling to rails)

Plus a few hundred 90*3.15 hot dipped gal nails (for rails to posts)

Tools required:

1. Post hole shovel, scissor type
2. Crowbar or fencing bar
3. Shovel
4. Coil nailer (I used the DUOFAST KD665A) and compressor, a framing gun doesnt hurt either but isn't necessary
5. Circular saw 9inch or bigger
6. Hammer, chisel, string line, pencil, square, level, ground paint, clamps

Method I used:

1. Stake out the 2 ends of your fence on the boundary.
2. Measure the distance between these and divide it into equal distances of 2400 or less (as close to 2400 as possible though).
3. Mark these points with ground paint aprox 60mm back from directly under the string line, these are the centres of your post holes.
4. Using your fencing bar and scissor shovel dig all holes including the ends to the depth of in my case 1m (1/3 in hole 2/3 out, 600mm will suffice for all fences under 1800 high). Clean out the bottom of the holes and place a sole plate in the bottom of each (Hardwood block)
5. Place the two end posts in the end holes on their sole plates and measure up the height of the plinth less 25mm from the ground and mark. This indicates the bottom of your bottom rail.
6. Remove these posts and measure down 150mm from the top of the post and once again mark. This indicates the top of your top rail.
7. Mark the middle of these 2 marks this will indicate the position of the centre of the middle rail.
8. Using these initial marks draw out the rebates with your tape and square and then set saw blade to your rail depth. Make multiple cuts half way across the face of the post on the side that the rails will extend from and then chisel, finally check that your rail houses nicely.
9. Replace these posts in their correct holes and use stakes, clamps and level to position exaclty upright. Alternatively just hold it about right and put the first soil cement mix load in about 100mm and ram you will be able to make adjustments to the level whilst the post is more or less free standing. Commence backfilling with a mix of soil and cement, I used about 3/4 bag per hole. Fill about 100mm at a time and then ram solidly with the reverse end of your fencing bar, repeat until the hole is filled slightly proud to allow water to drain away. Put a small amount of water in as you go and continue to check your levels in between ramming, some adjustment may be necessary and is possible until you get about halfway filled.
10. Stretch very taughtly a string line between these posts on their paling face and slightly below bottom rebate (1mm).
11. Place all other posts loosely in their holes on their sole plates, hold upright and mark where the string line touches their front face. Post by post remove from hole and translate all other measurements from this mark. Then Cut and Chisel out rebates across the front face and check rails house nicely. Replace in hole.
12. Backfill all posts as per above.
13. Install rails with the middle rail offset from the top and bottom rails use the 90 mm nails to attach to posts, 2 per rail per post shoul be more than enough.
14. Install plinth so that it covers the bottom 25mm of the bottom rail, make sure you get this level as all of the palings will sit on this.
15. Starting at one end install the first under paling (150mm wide) make sure you use your level to get this exactly vertical. The under paling requires one nail in the centre per rail. Install the next paling with a 50mm gap, I found my level was exactly 50mm and worked well as a gapper allowing me to recheck my level regularly as I went. Sometimes small adjustments in the gap were required to maintain level.
16. Install the first overpaling (100mm wide) so that it overlaps the first underpaling by 25mm. Overpalings require 2 nails per rail, make sure with you spacing of these that they do not pierce the underpaling as well as this should be free to expand/contract independantly. Repeat with 100mm gap, a spare straight paling can be used. Once again periodically check for vertical, gaps and overlaps
17. Tidy up and the old fence to the tip.
18. Job Done

This is a really useful site

Paling Fence guide

Some general before shots








New roof is certainly on the cards!



And that built in under the verandah is near the start of the has to go list




Some of the movement in the stumps.



Back Deck



Pressed metal ceilings in half of the hall and what was once the Lounge, soon to be master bedroom.



Floor boards look OK, nothing a bit of serious sanding wont fix, these have to come up first for the restumping and then am going to relay them on top of a layer of yellow tongue for added insulation, and to ensure the bathroom floor height matches.


