renovaters' support thread?

[stegosauruslady]

Is anyone else renovating at the moment? Interested in somewhere to moan?

I'm renovating my first home, a three bedroom terrace with a cellar. On today's list is the electrician finishing off a total re-wire, a plumber coming to fix our mystery leak (which is probably the overflow on the header tank) and a wood burning stove dude coming to give me a quote!

[coolpatterngirl]

Fab idea, I'll be joining you soon. Although our renovations will be done room by room.

[stegosauruslady]

We'll be doing room by room for most things...but the re-wire has to be done all at once! My house is a dusty nightmare! I'm going to start filling in the chasing this afternoon, after going to the bank to give all of my money to the electrician!

What kind of house are you going to be renovating?

[coolpatterngirl]

How bad is the rewire, are you living there?

We've booked the electrician for the week of 17/10 for wiring and hoping to move in the following week.

Ours is an old 30's mock Tudor. I'm quite nervous about the amount of work it needs!

[coolpatterngirl]

Did you install data cables whilst rewiring? My husband wants me to look into this but I haven't started this yet.

[MrsCampbellBlack]

We're doing an extension and total house renovation and have moved out for 6 months. The house has been gutted and totally stripped out.

It is exciting but very costly.

[FunkyChunk]

Oh I'll join! We are actually coming to the end of our renovation (I hope), but still a mountain of work to do. It's been a LONG 7 months!

We are renovating a 1930's 3 bed semi. The previous owners were elderly and it hadn't been updated in years. We've gutted and done the whole lot:

Remove chimney breasts in bedrooms/dining room
Widen doorway between living/dining to make a big living space
Complete re-wire
Complete re-plumb
New boiler
Plaster whole house
New staircase (Old one was made by the ex-man of the house in the 70's, it was solid but didn't comply with building regs!)
New kitchen
New bathroom
Every single tiny other thing you could think of - replace skirtings/architraves/coving/flooring/radiators etc etc

We've managed to keep the costs down by doing 90% of the work ourselves, luckily my DP is a plumber and has the knowledge/squillions of tools. I've also become a fanatical bargain hunter, finding good quality materials much cheaper using online trade suppliers. I massively underestimated how much all the materials would cost!

Cannot wait until it's over, I want my weekends back!

[stegosauruslady]

Yep, data cables everywhere. It was no extra work for the electrician really as you can run them in the same channels.

We are living in the house, everything is dusty and messy but it isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be! The DDs are away with their Dad for a week so it has been just DP and I here, which has made it easier.

Our list of things still to do is...

Kitchen
Bathroom
Put new air bricks in to finish off drying out the cellar
Wood burner in the living room

That's the big work done then, we'll decorate as we get rooms finished. I have to go and fill holes now!