Some people have an uncanny knack of walking into any building and immediately identifying all the defects that have been missed by others. The rest of us carelessly traipsing around architectural delights justifiably assume if the roof doesn’t leak and the walls don’t fall down then the job must have been done properly. Dad was one of those people that knew instantly when something wasn’t right.
We were house-hunting when I was about 12 and Dad took me to see a potential future family home. He rapped his knuckles on what looked like every other wall in the house and made a concerned face. “Water stains behind that plaster” he grumbled. The housing agent smiled nervously.
Of course he was right. Water stains = inappropriate detailing/repair work/thousands down your pocket.
Easily identified by my genius father.
I never quite mastered this knack. When I bought my first flat it looked great on viewings. Picturesque floral exterior, smart hallway, freshly painted doors.
What I failed to realise were: 1) the slight bubbling in one bedroom wall 2) the smell of damp in the bathroom and 3) how loose some of the floorboards were. Oh wait. I knew they were loose.
After six months the cosy bedroom had serious rising damp, half the bathroom ceiling had collapsed and someone had actually laid new floorboards over rotten joists. “You’ve been conned” Dad sighed when he came to see my masterpiece. As he enthusiastically dug his fingers into my bathroom wall I could see his disappointment. “It’s all cosmetic” he explained, “they’ve just covered it up. Literally in this case”.
It cost more to put it right than I paid for the flat in the first place. Lesson learned. I promise I’m telling you this sorry tale for a reason.
Not just so you can tell yourself that your house-buying/purchasing problems aren’t as bad as mine – although admittedly that helps too and you’re welcome – but because there is something I’ve learned to appreciate about buildings since that moment. Knowledge about how buildings are made; about construction fabric and building details doesn’t just apply to architects, surveyors and builders. It should matter to everybody who occupies a building; whether you own it, rent it or just buy stuff inside it.
And that’s pretty much all of us. So once I’d paid for my own poor education I decided I was going to learn enough about buildings not to make the same mistake again. And I don’t mean I sat around dreaming of becoming a surveyor or a builder (although that would’ve probably saved me a lot of money too).
I mean, I wanted to know enough about buildings not to get conned. What I didn’t bank on was taking notice of good stuff as well as bad. Rendering.
Before my traumatic property experience I’d pretty much assumed that external walls on buildings were all pretty much the same. Now whenever I see render I’m checking to see how think and baggy it is. Cheap render pouches and cracks within a year of application if it’s not done properly.
Good quality systems use the right balance of resin to give longevity and flexibility without looking like cottage cheese stretched across a wall. I’m that awkward person that runs their hand along external walls now. Making inappropriate smacker sounds and generally knowing too much about something I don’t get paid to care about. “What’s that mean?” my friend Kate scoffed when I was looking around a new build flat with her last year. “Look at the little hairline cracks here” I said pointing to the rendering. “See how it’s cracked almost straight away?” I enthused. “That means they’ve either applied it too thinly or it hasn’t been mixed with the right amount of water.
Either way, once it starts raining it’ll all come loose and let water in”. Kate stared at me like I’d developed the ability to talk to aliens but thanks to my overly-excited explanation she avoided having to repair a years’ worth of rendering along with all the other flats in her block three years down the line. This is the thing.
You don’t notice quality. Quality doesn’t wave banners around or buy shiny paint samples. Good work is silent, it holds rain off your building and keeps functioning year after year without anybody taking much notice.
Bad work, on the other hand, will loudly announce itself with a wet bathroom ceiling when you’re busy listening to X-factor. Or rotting floorboards when you’ve just installed that shiny new kitchen. Skirting boards.
In all bathrooms I now check tiles at internal corners; are the grout lines straight and consistent? If the answer is yes they’ve probably fitted the tiles properly throughout. If they’re shoddily tiled at internal corners you can bet the kitchens will be fitted with chipboard backsplashes and broken drawer joints galore.
Consistency. It’s something I look for everywhere now. Externally I’ll look at rainwater goods to see how they’re secured to walls.
Internally I run my fingers along skirting boards; are the floors screwed down properly or do they feel nice and wobbly? Oh and tiles; do kitchens have exposed bottoms? If you open a kitchen cabinet and it’s finished like the exterior you can guarantee the workmanship elsewhere is pretty good.
Flushness. I love nothing more than seeing where paint finishes meet ceilings around a room. If the paint stops at a clean sharp angle it means the person that did it took as long finishing that room as I’m taking telling you about it.
If, however it wobbles up the wall at about a 70 degree angle then they were either lazy or in a rush. I took Tom around a flat he wanted to rent last year and spent about ten minutes enthusing over the art of skirting boards. “They’re just bits of wood at the bottom of walls innit” he uttered sarcastically as I tutted over gaps where the floor hadn’t been properly screwed down. It turned out that the gaps in the skirting boards were mirrored by gaps in the floor covering throughout and, three months after he’d moved in Tom was telling me how much the cold drafts were driving him up the wall.
Literally. Give doors and windows a shove. Do they easily make contact with their respective door frames/windowsills or do they need wacking further forwards?
