restoration and renovation

Full restoration of medieval cottage, Nottingham

We are a young family living in a Grade 2a listed cottage which we bought in poor condition three years ago. The house we bought had huge potential with a thatched roof and large plot, but is technically located in Nottingham City, and had had a varied life as a farm, divided into two houses, as two council houses and lastly having been clumsily reunited.

Emergency actions, which included reroofing and propping up supporting beams throughout the house, absorbed most of the budget we brought to the project. At this stage we began working with Old House New Home, with George Clarke and they strongly advised that we look for a project manager able to support us through the full restoration.

We met Paul Thorneycroft of Listed Property Management at the beginning of 2019, visiting a similar listed full house restoration that he had led. This is a personal experience, but we found that the architects we met were more focused on extensions and adding new fabric, rather than working with the constraints of the listed fabric. Instead, we appointed an architectural technician who worked closely with LPM and with the local conservation officer to translate our plans for the house into a sympathetic, achievable delivery plan.

While friends who own listed buildings saw their applications rejected repeatedly, by working with the conservation team we built up a relationship of trust, and over more than two years, no application was denied or delayed beyond a couple of days.

Over a series of builds culminating in a six-week main stage (while we lived in the house with a baby throughout!) we turned the orientation of the cottage to the garden. The unsympathetic extensions were substantially amended, knocking through to create a kitchen across two rooms. Windows were added and a very large proportion of the new brick at the back of the cottage removed and replaced with a run of French windows, beautifully crafted by an LPM contact.

LPM contacts have been invaluable throughout the work, allowing us to achieve an astonishing level of change for a total budget under £60,000, but were particularly helpful in this very complicated part of the project, as the conservation joiner selected by Paul was regarded as a trusted expert voice by the local authority. This was the same for the surveyors, building inspection and other relationships managed by LPM. Because of the level of experience and reputation of the contractors appointed, we have been allowed to be flexible and responsive to the needs of the building, changing plans where required or where we identified ways to improve on the final designs

Paul and LPM have been highly professional throughout, and the advice to appoint a project manager, having not previously considered this, was amongst the best we received. We calculate that Paul’s involvement was not just cost-neutral but allowed us to make substantial savings on costs against the previous quotations we held. By comparing the build cost, windows, doors and other craftsman made items sourced by LPM against comparable commercial products we know that we have ended up with exceptional, lasting quality - but at a cost which made it possible for us to complete such a wide-ranging and extensive building project in a comparatively short period of time.

And we are of course, now happy to show our lovely home off. When appointing LPM we benefited from being able to see and talk to people who had previously completed projects from small to large, and would now like to pass this down the line. For anyone considering a listed or historic building project, our contact details are available from LPM and we will be happy to offer you a viewing and to talk through the pitfalls, the lessons we learned and most importantly, the level of transformation we have secured.

KG/DM