DH has moved out

If memory serves, avocado was a lot darker when I lived with one.

I moved to a house with a yellow bath suite. Never changed it, because the bath is the old cast iron and I don't want a plastic one. Probably yellow cast iron will be in again one day, or someone won't mind going without a bath while the paint dries.

I have better things to spend my money on. Now if there wasn't a bathroom at all, that would be different.

Comparison is the thief of joy. You've put it so well and much more kindly than me.

Depending on how much you've spent on beds and I'm guessing a lot of completely not urgent stuff like that, it will all be money you've sunk in with no return. Fitted wardrobes maybe but minimal. The garage should have waited. I understand bathroom(s) and kitchen but spending more on them that you will recope on the house is madness. 20K would have done the job but you wanted "the best". Floors yes, but everything should have been added up before any work was done. I get it, you don't know the costs but you should have added them up.

I guess you feel that we're all ganging up on you but this could so easily have been avoided and your dh has now spent a whole lot of money for something he was prepared to take more financially seriously. And, I hate to say it, but I think you have been manipulative and I think your marriage is on thin ice. Some counselling, maybe, to have a look at his decision to run away and your spending well outside of your means and what that says about your manipulation and your marriage in general.

I sold my parents’ avocado bathroom suite for £250 to a couple who were doing up their mid century house.

Haha we left the avocado in one bathroom because of the kids. Just moved the loo, an ancient electric shower, built fitted cupboards. Some new tiles, wallpaper and curtains.

I wonder if coloured bathrooms will ever make a comeback.

I inherited an avocado bathroom two houses ago. It stayed there. I wasn't one of those people who cared all that much. How much time is spent in a bathroom? The kids mess it up anyway, whatever colour it started off as.

Trying to compete with others is never a good idea. You wanted to own your first home. You saved up the deposit and got a mortgage? You found a property you could make your own, without realising the cost.

Did you want to hold your housewarming party too soon? You talk about the price your friend paid for her kitchen, and that gives the impression that you might have been impressed by what they had achieved and wanted the same. How do you know it isn't harder for them to redo the kitchen?

Do you think when your friends invite you round to see their homes they are not in the same mess you are in? 9 of 10 says they are, unless you make friends with very wealthy people, that is.

Don't go through life trying to compete or impress others. You will see they are not worth it. Put friends aside for a while. Make up with your DH and see what you can save from the tangle. Tell them you are too busy sorting out your house to go to parties or wherever they go, then sit down and work out whether you can continue what you have started, or cut your losses and try again.

Everyone rises and falls in life. It is what life is. Everything you experience is a learning curve - a very good learning curve. The worse the fault, the more you learn from it and the more you can guide your family through it.

Don't forget that. It is important. Try to redeem something good from every disaster that comes your way. Look back at experiences, not in anger. I don't know if you do old fashioned things like knitting, but when you make a mistake, you can just unpick it and knit it up again. You can even decide the mistake was meant, unpick the lot and start knitting something else. Not everything in life is like that, but learning which can be salvaged and which cannot, is life.

Other couples are the same as you.

I wonder if it is all about impressions. They see a house - and old house - that they can afford, and buy it. Then friends want to see what they have bought. That is when the 'rot' sets in, and impressions seem more important than how much they can afford. It is understandable, really. It depends who their friends are. If they are richer than them they may be wanting to impress, and that is their first wrong move.

It could be why the DH got cold feet. Perhaps he suddenly realised that the whole thing was just to impress and the friends are not worth selling your soul for? They have eyes bigger than their bank balance.

It is hardly different to why people wear designer labels. They want people to believe they earn enough to be able to afford them.

It makes you want to knock their heads together.

Again, I think the hundreds of house renovations on TV appear to be more doable than they actually are. They give couples buying their first home hope that it can be done - like magic. Sometimes those renovations take months, but that isn't always spelled out.

If there was a TV show telling people exactly how it is in the renovation lark, it would bring them nearer to earth, but that is unlikely to happen.

What's more important is helping them pick up the pieces. Too late for judgements. The deed is done.

How big is your kitchen?!?!