If you have to force doors and windows shut it’s not normal wear and tear; it’s poorly fitted junctions that won’t last through building movement- something that happens to every building basically. I’m not suggesting you need to go full-blown Sherlock Holmes on every building you set foot in. But having a basic understanding of how your home is put together (quite literally) and how to spot substandard building work from the good stuff will save you a lot of heartache and probably money.
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Think of it like learning how to check your engine oil. You don’t need to be able to rebuild your engine when it’s flat to spot when things aren’t quite right. “A few damp stains on the ceiling” my brother- in- law James text me last week. “The survey said everything was fine!” he continued in despair. He’d moved into a lovely Victorian conversion flat and, after heavy rain, was finding patches of brown appearing on his ceiling.
Less than half an hour on Google Streetview and I could see the culprit. His.flat roof. Surveyors will always check roof covering but what James’didn’t see were badly fitted flashing details where the roof met the brickwork.
A few quid spent on repairing these.details saved James having to rip his entire ceiling out and redecorate. Look at junctions. See that little diagonal crack where the wall meets the roof?
That wasn’t there when they built the extension. It’s where two different building materials meet that issues occur. Different materials expand and contract at different rates with changes in weather and temperature.
If the builders haven’t allowed for this at junctions then cracking is pretty much inevitable. It’s a weird habit I have now of literally feeling my way around buildings. I run my finger along bits of timber to see if it’s solid or veneer.
I rap tiles gently with my knuckles to see if they’ve been bonded properly. I probably make my wife cringe when I do this in front of other people but surreptitiously she admits that it helped when we were choosing floor and wall finishes for our house. “What are you doing?” the chap behind the reception desk asked me as I stroked the wallpaper in a hotel lobby last week. “Checking to see if it’s textured paper or just printed to look like it?” I replied innocently. It sounds silly but it’s those kind of details that help me work out if a developer has gone to the effort of using real quality fittings/fixtures or just the impression of them.
The thing I’ve really come to understand about buildings is that durability isn’t a magical occurrence. It’s hundreds if not thousands of small details; using the correct material for the job; allowing things to dry properly; preparing surfaces correctly; understanding how different parts of the building interact with each other throughout the year as temperatures and weather patterns change. My cousin spent thousands on limestone kitchen floor tiles for her new extension.
Despite sealing them regularly they turned a muddy brown colour within months. Not because the tiles were defective but because they’d been laid directly onto a concrete floor slab. The lime in the concrete reacts with the stone and causes staining.
It’s details like this – how one building material affects another – that reveals whether you’re dealing with good builders or rubbish ones. I’ve never been accused of having a keen eye for detail! Ask my wife; she changes her hair style and three days go by before I notice.
But paying attention to the important details in buildings has become something of a passion. I can’t go into a newly built house or apartment block now without scrutinising the brickwork pattern, attic ventilation, gutter detailing, or how rainwater goods are installed. It’s incredible how often I see the same mistakes made on newly built houses.
Render applied directly to insulation boards with no breathable base coat. Wood rot waiting to happen. Timber cladding installed without any ventilation gap around edges.
Dry rot in 5 years. “You’ve ruined buildings for me” my friend Sarah said after I embarrassed her by pointing out badly installed windows at her work place. “There’s holes in them I didn’t even notice” she wailed. I apologised but internally was waving the bl**dy banner myself. Awareness is always the first step to making better decisions.
Luckily there is some brilliant workmanship out there. If you know what to look for you can see it and actually appreciate it too. Running your finger along a perfectly plastered wall and seeing no joints.
Wow. Following a timber skirting board around a corner only to find the grain pattern continues seamlessly on the other side. Well installed windows that have lasted 40 years and still operate like new.
Trust me. The best buildings aren’t always the expensive ones. Or the ones with show off kitchens.
They’re the ones where someone cared enough about the product to get even tiny details right. Buy a well-built mediocre house and watch your badly built, vaulted celebrity wet dream dissolve into a damp patch on the floor. Start looking.
Learn the simple stuff. Understand how water behaves around buildings (it’ll always find a way to cause you problems). Know which materials are affected by temperature fluctuations and why.
Look at how walls meet floors, floors meet ceilings. Appreciate good work where you see it. And finally, if you’re buying a new house spend more on the things that truly matter; windows, insulation, good solid doors.
Stop mortaring yourself into corner Inswing toilet cubicles and get a quality kitchen.
You’ll never regret spending a little more on stuff that actually lasts. Ok I’ll admit it.
I love buildings now. I don’t have Dad’s intuitive ability to rap on a wall and know exactly what’s wrong (yet!) but I’ve managed to save myself and others a lot of expensive mistakes. Knowledge really is power.
And if you ever need me to look at anything building-related I’m your guy. After poking around in enough corners I can safely say I know what a stud partition looks like. The next time I go to see my parents we’ll have absolutely nothing to say to each other except for the odd moan about how flashings aren’t installed properly these days.
But I couldn’t be happier about ruining your love of buildings. After all, they’re the biggest – and most expensive – thing we’ll ever buy. Don’t just blindly trust it works.
Find out why.
