Product Description

Many of Britain's four million Victorian and Edwardian houses were shoddily built and often require 'essential repairs'. Problems like rising damp, timber decay, bowed roofs and subsidence are well-known, but how can you tell if your house has major defects or is just typical for its age? Forget 'makeovers': this easy-to-use manual shows where to look for danger signs, what's 'normal' and what isn't, and how to fix common defects. Equipped with this book, you can talk the same language as builders and property professionals. This is the first book to cover logically all defects common to Victorian houses.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28397 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

useful and enjoyable
The roof on my 1880s house recently started leaking and I've got several quotes for repairing it. So I was pleased to find this house manual that shows the causes and remedies to typical problems found in victorian/edwardian houses.

The manual has quite a lot of detail and helped us get to grips with the work required and the resulting dampness to some ceilings and walls etc. But whats surpsrising is how enjhoyable this book is to read / browse with interesting historical stuff about how they were built and loads of nice colour photos! a massive improvemnt on the old black and white haynes motorbike manuals I used to buy years ago. highly recommended.

Great stuff !
It is very well written and also quite amusing! The author has put together a great mix of useful facts, history and humour to make it very readable.
The detail is excellent and it is technically spot on. It takes you though each part of the house in turn explaining what goes wrong and how to fix and restore it all in keeping with the age.
It is a very interesting read. The text is clear and informative and the pictures are lovely (except the ones of dry rot and woodworm!).

Enjoyable to read and useful
As a victorian house owner I like to improve my understanding of property construction and history whenever possible. I found this book most informative and I enjoyed the relaxed style of writing. A lot of property books rely on diagrams to illustrate problems but this one has some excellent photos of real life defects balanced with the more conventional 'glamour' photos showing time-capsule Victorian house original features. Each chpater has suggested solutions to all common problems in a specific part of the house, and the book seems to stress the need to approach old buildings with respect and not to unnecessarily impose modern solutions. Well worth buying in my opinion.