Simon Kaylor and Kari Bleikik Britain's Empty Homes

'Across the country, empty properties that could be homes

'are just waiting to be brought back into use.'

I'll be finding out why

and what you need to do to rescue a house for yourself.

Along the way, I'll be doing some digging of my own to find out more

about our housing stock, our heritage

and why we should be both reinventing

and preserving Britain's empty homes.

Renovating an empty home can be a life-changing experience.

You'll need the ability to visualise potential

where others only see problems, but if you can do that,

then taking on one of these buildings can be truly rewarding.

On today's show, a couple looking to jazz up an empty Methodist Chapel.

I've had to get used to a builder's idea of an early morning,

compared to what a jazz musician's idea of an early morning is.

In Greater Manchester,

a regeneration project creating new homes and new opportunities.

You get to learn what you've got to do on the outside world

instead of just being in a workshop all the time.

And we follow an empty property officer

on a mission to fix a home and a community.

One evening I came home and there were some youths

in the garden and they actually threatened me.

In Armley, Leeds, professional jazz musicians Simon and Kari

always dreamt of renovating a classic Yorkshire sandstone building.

And it was music to their ears

when this former Methodist chapel came on the market.

'We've been wanting to do something like this'

for as long as I can remember.

Yes. Somewhere where we can completely put our own stamp on it.

We always knew when we were looking at this property

we could clean it up and get that beautiful sandstone colour out again.

We were walking around saying, we can do this.

This is something we can take on.

But not everyone in their family had quite the same faith in the project.

My dad came to view it for the first time. He was absolutely horrified

and I think he just thought we were crazy.

Simon and Kari paid ?120,000 for the chapel

and they soon found out they got more than they bargained for.

We actually found a carrier coffin and various other, sort of...

Accessories. ..items. SHE LAUGHS

And we're not superstitious,

but Kari did enjoy coming up to the property without me knowing

and positioning the coffin

in the middle of the main room with a cross on top of it

and insisting that we go late at night to view the property,

so obviously I opened the door and had a bit of a shock.

Um... But other than that, we weren't too worried about it, were we? No.

SHE LAUGHS

But turning a former chapel into a comfortable home

is an ambitious and challenging feat.

With a building like this, you've got to keep

as many of the original features as you can,

but you've got to introduce new technologies,

to make it environmentally friendly and efficient.

Simon and Kari are hoping the ?80,000 set aside for renovation

will be enough to create their dream home.

Some days I come up here, look at the building

and I think we're getting nowhere. I really think, what are we doing?

And I actually really feel quite worried that

if we don't do it right, we've let this building down. Yes.

We're just trying to make sure that we do it as best we can.

Within our budget. Within our budget.

The couple have been working on this site for just under a year.

But they still have plenty to do and crucial decisions to make.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Simon, how are you doing?

Good, thanks. Tell me about your place.

Well, it was a Methodist chapel originally

and then it became some kind of working men's club

and before we took it over, it was a joiner's workshop.

It looks like a Methodist chapel,

it's got that lovely quite simple, plain look. Beautiful stone.

Have you started work? Yes. Big skip is a big clue.

Yes, that's actually skip number ten, I think. Number ten?! Yes.

Let's go inside, shall we, and see what you've been doing? Yes. Great.

It's an incredible space.

What was it like when you saw it for the first time?

Every bit of stonework you can see was covered with plaster

and it took months to get all that off on the entire building.

And these wood beams are incredible.

These were actually a bit of a hidden treasure

and when we uncovered them, we changed our plans.

We raised the height of the floor upstairs so these can be exposed,

so we'd be able to see them all the time.

There's real craftsmanship where they join. You've got this space,

what are you hoping to achieve?

Well, this is going to remain open plan as you see it now, pretty much.

OK. So, it's going to be kitchen, diner and living space all in one.

Nice. To the side, we've got we've got a small chapel arrest.

OK, what's it going to be?

Well, it's going to be Simon's resting place. My resting place.

It's going to be a music room for me, I'll have my games console and TV.

Little man pad? Yes.

Do you get your own room as well? How does this work?

