Phil L ) wibbled on Tuesday 11 January 2011 16:13:

Gill Smith wrote:
bought a 1950's ex-council house

it's just about liveable-in

so, where to start?

central heating, electrics, or the damp patches I just noticed at the
base of the sitting room walls

the first thing you need to do is go around each room and decide what
needs to be done.

if you are having it re-wired and CH put in, the chances are, every room
will need re-decorating afterwards, so the first thing on the list would
be to strip off all the wallpaper - this can be done by tradesmen, but
obviously they will charge you for this, another advantage of stripping
the walls is that you can identify other work that may be required
(someone will be plastering in there shortly, so you may as well find any
bad patches now, and he can do them all at the same time as the chasings
etc).

Agreed. Stripping and washing down is a tedious job but not arduous and can
be shared with almost anyone - SWMBO or have a mates' strip-n-BBQ/beer party
(you know what I mean, perverts!). And the tools cost bugger all, even if
you allow for a small garden sprayer and a nice steam stripper.

Once the OP gets to the replastering stage, especially if going for a full
skim, it is essential to sound the walls (I used a small spanner) and locate
the loose bits (skim or undercoat - you learn to tell by the sound).

Chop that off too. You will miss many bits, but you will at leat end up with
about 95+% of your walls sound compared to possibly a lot less if you don't
bother.

And the bits you miss will probably be small isolated bits a few inches big
which won't cause any problems, rather 2 foot long bands of skim (areas
where picture rail has been pulled off are the worst IME).



secondly, you need to decide what revolting stuff is coming out and rip it
out yourself (shelves, rotten skirtings, rails arhitraves etc) - this will
save you time and money in the long run EG, an electrician puts cables
behind skirtings, rails etc and they get plastered in, and then you remove
the woodwork - this will leave a horrid mess which will need
re-plastering.

And for electrics:

conduit, conduit, conduit. 20mm oval costs absolutely sod all - there is no
excuse for not specifying it for all buried sections.

Platic rad pipes can be run inside flexi tube (corrugated conduit) which
makes repairs easier.

--
Tim Watts