And most importantly it has a shed!!!! but not a lawn mower

Right, up to the next stage which means restumping the existing house, I've got all my quotes and I have decided to go with a local company that are charging $6700 to restump and level the whole property. According to the restumper he quoted this house 20yrs ago and then the owners at the time decided not to bother! I think its still standing more out of obstinancy than anything else!

One catch is the floors have to come up first, and with a building this old they built the floors around the wall frames so the the floor boards actually sit under the dividing walls, this means the wall linings have to come off which, isn't altogether a bad thing. I discovered a lot of the bad smell in the place was 100yrs of accumulated crap in the wall cavities and it will also give me a chance to properly insulate the building.

Although it was annoying to find that the horsehair plaster had been laid up directly over the original pine board wall cladding. It means the job takes twice as long and I'll end up with twice the amount of rubbish to get rid off!

I think with the difficulty in removing this that I will leave the ceilings as board and paint them as a feature.





Plaster is easy to pull down





Its like a Chinese jigsaw puzzle you cant dismantle one thing without removing the piece next to it!



Board lining isn't, easy to pull down that is!




Lovely mixture of modern and old cables, well at least with the cladding off the cost to rewire will be reduced somewhat.

love the pig iron decorations on the balcony

apparently melbourne has more of that going on than anywhere else in the world

Yes so do I, unfortunately I'm missing some where the verandah was built in around the return, although i think I have sourced some replacements. I can see rebuilding the verandah and stripping the lacework is going to be time consuming but very rewarding once finished.

Gday Steve, thanks for the offer, at the moment I've managed to locate most of the materials I'm going to need, but will definitely be quick to ask if I get stuck. It's my intention to try and revive the original period exterior, with maybe a slight colour palette change. I would love to use genuine Galvanised iron to reroof as opposed to zinc alum or colorbond but the price differential and supply problems make it unachievable at the moment so I will probably end up using color bond in a gull grey colour which is a satisfactory secondbest. The interior is planned to have 2 modern bathrooms with the 3 other existing rooms restored to original with the exception of new plaster instead of the pine board for the walls, I do need to source a replacement victorian fireplace and mantle for one of the rooms that has had a gas heater installed cheaply!!



I've been carefully removing the 8" skirtings with some success but am struggling to get some of the architraves off without damaging them, I havent even managed to get them far enough away from the wall to cut the nails of from behind - any suggestions as I would really love to reuse these as opposed to putting reproduction pieces back on.


Oh and the house is in Newtown, near Geelong

Hi Steve, not sure about replacing the front weatherboards yet will see what the overall condition is once the verandah is off and I've had a chance to sand them back a bit. Your right the lining boards are a pain to get off but I probably managed to save half of them for reuse as wainscot in the hallway as some of these are already split with the movement from the rotten stumps. Thanks for the contacts and the info.

Slightly intersting under the house to say the least but this will be done remedied next month.



I really like the stump in the right foreground!

If you are wondering why so many posts on my first day, Ive been snowed in and the car is 2 wheel drive with no chains, so no getting back to Geelong today!

Can I suggest you get rid of the concrete front veranda floor soonest! It will be blocking subfloor ventilation and potentially causing damp problems at the base of the studs of your front wall. No point replacing the weatherboards if you have a continuing problem with that flooring!!

Lovely cottage. My sister has one almost identical. She built the same sort of extension, but ran it across the back of the cottage so she could have a wall of french windows overlooking the back garden.

Thanks for the suggestion Black Cat, I had thought about removing the concrete but was disuaded by the extra excavation required but you are quite right I was making this decision based purely on aesthetics and on that basis had decided no, but I am going to have a rethink on this based on long term structural soundness. Whats a bit of digging anyway, and some of it would have had to come up anyway to replace the stirrups for the verandah posts.

All that exercise is good for you, lol I have gone down two dress sizes since I started my reno - and I am very expensive to feed ...