We put a new kitchen in a couple of years ago. L-shaped kitchen and island, quartz worktops, new floor, lighting, new electrics consumer unit, appliances, ceiling skimmed, painted etc... We assembled the kitchen units ourselves (not exactly difficult so saved money) but the rest we had fitted. Total cost £10,500. We used DIY Kitchens and local independent tradespeople do to any work.

Who was project managing the renovations?? Very poor project planning, and from what you've said about your DH's reaction, you might have been a little too demanding about it.

And surely if you've now finished the renovations, it will be worth more?? Or did you not research that either?

By the sound of it, you've jumped in feet first without doing some basic calculations. If the relationship isn't salvageable then yes, you will probably have to sell at a loss.

The vote being that close is concerning. Half the mumsnetters on this thread think it fine to spend money they don't have on things they don't need. Are they really so enamoured of designers.

The vote was too close to call, so she is probably as confused as ever. I hope the couple can sort it out.

It is an eye sore though....perhaps marginally better than the hideous pink we pulled from another bathroom.😁
With a green bamboo wallpaper, and cork flooring...hideous.
Having removed so much wallpaper I have never considered hanging the stuff again. 6 layers, it was like insulation.

I think there are different definitions of ‘unliveable’. Roof and damp course are unliveable. Dangerous electrics and condemned boiler are unliveable.

Avocado bathroom is very livable.

No. You should certainly live in it through at least one rainy season. I have lived in this house for years, and no leaks. Now there is water coming through the kitchen ceiling. It could be the bathroom, though I live in the disabled living extension downstairs, so it could be the join of that and the main house.

It got bigger today, so I do recommend people to live in a place for a good long time. No good new decorations if they are spoilt.

I am.

Are you in the UK?

It costs me £50 an hour for two handymen to move a few sticks of furniture.

I was quoted £740 by a removal firm to move one bed upstairs, take four bits of furniture out of the garage where they had been temporarily and bring them inside.

When I thought of buying a new bed for upstairs, the shops which sell them charge £90 if you want it further than the front door, and more if you want them to take the old bed away.

Friends had three rooms knocked into one really big long room, three zones. Once the plaster had dried two guys came in and sprayed the walls with paint. Took them two hours, cost £300. It was an amazing finish.

£4k to 5k for painting...

I've just repainted three ground floor rooms in our house. Walls and all woodwork.Took me a weekend and the place looks fantastic. Total cost just under £100.
Probably you have a bigger house but why spend a fortune all at once rather than doing one area at a time and doing some of it yourself?

Really surprised at this actually op as Ticktock is absolutely rammed full with couples buying dated houses and doing them up themselves on a buget/diy over several years.

Those Reform cost cutting measures are going so well!

But you knew what it was costing you and that, by buying a house at the top of your affordability, you had no money to spare.

Exactly, there would have been quotes for the work. If you have a £60k budget and you use £30k on a kitchen then there is only £30k left for everything else so you have to either lower your expectations of what you can afford or wait and save more money to get what you really want. It is not rocket science. To just plough on regardless is insanity.

But you knew what it was costing you and that, by buying a house at the top of your affordability, you had no money to spare.

I'd be pissed if I was him too. He shouldn't have cashed his shares or ISA to do non essential work. Essential work is work that will cause damage to the house if not done eg leaking roof. Non essential is a kitchen or interior you don't like. Even more non essential is hiring a designer you can't afford.

You would have been told the cost of the work before it commenced. You could have decided what to proceed with and what to wait on. Personally I waited 13 years to replace my kitchen and bathroom. They were functional, did the job etc but were old and dated. I replaced them when I could afford it.

The eye batting innocence of "I didn't realise the cost" would infuriate me and I can see why he's called you manipulative. Yes he sold his investments but I can imagine the pressure you were putting on him to do so.

I still have no idea about the following:

1. does OP want to mend the marriage?
2. is the house finished or is there money to be saved?
3. is the house going to be valued and possibly sold?

I know we're not entitled to answers but I feel this thread is either not genuine or we're being strung along somehow. What the heck does the OP want from this post?