Yes, I get a workroom upstairs.

There is a deadline, isn't there? There is, yes,

we're having a little one in November... Wow.

..so we're obviously hoping that it will be liveable by then. Yes. Yes.

Any other key discoveries as you've gone along?

We've discovered loads of things. I've got some here.

This is an old medical device.

I think it was some kind of electric shock therapy.

Goodness me! Different attachments.

And then sort of blue electricity would come out and...

Never seen anything like this! It's like film on the surface.

Oof! Look like they've been well used as well, don't they?

That's bizarre!

We've also got this, which is the old Leeds Yorkshire Mercury

and it's actually from Thursday, December the 12th.

December the 12th's my birthday. Gosh! Bit of a strange coincidence.

That is, isn't it? Incredible. Over 110 years old. Yeah. Yeah.

Fantastic! I'll give those back to you before I wreck them.

What do you want out of this property?

I think the main thing here is to let the beam work do the talking

and keep the decor quite simplistic.

'Although downstairs will be an open plan living space, upstairs,

'the couple are creating four unique bedrooms and two bathrooms.'

Where are we standing now? We're in the master bedroom now.

So what would that be there? An en suite?

Clearly, a lot of work's happened already. We've put new ceilings in, walls up

and we've had to replace every floor level in here. It was all on strange different levels

and different bits over the years that people had built. New roof?

When we first viewed the property, we could see daylight through the roof.

It was the original sandstone slate roof, so it was all worn out,

so we've had to have a new one. Your little baby's due in a few months.

What state would the building be in ideally at that point?

By no means does the entire property need to be completely finished for us to move in.

We need a functioning bathroom, bedroom spaces, obviously.

What's the budget? I think if we can finish around the 80,000 mark, we'll be fairly happy.

I think we're going to.

I guess you're both improvisers cos you're jazz musicians.

Does that feed into being creative about this project, in coming up with unusual ideas?

I've had to get used to what a builder's idea of an early morning

is compared to what a jazz musician's idea of an early morning is.

'Simon and Kari are adding a lot of insulation and are clearly

'taking the energy efficiency of this building very seriously.'

What is it that's still a concern at this stage? Obviously, the green element of the building,

so how we're going to heat it. The technology we're looking into isn't that commonly used in this country.

It's hard to know, completely independent advice and advice

that's being given because someone's trying to sell you something. Yeah.

This is the ideal moment to get a little inspiration from another property.

So I'm taking you to see a place that's also been many things in the

past and also the person involved has experience of green technology.

I think there'll be some really good advice and plenty to take away.

Does that sound like a good plan? Sounds great.

The big challenge now is to transform this building site

into a very personal family home,

while keeping a sense of the building's history and grandeur.

So it'll be great for them to see a property that has been completed,

so they can glean a bit of inspiration,

but also to get advice from a man who's been through all

this before and turned a house of God into a heavenly home.

Whether you're taking on a vacant church on a wing and a prayer,

or making hay with a barn conversion, with imagination

and perseverance,

even the most unlikely of dwellings can be turned into a new home.

In north Yorkshire, after selling his dental practice,

Ian Gordon and his wife Jane were looking for a renovation

project they could sink their teeth into.

We came to look at on my birthday and although it wasn't very

appealing, the plot was fantastic and I immediately thought, "Oh!

"I know what I want to do!"

I think the vision came together for Jane because she could see what it was going to

be like. I'm more pragmatic. I needed to actually see some bricks and mortar.

Ian and Jane bought the property for ?650,000, which is

a lot of money for what was effectively a giant cat litter tray.

The first thing that hit you was the odour, which took a little

while to identify, until you realised it used to be a cattery.

We wondered whether it was just a cat that had lost some of its bowel control!

But there was one problem not to be sniffed at.

The bungalow is overlooked by a conservation area,

meaning tight planning restrictions. Certain walls, we've had to keep.

They have no structural value, just pure political value.

I think the National Park get concerned about allowing

a demolition because that can set a precedent.

But with work well under way, the project froze.

December 2009, it started to snow.

Seriously deep snow.

We lost six weeks of work and we were still in rented accommodation.