And re the skirting and architraves - the profile is sold as 'National Trust' here in Tassie. With all that paint on,and hard plaster on the other side, getting them off will be a real pain, as will stripping them. If the budget can stand it - go repro in this instance ...

Very nice, are they your work? I think my tastes lean towards the last image especially the overhead with the glass doors. Here is the current kitchen.



Not overly inspiring but its functional!

Haven't really put much thought to the style of the new kitchen yet, its probably going to be one of the last things to be installed. Have to get the new main bathroom done as a first priority and then get one of the bedrooms back to a liveable condition after that it should be plain sailing..........for a blind man in a leaky boat haha.

Dave

Sigh. I am suffering serious kitchen envy now. Makes my Bunnings Flatpack look almost as tawdry as it really is ...

I actually quite like that little kitchen DBFalls, though I can see that accessing those top cupboards could be a challenge. You could maybe make one of those library ladders that runs along a track to access them?

This weekends work involved pulling down the collapsing original verandah



Came apart fairly easily and I even managed to keep the profiled rafters intact to use as templates



Only thing that really wasnt pleasant was continually being covered in a 100yrs of grime.





Built in under verandah patially gone





Built in under verandah completely gone thank god!



Next job is to rip up the concrete porch in readiness for the new deck and verandah to go back in.

Had a bit of time left so I pulled apart the third bedroom as well.



Old mantle safely removed in one piece.



It was interesting pulling the mantle off and had the suprising find of an old christmas card dated 1895, so I think the building may be slightly older than I had first thought.

Next week is remaining room to be stripped and then floorboards up so the restumpers can get to it the week after.

Ok latest photos.

Floors coming up carefully, the restumper (Armstrongs in Geelong) lent me a couple of floor lifters which made the job a lot easier, probably 2 solid days to take up the floors in 2 rooms. Secret seems to be patient and try not to lift each point too much before moving to the next joist, and it definitely comes up easir working from the groove side first.



Room 1 and 2 floors partially up.



The big new bedroom floors coming up.



And nearly done!



I took a few cubic metres of rubish out from under the house after the boards were up. And have now moved my temporary bedroom into the dining room at the back of the house, which I can lock off from the front. I pulled up the majority of the tiles first and roughly relaid some of the old carpet for the time being.



So will get the front four rooms restumped and then put the floor back down and move my living quaters back to the front of the house while the kitchen dining etc gets done.



Restumping has commenced, not really sure what was holding the building up as all the stumps that have come out so far were completely rotted through!



Other jobs done this week include dismantling the old front deck



Cutting the grass which was nearly waist high (4hrs later, lucky it was a nice day to be outside) and chopping down all the trees in the back yard, which actually makes it look quite spacious now.





Started pulling apart the hallway as well in readiness to pull up the final floorboards.



Next weeks job will be to take 50cm out of the front yard and put in a retaining wall a metre back from the front fence to give me enough clearance for when the concrete slab comes up in the front and the new deck gets laid in preparation for the verandah going back on.

Crikey! You really have been busy - well done!!! It will look so fabulous once you are done. I love the fireplace - and what a treasure to find that Christmas Card - best Ihave managed was a tarnished, not-quite-silver teaspoon with initials punched into it.

Very tiring week, restumpers started on friday and finished up at 10am this morning, backfilled droppers fitted and site left tidy, really happy with the work.







This was the Kitchen, the bearers and joists had to be replaced here due to some severe deteriation, unlike the rest of the house which was in very good condition.



Kitchen demolition was my first job of the week to give the stumpers access to replace this area of subframe.



After being unable to get a quote of any sort - the job was either to small or access wasn't good or they didnt have the time, I decided to excavate the front yard myself the old fashioned way, with a pick, shovel and wheelbarrow. two and a half days later I have the yard more or less levelled with good clearance for the new front deck and verandah.



Just have to organise to get the gas meter moved and the piping put back down to depth, originally it was only in at 400mm which was suprising and quickly uncovered in the first hour of digging. Visible under the protective yellow pipe in the below photo.



