Fisherton Street, Salisbury

Originally built in 1862, this was by far the oldest property I’ve ever refurbished. To be honest, it was a complete wreck when I bought it and believe it or not contained over 12 ton of rubbish (according to commercial recycling receipts) before we cleared it out! The guy that lived here was a hoarder and had rubbish everywhere, but you would never know it to look at him, he was actually a really lovely guy. In the end I paid him a year’s rent up front to make sure he had somewhere safe to go to.

After some too’ing and fro’ing with the council, I managed to get a shop, two studio flats and a one bedroom maisonette on the top floor. Once again we had to gut the building, but this time we even had to remove ceiling and floors! It’s pretty eerie when you stand on the ground floor and can see up all three flights to the roof!

Once work started things progressed well, then I happened upon another deal and so paused this job whilst I took care of a very keenly priced flat in Portsmouth that I managed to acquire for 30% below market value.

I guess the highlight for me was having eleven plasterers on site at the same time! As the below video shows, it was a bit of a mad house, but they cracked it out in two weeks and did a first class job.