Survey came back with nothing dramatic beyond one damp patch in a back bedroom and a note about the gutters. Budget is about £2,000 for the first year on top of moving costs, and I have basic tools and most weekends free. I would rather spend it on the boring things that stop something expensive happening than on making a room look nice. What did you not do soon enough?
Spent our first year money on: gutters, a chimney check, loft insulation topped up, and having the electrics inspected so we knew what we had. Nothing to show visitors and no regrets at all.
Ignored a damp patch exactly like yours for two winters because it did not get bigger. It was not getting bigger because it had already soaked what it could reach; the plaster behind was gone and the skirting was rotten by the time I opened it up. Cost me about four times what it would have if I had taken the wall apart in the first summer. Damp patches are not stable, they are just slow.
Week one, before anything else: find and label the water shutoff, the gas shutoff if you have gas, and every breaker in the consumer unit. Take photos. Then buy a decent stopcock key and put it somewhere you will find it in the dark. The first time you need any of this it will be at eleven at night with water coming through a ceiling, and knowing where the valve is will be worth more than the whole two thousand pounds.
Politely disagreeing with doing anything at all beyond the water stuff. Live in a house for four seasons before you spend on it, because a 1968 house will tell you what it needs — where it is cold, where it is loud, which room you never use, where the condensation gathers. Everyone I know who renovated in the first six months redid part of it later. Keep most of that two grand until spring.
Agreed on rooms and layout. Not on gutters and drainage, which are the one category where waiting a year costs you money rather than saving it.
We waited a year on everything and the only thing I regret waiting on was insulation, purely because we spent a winter heating the loft.
Start a folder, physical or otherwise, and put every certificate, receipt, manual and photo of an open wall in it. Five years from now when someone asks what is behind that plasterboard, you will be very glad of the photo.
@shallow_well_shea · 6mo ago · 3 replies
Water, in this order: gutters cleared and the joints checked, downpipes actually discharging away from the wall, ground level outside below the damp course, and any external timber painted before winter. Almost every expensive problem I get called to started as water going somewhere slightly wrong for three years. It is the least satisfying money you will ever spend and it is the reason your house will not need the fifteen thousand pound version of the same conversation later.
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@gramgrader_gus · 6mo ago
Add: check where the gutter water goes once it hits the ground. Mine discharged neatly into a drain that had been blocked since before we moved in, so it was quietly soaking the corner of the house for years.
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@rueben_alsop · 6mo ago
The damp patch is in the back bedroom, which is directly above the corner where the downpipe is. That is probably not a coincidence.
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