So when we came to choosing paints, we wanted to keep the moisture permeability.  This meant choosing clay paints – most of which come solely in disgusting shades of brown and green.  We were saved by Earthborn, who do 126 colours of clay paint which goes on very nicely – the finish looks slightly chalky (although it doesn’t come off) and the colours change with the light in an interesting way.  One area of standard plaster got ECOS paint to get a particular colour, but the ECOS paint was not happy on the lime plaster – it looks quite patchy even after 3 coats.  The Dulux paint now marketed as “eco paint” has low VOC (fumes) but is an acrylic paint so not vapour permeable and there are environmental issues with the manufacture.  We bought the Earthborn paints from Ty Mawr.

The first phase of work on the kitchen has been completed, including a structural steel cabinet which houses two ovens and holds up the chimney.  The stainless steel worktop was bent locally to create a shape that will hold up cupboards (except over the hob) and creates an elegant shape with no nasty corners to catch muck in.

The cupboard doors and drawer fronts are made from recycled timber from a demolished high school lab benches.

We’re currently slightly stuck on choosing the ideal board to make the sides of the cupboards and drawer unit out of – current choices include 100% recycled coloured MDF which is lovely but involved buying a whole pallet from Germany when we only need two boards (despite them having a UK subsidiary) or calcium silicate or magnesium oxide which would be ideal if they were made from industrial waste products but the ones we’ve found seem to be freshly mined for the purpose.

The idea is to create a kitchen that will last, with no intention of changing it for a more fashionable one in a few years time, and avoiding the use of plastic covered chipboard which is very difficult to recycle and not a very good idea to burn either.

This is Udi In Reco, 120mm thick, similar to the external insulation but with a special smooth internal render as the vapour control layer.  This fixed to the wall with much less trouble than the aerogel, using adjustable long screws with plastic plugs on the end.  It did mean some joinery work to extend the window cills and surrounds, but these were made with recycled old timber from other parts of the house so the colours match.

You can buy this insulation from Back to Earth.

This was  a lovely material – cuts with a bread knife, smells like harvest time, and no more freezing cold feet. By cutting it slightly large, it holds itself in place with no fixings.  It was supplied by Back to Earth (see links for more info).

Eventually we’ll put the plasterboard back, which will be even better.

While this work was going on we also found huge amounts of cold air was getting in around some of the sash windows – as soon as the window surround was removed it was clear that a second world war bomb had blown the windows in and they had been shoved back out without being properly refixed (in 1941 judging by the newspapers packing the spaces).  So we were able to seal up these air paths too.  Next summer we need to replace the pointing around all the windows while they are repainted.

The good news is that the house feels significantly warmer!

I’ve also just added a link to Chorlton Eco Refurb, a local group working on getting more work done to the many houses in this area that need it.

The log fired heating system + accumulator cost £7,234 and the solar install with controller and consolar stratifying tank cost £7,182 – this is higher than usual for solar but we have more tubes than anyone regards as normal and we’re still getting heat today in November.   As it’s fairly warm outside this will mean we will have enough hot water for showers and can light the small woodburner for heating (which cost £1,100 fitted) instead of the boiler.  For a similar price we could have had a pellet boiler and small solar install but this would have been less resource efficient – pellets have to be made and shipped around in tankers where our solar output is now cost free and we’re currently burning Udi woodfibre insulation offcuts, our old roof battens and some beams our builders took out of another house.    When nearby skips don’t fill our cellar we get wood from a local tree surgeon which is about two thirds of the cost of pellets.

We added a maintenance gantry and  access hatch costing £1,348 which isn’t a requirement but will be cheaper than hiring a scaffold tower when we need to do maintenance.

The new windows cost £635 per square metre, a total of £2,157 for four opening lights and two fixed.

The refurbished windows cost £170 per square metre, a total of £4,550 for twenty windows and secondary glazing the stained glass panels.  About half of this is labour and it’s not terribly complicated – if you can use a router and have time on your hands this could be done for alot less.

For insulation we spent £845 fitting glass wool under the ground floor by taking down the cellar ceiling.  We spent £5,159 on Spacetherm for the front and back walls and where ceiling height was a problem on the top floor.  We bought £638 of wool insulation and £172 of glasswool for the other areas of the top floor ceilings.  The Udi Reco system for the gable wall cost £9,373 in total, which is £134 per square metre.

So that’s a total of about £38,500 on the heating, insulation and draft proofing.

Having paid £297,000 for the house in 2004 we’ve spent just over £85,000 overall on maintenance and decoration, which is still less than we would have paid for a house this size in good order.   This has given us a brand new roof, draftproof windows, a seriously efficient heating and solar system, complete rewiring including burglar/smoke alarm system,  two refurbished bathrooms, two fully rebuilt bedrooms plus an office and a house which is now comfortable in winter – the first sign of spring used to be a visitor with their coat off!  Someone less interested in high quality design might not have needed top of the range window fittings, stainless steel sockets and light switches, Italian lights and feature window.  And the kitchen is still to be done…

November 2009