To ask you to guess how much I’ve been quoted?

[BrainScience]

I bought my dream house at the beginning of the year. It’s a beautiful old Victorian property that I dreamed about living in ever since I was a child. It was relatively cheap as nothing has been done to it for about 50 years. As it was cheap we had around 100k left to do it up which I thought would be enough to doit really, really nicely. But everything is so expensive . Everyone who comes round to look at a job will remove a panel/ floor board/ light switch finds something that’s bodged it dangerous behind it and it ends up costing twice as much and taking twice as long.

The next job that needs doing is the exterior painting and guttering replaced. At the moment it is just concrete render and is a similar size to the one in the photo I’ve attached, although only bay windows downstairs rather than upstairs too. The wood that the guttering is being stuck doesn’t need replacing and the cost of the scaffolding isn’t included either. I’m in an average sized tourist town in the SW.

The price I’ve been is so much more than I was thinking but I don’t know if that’s me being overly optimistic or decorator thinking I have more money than I do!

Here is a friend of a friend (I don't know her myself) she renovated in Ireland:

www.houseandhome.ie/real-homes/1930s-clontarf-home-dublin-interiors-21816

The extension is modern, but the rest, the old bit of the house is done very well.

horsemen I’m not sure why it’s not obvious why I can’t paint the exterior of a house when I’m looking after 2 dc. I can do odd bits like repainting and sanding etc once dc are in bed but I’m not climbing scaffolding at 8pm to start painting a house.

Thanks mrselizabeth that’s really useful, I didn’t know that about gas supply. There’s currently an Aga which I’m planning on keeping so no worry about new oven. The Aga isn’t in the kitchen, which is weird, but the new kitchen won’t have any gas at all. There’s a new boiler that’s due to be fitted next week. The guy didn’t mention any issues with the gas supply, is it something they would’ve checked as standard do you think? Or is it only likely to become apparent once it’s installed?

3lucky that house is gorgeous. The hall especially and the bathroom. I love that shade of blue in the bedroom too.

I’m just coming to the same conclusion OP!

We had someone come round to give us a quote to replace a fence. Wouldn’t quote for all of it for one reason or another, just a very small portion of it but wanted nearly £1500!!! 😱 Had a quote to clean our gutters and fascias etc - £250!!! 😱 So we’ll be doing it ourselves unfortunately... 😭

Sorry if I've missed something but you say you're a single mum with two children after talking about 'd'h?

The OP says her dh is living in another house with someone else ineedabodytransplant

Op they should be checking prior to install x

I'm afraid that sounds like a very reasonable quote to me. And yes, they do need to do multiple coats, or you'll have to get them back in six months to do it again.

I just have to say I love the look of your house!

Yep, it looks like it is fairly reasonable after all. A lot of the cost is the actual labour - 3 guys for nearly 3 weeks adds up pretty quickly! Tbh I hadn’t considered it would need so many coats but it’s bare concrete render at the mo.

I’m also now in the dilemma of being able to decorate it exactly how I want without having to take stbxh’s very greige taste into consideration. But now I’m unsure whether I genuinely like things or whether I like it because I know it will really piss stbxh off if/ when he sees it! I can have my own room though, all to myself and it’s going to be bloody beautiful.