Restoration Services: Preserving the UK’s Historical Sites with Property Restoration

The UK has a rich and varied history. Some of this history still remains today, often in the form of old buildings, monuments, and statues that reveal things about our country’s past, whether it is 60 years old, or 400 years old. The UK has many historical sites across the country, and it is important to preserve these as cultural and educational tools, keeping as much of the original form and purpose as possible. Property restoration is required to bring these building’s back to their original state in a safe and efficient manner.

What is Property Restoration?

However, no matter what effort is put in to preserving certain historical buildings and monuments, time cannot be slowed, and age and decay will often play a huge part in the degeneration of these important sites. In addition to this, modern life does not always offer the best environment for historical sites; the constant building and construction surrounding them can cause damage, and sometimes historical buildings themselves are converted to be used for more modern purposes. The pollution caused by modern living is also a factor in the degeneration of historical buildings, where they can become stained, discoloured, cracked or weakened. Property restoration services are often needed to ensure the quality and features of these historical are looked after.

Property restoration involves the process of recovering and revealing what a historical building or monument would have looked like when it was originally built. This can involve a number of different methods and procedures to achieve the optimum look. For example, larger work can take place, such as replacing heating systems with more modern ones, or reinforcing structural weaknesses in walls or the roof, but it is often in the more detailed restoration work that the original appeal of the building can be found.

The majority of historical buildings and monuments are constructed from older stonework and masonry, which is usually authentic and beautiful, but it can be easily damaged, and is fragile due its age. Because of this, it is crucial that restoration and cleaning services are thorough and effective, while always remaining sympathetic to the host material. Professional restoration companies, such as APT Commercial Cleaning, employ a number of different techniques to ensure stonework and masonry can be cleaned and repaired to a high standard, without risking any damage to the original material.

How do you restore buildings?

An increasingly popular technique, being used for a variety of purposes, is soda blasting. This involves granules of natural bicarbonate of soda being blasted at a surface using controlled volumes of compressed air. This process might sound harsh, or abrasive, but the soda granules explode or fracture upon impact, taking away any surface material, such as dirt or paint, while leaving the original material completely unaffected. This highly effective technique is ideal for use in various restoration projects; almost any material, such as stone, brick, marble, bronze or brass, can be purged of any dirt, paint, graffiti, surface rust, or misplaced mortar, extremely quickly, allowing the original historical features to be brought to light once again.

Cleaning any historical buildings or monuments can come with its own set of challenges, but what do you when years old stone and masonry needs to be repaired? Repairing or restoring masonry can sometimes be extremely difficult, as the materials that were originally used for construction will now hard to come by, and relocating any structures can be risky. However, professional property restoration services will be experienced at carefully dismantling and reassembling older structures, assigning each individual brick or stone with its own number in the sequence. They should also be able to source stone or masonry that is as close a match to the original as possible, whether that means finding reclaimed bricks, or specifically manufacturing identical matches.

APT Commercial Cleaning have years of experience in the repair, property restoration, and conservation of historical buildings and structures; having worked on residential buildings, churches, statues, monuments, bridges and much more. Our team are well trained in all methods of restoration, and we employ the use of our own unique soda blasting design, and specially developed, eco-friendly blast media compounds. Our team have supported conservation architects, CADW, English Heritage & Historic Scotland throughout the years. Check out our property restoration case studies here.