After living in fairly new houses all my life, my DH and I fell in love with and purchased a Victorian semi. It's in good shape structurally but the interior is kind of a shambles. Lime green paint, smelly stained carpet, ten layers of old paint over everything, tacky wallpaper etc are just some of the monstrosities I'm dealing with.
We're getting rid of the worst of it and trying to figure out how much of the rest we can live with. Lime green actually looks kind of okay toned down with the right accessories, for example.
The question is what kind of finish to go for with the parts of the house we do fix up and how much to leave of the rest. Do we really want to be putting all our spare money into this house for the next several years? It's a big house so removing all the old layers of paint from cornices and skirting boards would probably cost £10k alone. Then there is lining paper on the walls. Do we leave it and paint over cheaply or do we strip it off, reskim, and get a great finish? But that would be pointless unless the skirting boards and cornices are done right. It almost feels like an all or nothing proposition.
So AIBU to just make things look okayish by slapping more paint over everything and accept the house has battle scars and will never (and should never) look like a Barrett home? Or do I painstakingly and lovingly make everything perfect and go broke in the process?