All up had to take out 10m by 3.5m to a depth of around 400mm, which included a reinforced concrete slab of 8m by 1.5m, this required borrowing the stumpers demo saw to get it into manageable chunks (the body is feeling the effort of moving 14 cubic metres of soil from the front yard to the back!)

Trying to take it easy today, started pulling apart the rear deck whilst waiting for my flooring to arrive.



Ive got 20 sheets of Yellow tongue due and another 10 sheets of Sycon Secura Interior Wet Area flooring (expensive $90+ per sheet, but will stand the test of time) hopefully will arrive before lunch. Its my intention to lay the yellowtongue as a base and then re-lay the pine floorboards that were carefully removed over the top.

Nice job...and very interesting...I just wondered why you had to remove all the floorboards for re-stumping...seems there is a fair bit of room under the house?

Hi Leeton, No the floors didn't have to come up for the stumpers, although it did reduce the cost. It was more about sealing the floor, the gaps between boards was up to 5mm with lots of draughts, so by pulling up the boards I could clean out the tongue and grooves and re-lay nice and tight (hopefully) and also putting the yellow tongue underneath should give the floor a really solid feel to it once finished. Also one room that was previously a bedroom is becoming the main bathroom and I wanted to use the Sycon product for this directly onto the joists for durability.

I've been jumping around with the jobs a bit this week but have managed to get the yellow tongue down in one bedroom and the scyon sheeting laid in the bathroom and ensuite. I had a mate who is a plumber come and give me a hand and I now have all the plumbing done for the bathrooms as well as framing out the main bathroom.



Old kitchen floor is now relaid as the ensuite to the current junk room, lots of floor board to de-nail!



And yes its level.

New floor in new bathroom.



Framing out the toilet and the dividing wall between the bathroom and front bedroom.





Next week I'm hoping to pull the old rear bathroom and laundry off the house, these are under a lean too roof that has to go to make room for the extension. Will then aim to get the extension and deck stumped, bearers and joists on and get the yellow tongue laid by Sunday.

Looks great! well done!
Is there a reason you didn't use ant caps on the new stumps?

Hi Sundance,

Building code doesnt require it for concrete stumps, as far as I can determine the metal caps are only there to force the ants to build a path around the metal externally to get up to the rest of the house, this obviously makes visual inspection easy but does no actually provide a non passable barrier to the ants. Likewise the ants can't burrow through concrete and therefore have to build an external path on the concrete so visual inspection of ant activity is also possible without caps. Not a great saving but didnt see any benefit either.

So our unseasonal weather has put back the extension stumping, but have managed to pull down the old laundry and deck and remove all the old stumps and level the site in readiness. I also used the opportunity to finish laying the final small pieces of yellow tongue around the fireplaces so all the base level of floor in the existing building is now complete At the same time I am part way through having the meter relocated and having the new submain installed in the hallway. All of the old wiring from the roof has been removed with the exception of one cable for my only functional GPO. I still have to get back in the roof to remove the old insulation and vacuum all the built up dust and probably remove the four massive birds nests I have found. Will post some photos tomorrow hopefully.

Ok, so as I said in the previous post the weather and forecast weather caused a change in plans and I have been doing a lot of indoor work. The parents are also visiting at the moment and have been lending a helping hand which has been great, hope I havent worked them too hard (Thanks Mum and Dad)

Heres some photos of the indoor progress.



All the floors are now back down in yellow tongue awaiting the old floor boards to go back on top.



Started framing out new ensuite and decided I couldnt live with the offset window and thought it should be higher (plus the bottom plate had rotted out and needed replacement)





Demolished and partially rebuilt also have to pull the weatherboards of the meeting wall seen in left of photo above and in photo below as they are completely rotted out.





Reframed, wall clad and window temporarily back in. Pulled the other wall down and was just about ready to put the cladding on when the big storm rolled through this afternoon, ended up very wet just throwing some builders plastic up to keep the water out.



