Ah, thank you for your interest in this (and me). I've lived in this house for so many years I can barely remember, for my parents since passed lived here as did my partner's parents. My partner and I only recently got together from being neighbours, so we shared the cost and hired a chartered surveyor. His firm promised to do a very thorough buidings survey of both properties.

Fortunately, both our properties are as sturdy as the day they were built. Brilliant! Had the surveyor found damp rot or worse, dry rot or even woodworm or settlement fissures - then our circumstances would be far different! Our homes were built from tough engineering bricks and covered in a cement rendering before being painted in masonry paint, identical to that of a lighthouse. If our coastline gets a big gale, we draw the shutters down as these protect against flying pebbles. Also, shutters drown out wind noise.

Some property owners in this country go to extraordinary lengths building indoor pools which we believe they were inspired by the Swiss. Swiss ski lodges have these pools and likely parts of America, too. But having that indoor pool in that Victorian property seemed way out of place. On reflection we did the right thing, and our children thought long about it, and lovingly backed us up. How we love them.

Building renos are going to be so stressful as you have commented, so we plan to stay locally during the major building works. Both of us work long hours, so to stay at our home could cause us such stress we could make mistakes in our professional lives. And neither of us can afford that! We will be hiring good builders who have both references and high qualifications. We'll leave nothing to chance.

Thank you so much for your post.