We still had site huts and site equipment

and every day cost money, really.

One of the low points in the build.

It wasn't like you could say, "Look what we've got." We basically had a building site. Yeah.

Keeping costs down on a renovation of this size can be quite a challenge.

We'd set a budget of 300-350,000 and we got a builder round,

gave us a quote which just seemed absolutely ridiculous.

All I'll say without saying too much was he was a darn side nearer

what it ended up costing than anybody else had been!

With total build costs of around 700,000, the Gordons were

keen to stop paying rent on top and move in as soon as possible.

Because it wasn't finished when we moved in,

every day a new light fitting would arrive or a carpet would be

put down and so it just kept getting better and better. It was just brilliant.

We'd been working towards this dream for two years and although I could

visualise what it was going to be like,

actually living in it was just a dream come true.

The sedum roof makes it blend into the hillside

and then the upstairs is a very selfish use of space.

There's two bedrooms upstairs, but you could have put a whole multitude of rooms up there.

The open plan works very well,

although I occasionally find it not cosy enough,

so I would quite like a more snug room where you might retreat to.

That's one of my plans, to extend it.

Yeah, cos it's not quite big enough(!)

It's often the finishing off of a project which you just don't allow for.

We sort of finished things off over the next year.

We still haven't finished things. We've still got no doors on the study.

Shelves. I'm working on him!

SHE LAUGHS

There's always a project.

Large numbers of empty properties in one part of the city

or a specific area are often the result of a structural change,

a decline in local industry.

Manchester had a housing boom during the industrial revolution, but

now the area of Openshaw has empty properties dotted on virtually

every street.

To deal with this issue head on, the council and a local building

contractor united to try and kick this problem into touch.

With 27 properties to tackle, Steven Weir is determined that

families should live in these homes once again.

These 27 properties in Manchester fell into disrepair over

a number of years and we were approached by Manchester to

enter into a development agreement with them to bring them back into circulation.

The majority of the properties are derelict, infested with vermin,

evidence of drug use in a lot of them. Just in a very terrible state of repair.

Projects like this can have a kind of domino effect. It brings the whole area up.

What we're finding is that now we've started on these properties,

other local landlords are starting to realise

they need bringing their properties up to the standard that we are.

So it's a domino effect.

You're a construction company, but are you using local people? How does it all work?

We've also entered into another partnership with Manchester College,

so we're able to offer training opportunities to young people.

This is experience they can't get in a simulated environment in the classroom.

Shall we have a look inside? Sure. Yeah. Follow me.

We fully gutted this property, back to the bare structural walls.

This house now is ready for plastering. You've got some guys working here at the moment.

Yeah, we've got some apprentices upstairs. Can I go and say hello? Yeah, sure.

'To add greater social purpose,

'they're also working with the Manchester College,

'offering their students vital hands-on work experience.'

Hi, guys, how are you doing? Ashford. Hello, Ashford.

My name's Reece. Reece, I'm Joe.

Good to see you, so you guys are both apprentices or trainees? Yeah.

I'm a... I do, like, plastering at the college that I go to.

So these buildings give you a chance to work on real-life projects.

You get to learn what you've got to do in the outside world, instead of

being just in a workshop all the time. Yeah, and I suppose a certain discipline comes with

being on site, getting here on time

and working with other people around you as well. Yeah, teamwork.

Yeah, very good. So Ash is doing plastering. What's your specialism?

I'm doing joinery. So I'm keeping the insulation in.

What do you guys think about these properties sitting empty?

It seems a bit of a waste when no-one's here.

Especially when there's people living in the houses and there's just one house not being used.

Is it going to be good to see people back in here, living in these houses?

Yeah, it would. Yeah. And they can admire your plasterwork as well.

Yeah! Cheers.

Take care. Cheers. All the best.

I've seen the before photo and Steven is about to show me

what they look like now.

This is a recently completed three bedroom terrace. Ah, very nice.

This took, what, roughly ten weeks? Ten weeks from start to completion.

Amazing. Do you know roughly what a three bedroom house like this would go for in this area?

I would say probably in the region of ?70,000.

