My plan to renovate ‘Lincolnshire’s ugliest house’

When the render was done, in the 1970s, the previous owner had wanted it to look like a frosted wedding cake, I’ve been told. But it’s been called “Lincolnshire’s ugliest house” by the BBC, and even appeared on a local news programme, BBC Look North, as such.

The house before works to dismantle its “wedding cake” coating

However, I fell in love with it on my viewing and thought I could turn this three-bedroom ugly duckling into a swan, paying £190,000 in December 2023.

Built as a police station in 1897, the house’s amazing original features, such as mouldings and a carved balustrade on the front balcony, were completely smothered. The concrete material was not only ugly but damaged and worn and needing serious attention.

I had six expert render companies come out to assess it and quote for repairs. All of them told me there was too much damage and the external walls couldn’t be taken back to brick. This was disappointing as I wanted to restore the house to what it originally looked like.

They said removing the wedding cake render and replacing with resin render or silicone render would be best. One company also offered to inject a damp course as it said my house didn’t have one and the survey said I needed one. I trusted the experts, chose the firm and paid my deposit of £8,000 for works to commence.

These works would include removing the existing render, replacing it with a white resin render and doing the damp course.

Meanwhile, I put out a post on Facebook to ask if anyone had any photos of the house, before the render, from back when it used to be a police station. It went viral in my area, and someone sent me a black-and-white photo of my previously stunning house. I was also sent cool stories from people who knew the policemen and remembered when there were jail cells.

An early picture of the house, which was built in 1897 and first used as a police station

Among the comments was one from a heritage builder, Danny Smith, of Danelaw Lime and Heritage Conservation, who asked me some questions about my plans. I ended up booking him for a consultation, paying £150 for his time. It turned out that the renderers were wrong.

Danny told me that if I put silicone render on this building then I’d make the whole house damp. The house was built using breathable lime mortar. Most of the house still has it. This means it’s vapour permeable, so water can move in and out of the house; old buildings rely on that mechanism.

If I’d had modern render put over the top, I would have stopped that movement. All of the water vapour and condensation that builds up inside the house would have been trapped inside and the whole house would have had damp. As it stands, I don’t have any damp.

• ‘I bought a chapel on a Sicilian island for £140,000’

Danny basically said I was very lucky to have got in touch with a heritage consultant. A lot of the time people don’t know they need to consult a specialist builder when renovating a Victorian building.

He added that injecting a damp course would cause more damage than good as it turned out I already had a Victorian slate damp course [a moisture barrier made of slate that prevents water from entering walls and foundations]. A modern damp course would have pushed any damp inside, causing internal problems.

A drawing of the house from the original plans

The works I had paid to undertake would literally ruin my house.

Danny said that the renderers weren’t out to swindle me. They just didn’t know better. Old building techniques simply aren’t taught in colleges and on building courses any longer.

Nowadays if you go and study to be a surveyor, a builder or a bricklayer, there is no history taught, so people make assumptions. Unless you take a specific course to learn about historic buildings, you’re just taught the latest techniques.

Tradespeople are applying modern techniques across the board, not knowing that these methods and materials are incompatible with houses built before the 1920s, when modern mortar began to replace lime mortar.

The City of Lincoln coat of arms on the façade is being refurbished

MICHAEL POWELL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

None of the companies that came did any testing on what kind of mortar had been used; they either didn’t care or didn’t know. Danny took a sample of mortar, however. He said that these rendering firms had also not assessed the way the water would fall off the house, or how the joints would work. It would literally have been a case of putting new render on top, like slapping a plaster on it.

I also learnt that all the contemporary render systems suggested to me were only really suitable for a flat, even surface. Not only were they unsuitable from the breathability side of things, they would have gone straight over and obliterated the period features.

• How one couple revamped their childhood home for family life

So I cancelled the render company’s work. It was going to cost £28,000; I’d paid £8,000 in deposit and got £6,000 back, so I lost £2,000 in total. I’m now working with the heritage experts at Danelaw Lime and Heritage Conservation.

I’m now working with a team of expert heritage builders including Danny, the northeast Lincolnshire-based Aspect Renovations and local labourers.

The guys started taking the render off with power tools on about a one metre section, but we looked at it and it was damaging the bricks too much. So they ended up doing the whole thing with chisels and hammers. Because the render had been on for 50 years, some parts were pretty stuck.

But eventually all the render has come off. The builders have also repaired all the damaged brickwork, they’ve fixed up both of the chimneys, which hadn’t been rendered, and they’re reinstating the decorative egg and dart mouldings.

The renovation is nearly complete

MICHAEL POWELL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

Instead of render, they have limewashed the exterior, with a layer of what’s known as “hot lime”. This limewash goes over the whole house; it looks like one coat of white paint. It’s essentially a thin layer of protection, like repointing. It deals with any problems, any cracks in the face of the bricks for example, and because it’s lime it’s still completely breathable. Most of our lime products (NHL, Prompt, Quicklime, Otterbein etc) come from a specialist company called Cornish Lime (cornishlime.co.uk).

We couldn’t leave it as just brick, because there was too much damage. Danny did suggest that the team could remove each of the bricks one by one and turn them all around, but I said no, it would take years!

Then, instead of render, the exterior has been painted white, with black accents. We’ve used mineral paints because they’re breathable. One mistake people make with old buildings is to go to all the trouble of limewashing and then put an acrylic-based paint on top.

The products used are Beeck white mineral paint (beeck.com) and KEIM Mineral Paints Concretal-Black (keim.com). The coverage is fantastic and you can see the pattern of the original brickwork underneath, so it’s a good compromise. You can’t see the repairs done to the brickwork because the limewash smooths everything out.

Bryan in the kitchen with her partner, Adam Walker

MICHAEL POWELL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

Work started in September 2024, and the painting was finished in January. The rendering company expected to have the old render off and new render on in two weeks.

The external work has also included the chimneys, a new lintel for the big main window, sorting out the dodgy breezeblocks that had been used in a repair — the team carved out lines in them so you can’t tell now that they’re not actual bricks — and guttering. There’s also some work to do; the porch at the front, limewashing and painting the kitchen at the back and taking the render off the garage.

For actually treating the external walls, it has probably worked out at about £5,000 more than what replacing the render would have cost.

I’m learning a lot, so I now know how disastrous it would have been if I hadn’t managed to speak to a heritage expert. I’ve been documenting the progress on social media to try to raise awareness and educate people on the techniques and materials that should be used on old properties. I have about 3 million to 4 million views each month on Instagram: on Instagram. I’m also on TikTok (@TheOldConstabulary) and YouTube (@RenovatingTheConstabulary).

I just want to make sure other people don’t make the same mistake I almost did, ruining their renovation through getting the wrong advice on render.

Find more daily Property & Home content here