Open Questions

Assuming we're going down the pellet heating route:

• Where do we locate the pellet hopper / burner? Wood Shed (pictured)? Cellar?
• How will the hopper be filled (NB: Asbestos in wood shed roof)?

Requirements:

• Thermal Capacity (kitchen, two bathrooms both with bath and shower, visitors toilet and laundry room and some heating?
• Automatic pellet feed (hopper). 
• Home Assistant integration (WiFi? ZigBee? Home Assistant Integration available?)

We have an easement to use our neighbours septic tank until 2030.

Any hope of mains sewage before then?

Do we need our own tank?

If yes, where to we put it? 

• Under the garden? 
• Under the Jungle?

Remove the cast iron soil pipe from the North West corner of the property?

If possible we would like to make two structural changes to the property:

We have a low structural arch in the attic which we would like to make higher or remove and we would like to remove the arch separating the two halves of the kitchen (replacing with a cross member).

There is also a wooden structure in the kitchen we would like to remove.

We need to understand the cost of doing so to assess viability. It might be more cost effective to do this work as a single step.

For planning (what is realistic financially)

• Can we remove the arch from the attic (technical / cost) ?
• Can we remove the arch from the kitchen (technical / cost)?

2nd floor Mezzanine bathroom

• Feasibility of removing the wall and replacing with doors?
• Softeness of floor boards

Cabling in or on the walls?

Review Elettro Ticino offer:

• Overlap with previous work (Claude)?
• What and when (driven by hot water work)?

Insulation: Above walls (once we've decided about the attic arch).

Attic Insulation: 

• Bits we can't get to (above stairs).
• Membrane

Plasterboard the attic.

What are we going to do with the snug ceiling? 

• Remove?
• Chandeliers?

How do we improve the plaster on the walls throughout?

• Skim (and if so, how does the new plaster bond)?
• Insulate exterior walls or not?
• Keep the old distemper in the stair well (and treat with olive soap to preserve)?

Back door water leak in heavy rain?

Pane of glass over the front door (currently single glazed, legacy)?

Internal second level front door (double glazed)?

Many of the walls have been overpainted with modern synthetic pains. This is flaking badly, probably due to modern pains being used on lime walls.

Under the paint on the stairs there is some old lime wash (grey with pink edging, see picture). This is clearly from the early days of the house. We would like to remove the modern paint to expose the lime wash and treat it so this feature can be retained. We particularly like the work done by The Nito Project with lime plaster, lime putty and olive soap. It would be interesting to know if olive soap could make a good finish for this part of the walls. 

This Nito Project video is fun and inspires us to give this ago (also for finishing the walls in the attic)

When we remove the (metal and enamel) bath tub from the second for we will use this to make a batch of lime putty for future work. 

The kitchen walls have at at some time been coated with a synthetic coating (Artex of similar). The recommendation from the surveyor when we purchased the house is that this should be removed. This is one of the primary reasons why we're addressing the kitchen towards the end of the project. From research, such coatings sometimes contain asbestos so this will need to be tested.

This is a big, messy job and will involve re-plastering the whole room. In the first instance, Pete will have a go at plastering with a view to doing it ourselves.

The garden to the west of the property is not particularly useful and we are currently discussing what to do with it.

One option could be to terrace that area, however, we have no idea what is under that ground and we have some hints from The Jungle that we might encounter bed rock fairly quickly. How can we understand this? 

The kitchen floor is finished with modern terracotta tiles which leave a lip across the doorway. We are unsure what to do with these. They aren't particularly to our taste and there might even be something nice beneath them. We have no idea how viable the removal of these tiles (and glue) will be.

We are considering returning the ground floor rooms to their original height (removing ceilings). We have no idea what is above the ceiling in the Snug. The outcome of the plumbing design and the kitchen archway removal may influence what we do in the kitchen.