And so how soon do you think someone could be in here?

A matter of weeks. Really? Yeah. It's very spacious.

It's got high ceilings. Large rooms. It's ideal for a young family.

Originally, these were built for local working

people in Manchester, and that can now be the same.

You've preserved them for hopefully another 100 years. I'd like to think so.

The figures in this part of the country are truly staggering.

In Greater Manchester, there are 25,000 properties that have

been empty for a significant period of time.

Thankfully, this one is no longer on that list

and to think that this project, in the space of nine months,

will renovate 27 properties and get them

ready for local families to move into is just brilliant.

It really will boost this community.

Across Britain,

local councils are fighting to get families back into housing.

And it's the empty property officers who are carrying out detective work

on our abandoned homes and working to get them brought back into use.

In Erdington, Birmingham, Matt Smith is on his way to two half

finished houses that for several years have sat derelict,

attracting the wrong kind of attention.

The property that we're going to now, the current owner bought the house about five years ago

and got planning permission to develop two properties on the land.

He's run out of money and so he's done very little work.

It's been attracting theft and people are entering the property,

mainly due to the scaffolding allowing easy access into the house.

The property's also been subject to rats in and outside the house.

I had no choice but to use the council's enforcement powers

to threaten a compulsory purchase order.

After being told he could be forced to sell

the buildings by the council, one month ago,

the owner contacted them and agreed to finish the renovation work.

Matt is here to make sure the owner is being true to his word.

That's a good sign.

The gates are open, so I'm going to be able to get inside the property.

Slightly negative that it doesn't look

as if he's done half the work that I expected him to do.

He said it would be completed within a couple of months, but I just can't see that myself.

The landlord is not on site today but there is a builder,

so Matt takes the opportunity to see how the work is progressing.

Hello? Yes.

How are you doing? Matt Smith from Birmingham City Council.

Good to see you. Nice to see you, sir. How are you getting on?

It's OK. Do you want to show us some of the work you have been doing?

Let's go, I'll show you the bedrooms.

Only once Matt is inside the building

can he assess its true condition.

The bedroom, we try now the plasterboard.

And you've been doing some roof work as well? Yes.

The roof is complete now. That is pretty good.

Inside, there is so much work I can see being done.

From outside, you cannot see. How long is it going to be before you finish this house?

About four weeks.

Can you show us the roof in the other property as well? Yes, all right.

We have to go down.

The existing house is nearing completion and

although the new build next door is further off, work is well under way.

Where is the staircase? The stairs will be here.

You're going to put the stairs there, OK.

We will be going like this, all around, up. All the roof is done.

So you've had to put felt on it as well. Yes, it is all felted, yes.

That's really good work. Yes. It's going to be great. Yes, all right.

Brilliant, nice one. See you again. Bye.

That's actually been great.

First impressions when I turned up, I saw the scaffolding and I was really worried about

how much work had been done but now I've had a good look inside, lots of plaster work in progress,

it's really coming along more than I actually expected out of today.

And I think I've got such good news, I'm going to share it with

the immediate neighbour who's had to put up with all the problems.

Hi, Jane. How are you doing? Hello, Matt. Nice to see you again.

I've just been round to the house next door.

I think we've got some pretty good news. It's really moving on.

That's good. He's going to finish the first house probably just over a month or so's time,

which is great. Then the second house is gone to follow on from that,

probably a couple of months after that. So what will this mean to you, then?

That's just really good news. I'm really pleased to hear that.

It's been a real burden, to be honest.

The last six years, having to live next door to this empty property.

We've got three children, they haven't wanted to play outside

in the garden because we've had youths climbing on the scaffolding.

I had a bike stolen cos they'd had access through the fence

because it was such a state of disrepair,

and one evening I actually came home and there were some

youths in the garden and they actually threatened me.

They threatened to come over and do me! So we had to call the police.

And then we had to explain to our own children why the police were here.

That's going to be great, not just for your own family, the neighbourhood as well.

We might even have a garden party to celebrate. A great way to celebrate.

OK, great to see you again. OK, Mark. Take care. Good to see you. Bye-bye.