My swimming pool of a front yard after the rain below.



Some pics of the where the laundry used to be below.





Meanwhile the parents have been busy retrofitting breather foil to the external walls from the inside.





Im planning on also installing R1.5, 65mm insulation in these wall cavities hopefully next week.

Oh, forgot to mention have also had the new meter box and 'smart meter installed' on the external wall with a sub main installed in the entrance hall with a couple of builders GPO's until I have all the new wiring completely roughed in. Powercor have installed a new feed with 55A fuse. So am now not in fear of an electrical fire prematurely ending my renovations, at the same time I am considerably poorer

Yes, but as soon as you get the floors, you want the walls and so on!

Just a few photo updates,

Finished putting the weatherboard back up behind the ensuite just need to paint it now and architraves around the windows.



Cleaning out the roof, probably the worst job I've had so far and only partially finished. The dust is1cm thick throughout.



Starting to look better!



New Shower Hob installed and under cover for the moment.



Spent some down time working on plans, it turns out that having pulled down the front verandah and what was left of the original deck I now need to submit an ammendment to my building permit, $250 gone quicker than I could earn it, but quite enjoyed brushing the cobwebs of the design skills (Google Sketchup). Whilst doing this I found a great little program for selecting Bearers and Joists for internal use CHH hyspan 'DesignIt' simple to use, gives you a range of options and produces design certificates you can submit to council without the need of engaging an engineer for your subfloor. Unfortunately this is only good for Hyspan range which is for internal use only, so it was back to the span tables for the decks bearers and joists



Just have to play with this a bit more, to paste it out for the detail the council want. I know this looks like the hard way of doing things with the bearers running out from the house, but I really wanted to have the boards running away from the house as per the original so this is how it has to be.

OK what else have I been doing, well mostly starightening studs, plane combined with a bit of crippling, tedious but should make for a nice result, have also been nail laminating new studs to some of the originals just to get a flat surface, some of the older studs whilst nominally 70mm are closer to 55mm in some areas. Its hard to add wood back on hence the nail lamination of new uprights.

looking good mate, you got's some sketchup skills!!!

meself, i would just suggest lose the paper mask and as a minimum get something P2 with a 'cool flow' style valve, you only get's one set of them lungs mate

Cheers Twinny, yeah 5hrs on getting the design right, but the good thing is I've now got a plan to work to and it makes the material order a lot easier as well.

Yeah I think a better mask may be in order, by the same token there is no asbestos in the house and the old insulation is wool, must admit I was worried about what interesting things might have been making up the huge birdsnests though!

Hi. Nice work, the renovations look great. What program did you use for the drawings you did?

Hey Dominicw,

Program used was google sketchup (free download), pretty straight forward to use if you spend a bit of time watching the tutorials. It is however probably better for 3d design than 2d.

Well I took 2 weeks of the renovations over Christmas and New Years, but back into now.

My mate Dallas came down from Melbourne to give me a hand last week and we insulated and replaced the weatherboard on another wall. Then we proceeded to get very drunk at the local pub)



The plans for the front verandah and deck were approved 2 days after I submitted them which was a great result.

Here's a picture of nearly all the crap that came out of the ceiling, I'm going to have to get one more skip in to get rid of the final bits of junk so that should allow me to clean up the yard properly.



So Sunday myself and a good mate 'Raz' who happens to be a concreter marked out the stump holes for the extension and started diggin them after lunch. No special tools used except for a bunch of string lines and a good level.



We had 27 holes to dig at 400 * 400 by 900 deep (or to the clay level which ended up being @ 1mtr down). We ended up finishing these by early afternoon on Monday, so I gave the council a ring to book the footing inspection and whilst on the phone the officer handling my permit informed me that I had left out the rafter dimensions for the front deck. After telling him I intended to use purlins he said no problems he would just add the required dimensions to my plan for me and would have the approved plans out with the inspector Wednesday morning (Very impressed with Geelong councils building division!).

