Renovations are Happening in Burnley - Duplex Apartment 2 Progress Update

As you are probably aware Tina Etherington, owner and Director of E&M Property Solutions, along with her Business partner Ryan Morgan, have been renovating a large property close to the town centre of Burnley. This property compromises of 4 office units, a 1 bedroom duplex apartment, a 3 bedroom duplex apartment and two further 3 bedroom apartments.

In this blog we are going to share the journey, so far, of renovating our 3 bedroom duplex apartment! So here goes...

Firstly, what is a duplex apartment, simply put its a flat with stairs, in this case there will be two levels within the same apartment. So like a house it has an upstairs and a downstairs but it is in a complex with other apartments, or flats. The above photographs show you what we are working with from the begining, it doesn't look so bad right?

WRONG!

We knew the amount of work we were going to have to put in, to get this building up to scratch and up to code, and yes the to do list was extensive. Dry Rot, Damp, Plumbing, Electrics, Plastering, Flooring, New Roof, New Joists, New floors, New Staircases basically everything was going to be ripped out, replaced and transformed.

The biggest task was the Dry Rot, this is what we tackled first. Now if you don't know about dry rot, it's nasty, it clings to anything it can, spreads rapidly and causes major structural damage! First things first, is removing anything contaminated by it, whether that's the floor boards, joists, ceiling beams, doors and door frames, skirting boards, if dry rot has touched it - its gone! After we were certain it had all been disposed of we moved onto treatment and clean up! Take a look at what this Dry Rot looks like ...

As you can see it looks revolting, and it is a nightmare! But we are glad to report that it is all gone!

After that, its on with replacing the flooring and the ceilings, and knocking off the old plaster board to take it back to brick. We want to make these apartments look amazing so a fresh clean start is a must for us!

What a mess! There was so much to rip out and remove.

The bags of rubble and waste just kept on coming and coming. We've even had to rebuild part of the internal and external wall under the windows (which will also be being replaced) due to the excessive damp and structural damage.

For this specific apartment we wanted to open up the rooms in the roof space, this meant creating a new access hatch and staircase, you can see the mystery hand (in the very first picture) pointing to where the new staircase is going to be. So as part of the planning this was granted! Meaning we could put a nice private bedroom upstairs along with its own private WC. Win!

The next steps are a complete rewire, plumbing, plaster boarding and of course fresh plaster, wood works such as skirtings, door frames and stairs etc, there's still a big 'to do list' to work our way through, before we can get onto the exciting part of kitchen and bathroom styling, but progress is progress and we want to celebrate it with you!

We've actually created a short video for you, so why not take a watch ...

It's quite the transformation so far. Things looked a whole lot worse before they started to look better, but that's to be expected on a project like this. We cant wait to show you the finished results, and when this duplex apartment is complete, we will certainly give you a grand tour. Not long now! Thanks again to Ryan, and to all of our amazing trade men, who have got us this far and are continuing to put in the long hours and hard work, we certainly do appreciate it!