The property's been empty for five years.

Having now gone inside, it's superb to see work finally been carried out

and this is why I do this job, to see such a problematic house

finally coming back into use to the benefit of everybody.

If you're interested in tracking down a disused house to

turn into a home, then your local empty property officer

should be one of your first ports of call.

Also ask around the local estate agents and keep a lookout for signs of abandoned buildings.

Back in Leeds, I'm with Simon and Kari, who bought an old

Methodist chapel and are busy trying to turn it into a wonderful new home.

To help them, I've brought them to nearby York to introduce them

to a man who completed his own minor miracle,

turning an old chapel into an amazing house.

Right, guys. This is the property I've brought you to see.

I imagine you can tell what it is from the outside. What do you think?

Yeah, a chapel. Chapel, exactly. I love it. It's great.

The windows are fantastic. It's a bit younger than yours, it's 1900.

It's been taken on by a guy called Ben.

Before he had it, it stood empty for about two years.

It was a glaziers in there so it had an industrial use,

a bit like your chapel as well.

So let's go and say hello, shall we?

Engineer Ben Shaw was looking for a live-work space

when his attention was brought to this old Methodist chapel.

Being someone who likes to make things, I wanted to be able to

make things for a house that I was going to live in.

A friend of mine pointed it out with its workshop.

And my first impressions of the place when I walked in was fantastic, really.

It had a lot of space and I could see a huge amount of potential.

Yet it was completely uninhabitable and cost Ben ?250,000.

Because it was a commercial building, there was

nothing that really could remain beyond the bare walls.

We even had to take the roof off.

There was no insulation on the floor or the ceiling or the walls.

You know, when you look at change of use and building regs,

this all has to happen. You can't not do it.

The early days of this project were hardly plain sailing.

My relationship with the first builders degraded.

When you come back from a full day of work and you open the door

and you can see much progress, but you've got another bill in your hand,

it's, you know, you sit there thinking, God, is it going to end?

But with new builders in place, the project was back on track and Ben

could start to see his vision for an ecological sound home taking shape.

I like to be green where possible.

Rainwater harvesting and solar thermal,

they were both things that I was very keen on putting in.

I started getting excited about the property when you can actually

start to see some of the finished aspects of the room.

I love the luxury of walking around and having a lot of space.

And light as well. You know, there's a lot of light come in.

The roof terrace is just fantastic.

One thing that stuck in my mind was the saying, truth to materials.

Not to try and dress something up to be something that it isn't.

I like all the features that I've had a hand in, you know.

Whether it's design or actually building of the pieces.

It's all been pretty rewarding.

Oh, wow. So, have a good look around. There is plenty to take in.

Fantastic. Amazing.

Ben, maybe you could start us off by telling us

what this was like when you took it on?

It was actually in pretty good shape, you know.

I've think the Victorians put up a fairly good structure, you know.

The beans are all true and no rot or anything like that. Very good.

Because you got the clearly designated areas,

but it's still got an open feel to it, which is

something we're going to try and achieve with ours.

How did you want to configure it to

have exactly what you wanted in this space?

My primary goal has always been to have a big workshop.

And, you know, now I can have dinner and just walk two yards

and I'm in my workshop!

We've got chapel of rest off to the side,

that's going to be my music room. So, exactly the same for me.

You know, having a space just off the main living area where

I can go and work is going to be fantastic.

And you're going to be creating a kitchen from scratch.

I mean, what do you make of what you see there?

The concrete worktops are fantastic.

That's something we decided on early on, wasn't it? That we wanted.

But we thought that cost might make it impossible.

I made those ones myself, actually. I thought you might say that! It's not too difficult,

But it is time-consuming. Oh, really? You can cast little details.

You'll see that I've put keys from 1952 to do with the chapel.

There's one in each worktop. You know, if I'd have got someone to do that professionally,

I think it would have been over 10 or ?15,000.

I think you've been really clever because you've got the curve

of the kitchen floor matching the curve of the worktop there.

And it also distinguishes where the kitchen is and where it ends.

I can really see us doing that and it gives me

some ideas of how we're going to divide everything up.