Couldn't do any more work on the back until the footings had passed inspection so decided we may as well dig the 22 footings for the front deck/verandah whilst we were waiting. These were a lot easier only being 600 deep, marked out and dug by the end of day Tuesday.





Inspector arrived 9am Wednesday, scraped the bottom of all the holes to check we had gone down the requisite distance into the clay, picked up one that needed to be deeper which Raz fixed up whilst I got the inspector to certify the holes for the deck as well. All passed so we were ready to get out of the ground.

Measured up the holes for the stumps and whet around to the local supplier who just happened to be 2 blocks round the corner, ordered all the stumps and they were delivered 10 minutes later ). I thought we could get stuck into it so whipped around to the landscaping supplies and got 3.5 cubic metres of Con Mix($65/m) and 30 bags of cement ($7 each) and then went and hired a mixer for the week ($180) Also went aound to the timber merchant and ordered all the bearers, joists and verandah posts/beams for delivery friday. After all that managed to get the first 9 stumps in (1 at end of each row and 1 in the middle of each row.

Thursday decided to be a hot day but couldnt stop now we got the remaining stumps in and put a couple of the H5 treated pine posts in for the front deck as well.



Friday morning we backfilled all the extension holes and cleaned up the site then put all the posts in for the front verandah only stopped to unload the timber delivery for the deck and extension. Next job was to install the bearers and after putting in three 7.2mtr long bearers I couldn't help myself and just sat a few joists on to 'See how it looked'. That pretty much wound up Friday and the pub was a well deserved break in Air Conditioned comfort.



Saturday morning we got the other three bearers in and installed all the joists, tying it into the existing building. This took us through to lunch and I decided we'd call it a weekend and have a beer, Raz didn't disagree.



Another good friend, Lucy, popped into visit and decided the extension floor made a pretty good deck!



The new bearers actually extend under the wall behind Lucy by 1.7mtrs and will have new joists installed on them when this part of the old building is demolished on Tuesday. The building was temporarily propped while the existing bearers were cut out to allow for installation of the new. The existing substructure in this part of the building is a complete dogs breakfast of used materials unlike the rest of the building. (leads me to believe this used to be a back verandah that was built in)

This week will see the plumbing finished in the existing building, villaboard going up in the ensuite, demolish the 1.8mtrs of building under the skillion roof, put down yellow tongue and have the site measure completed by the prefab frame and truss company.

I'm feeling tired just thinking about it!

Bloss! You're supposed to be encouraging, lol. But you're right. Finish and fit out takes the time ...

It really does look quite wonderful - well done on the progress!!

Thanks for the encouragement, very timely, I've been plastering and waterprooofing the ensuite whilst its been raining and it is tedious. I have to keep stopping myself from going back to fix slight imperfections............it only makes it worse. Will start the tiling on monday and hopefully have that under my belt by Thursday

A few new photos, have tiled the new ensuite and started pulling down the old bathroom. Grouting tomorrow and pull down the rest of the old bathroom and then fit the remaining 5 joists for the extension.



Raz contemplating the outdoor bathroom



Ensuite befoe grouting

Your doing great work, something to be proud of.

Cheers, Su.

Cheers Shauk,

Days like today can be frustrating, thought it would only take a couple of hours to silicone around the ensuite and install the vanity and toilet, 7 hrs later job done (did I mention i hate silicone!!)

Anyway have some more progress photos vanity and toilet installed and the rest of the sub floor for the extension completed yesterday and passed by council first time.

Also had the site measure from the company building my prefab frames and trusses, yesterda. As always its more complex than you think added to by the fact the roof pitches are unequal. Should be delivered next Friday I hope )

Old bathroom completely removed and sub floor completed.



Also new doorway into 4th Bdrm/Study completed



Ensuite Photos from today







Mate Raz enjoying the only shower currently available, Im glad the weather isnt too cold at the moment is all I can say

Where'd you get those tiles? Very nice.