r/VictorianHouses

On A Cool Clear Day

I read some posts on here and thought I would throw in my experience. Firstly, if you buy a house that is Listed ensure you can afford big bills if something goes wrong and be prepared to wait for things to be fixed.

I knocked out the living room fireplace thinking I would have a 60cm x 45cm hole to the flu to install a period fireplace - the subsequent hole was 110cm in width, 80cm high and 90cm deep…I have a rather nice fire basket and a cast iron surround now.

Lifting carpets is hilarious. In my 29 square metre living room half was original Victorian pine, half was 1970s, thrown down by builders. I took the lot up - 2500 iron brads, nails - took me 3 months. The Victorian pine I bought was £1200 )and that was cheap).

Don’t put insulation under the suspended floor - Victorian houses need to breathe. Don’t put damp proof courses in / just maintain your air bricks.

Ensure your leaded lights are maintained. A plasterer opened one of my upstairs windows and it fell to its death. Another window on the same run feeds the bathroom and was not original so I ripped it out. Two things - £1400 per window and 3 years to get them fitted.

Personally, I would never put a fitted kitchen in a Victorian house. Mine unfitted one works for me.

Before and after pictures attached.

My husband and I (29M & 30F) finally closed on our historic church we’re turning into our house. 6.125% and total loan amount 293k but we only paid 116k for the building and then 149k for renovation and a 14k contingency in escrow. We were under contract for over 3 months and after numbers set back and 3 different lenders it’s finally all ours. Renovation has started and phase 1 will be done by end of July. We used an FHA 203k and if you have any questions please ask. I know everyone said this was the most difficult and impossible loan but I’m hard headed and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I think these are extremely underrated and we just didn’t have the time or energy to fight for a turn key in this economy with people bidding 100k+ over asking.

✨PSA✨ I know some of you are wanting to see the renovations process and I’m documenting and posting everything on TT, YouTube and IG my handle to all is cjdzimmer follow along to see all the pics and videos!

A rainy D.C. Sunday

Rain actually has a lot of character to it.

Over Spring break, we updated the bedroom in our 1890 house. We added wainscotting, picture rails, and completely refinished the fireplace, rebuilt it from scratch (you can see the before in the grey-walled photo). The mantle was found on FB Marketplace, the grate was rusting in the back of Architectural Salvage, the inset is electric from Amazon, the tile is from the Tile Shop. Then we color-saturated the room in SW Naval.

I know this type of dark room isn't for everyone but I find it sexy and soothing.

Our first attempt at wooden flooring - I don’t know whether you’ve tried laying it on concrete which undulates like the foothills of a small mountain range, but I wouldn’t recommend it!

just an architectural dream in need of some love