We're looking at having underfloor heating.

Everybody that we've spoken to says it's better to have a concrete floor

screed in and then put a flooring over the top.

That's what I've done here, actually. Oh, OK.

These floorboards, they were thick, they're Victorian ones.

I ended up planing them down sort of underfloor thickness.

So it allows the heat through. Yeah. I suppose that's the other thing,

if your floor is actually quite thin. you're thinking it can't hold the weight,

it might be the right thickness to go on top of underfloor heating

once you've laid down everything else. Especially if we do

a different flooring for the kitchen section. Yeah.

We'd have enough to do the rest of it.

Yeah, and actually, that might be a very authentic way of keeping some of the history.

It's been difficult for me to visualise how we're going to

make that work, you know, combine the old and new. And making it a success.

But you can see straight away that it does work really well.

I'm curious to find out what this is, actually.

Yeah? Would you like to have a look? Yeah, definitely.

Extravagant toy! Incredible, isn't it?

And it's more than a few bottles of wine, as well! It holds 275 bottles.

I designed and built it with a friend of mine.

That's the point, I guess.

if you take an empty property, and if you're completely open-minded,

you can pretty much do anything.

Well, look, this is all a bit too tempting.

I suggest no glasses of wine at this point,

let's continue the tour, shall we?

Let me show you upstairs in the master bedroom.

Did you design these stairs yourself?

Yes, I had a friend helped me who does that for a living.

They look fantastic.

We can see up here, the ceiling,

the wood goes the whole length of the building.

And that's all original.

Yeah, it was one of the features that really stood out immediately I walked into the property.

It was covered in a dark varnish and the workshop was painted white.

But we wanted to sandblast them

and bring them back up to their natural colour.

You guys want to make your building as environmentally friendly as possible.

Is that an aim you had? Is that something you've managed to achieve?

Yeah, I've tried to put a lot of green emphasis into the build.

The entire roof system runs off into a large underground 5,000 litre tank.

Wow. We clean it and supply it back again to the house.

These guys are thinking about, you know, air source heat pumps.

How do you power this property, are you on gas? I am on gas, yeah.

I did do a lot of thinking about it. Being green is expensive these days.

Gas boilers are still very, very cheap, in comparison.

Everyone we spoke to gave us a different opinion on air source heat pumps.

Stuff I've read suggests that gas boilers can be

just as efficient as the air source heat pumps. I don't doubt it.

That's the same problem I had, is some sort of clarification.

Who do you trust? What information do you believe.

Sometimes when I'm up at the building site and looking at all

the jobs that need doing, it can become a bit overwhelming.

Even small details, you think they're going to take a week to do.

Is that something you found?

Did you try not to worry too much about the small details

and think that it would all take care of itself?

I think it's a project that never finishes!

You'll constantly be looking to do little bits and pieces. Yeah.

Brilliant, Well, look, it's amazing to see round.

And I think it's a very close match to what you're dealing with.

So I hope it's been really useful.

But thanks for your time and for your advice as well. My pleasure. Thanks very much. Thank you.

Has today been useful? Absolutely. Massively useful, yeah.

Just to see the old mixed with the new, really. Come to life.

For me, I think the wood here gives the property a particular warmth.

Yeah. Yes. If you can keep that wood floor, little things like that,

that might be worth considering, do you think? Yeah. Good luck with it.

It's a really unique property. Thank you.

The best bit is, I can see how excited you guys are with it. Yeah.

It's a good boost for us, isn't it? It's something really positive.

And, you know, especially the stage we're at.

We need that enthusiasm to keep going

and I think this has definitely been that for us. So, really useful.

Best of luck with it. Thank you. Thanks very much.

I'm really pleased that Simon and Kari could see this place today.

Yes, they're already well into their own project,

but it never hurts to have a bit more inspiration, to see

how someone else has used a space.

And also, I think it will really give them confidence to play with their ideas.

To be bold and to do everything they want to make it a very personal home for them.

So I know they've got a lot of work ahead of them.

But I've got a very good feeling they'll be finished in time,

so they've got a lovely home when the baby arrives.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.

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