To sell the house and drastically change our lives

[julyjulyjuly]

I’m in my 30s, married with one DC and live on the outskirts of London. DH and I are both self employed and whilst the year started off well, the lockdowns have been awful financially and have also taken a massive toll mentally on both of us.

We have a big mortgage (£1500 a month) which was doable before, but with things looking so much less certain due to Covid, we’d now like to hugely reduce our outgoings.

We’ve always wanted to live in the countryside and we’ve found a place we really like the look of. It’s a long way from London and is in bad condition inside - it would need a new kitchen and bathroom straightaway and all the other rooms need completely redecorating (paintwork, fixtures and floors). The garden is an overgrown mess.

DH and I have never done any painting, decorating or floor sanding in our lives and don’t know anything about that sort of stuff. But it’s always been a dream to take on a rural project like this, do as much of the work as possible by ourselves and create an amazing family home.

We could afford a “finished” house in the location where we want to live on our budget, but it would be two bedrooms as opposed to four, with one reception room compared to three. I’ve always wanted the big rambling house so we can have family to stay at Christmas and friends during the year. Obviously that wouldn’t be possible with a two bedroom cottage, but if we bought the house that needs work then we’d have that.

The major issue is the finances - whilst our mortgage would be reduced to around £600 per month (that’s the cost of the house plus £50k to do it up), we worry that moving hundreds of miles away from London is a risky move career-wise. In our current state we can work from anywhere, but what if our freelance work dries up and we need to get full time jobs again? This is something that would be much easier to do near London than the far flung but beautiful corner we want to move to.

I know I’ve probably answered my own question here, but is it too risky to take this step and rely on getting freelance work in the future to pay our bills? Is there any way at all we can make this work or is it a total pipe dream?

I just feel completely and utterly drained by this year, am craving a massive lifestyle change and feel like this is a now or never moment.

WWYD?

Trikebaby

Urgh! Looking at that house made me feel itchy,

How well do you and your DH work together? I have found it better to designate one chief for each job and the other take the orders saves A LOT of arguments. Watch as many How to videos as you can on Youtube. Buy decent power tools and protective equipment.

I think you could do it for 50k if you don't have any structural issues and the roof is sound.

You will need a good reliable network with a good speed.

If I was doing it and living in it, I would

Make one room liveable (clean), where you can sleep and one room for eating/working, you can get by with a toaster and microwave for a while until the kitchen is done.

If it needs new wiring, pipework and boiler, get it done before you move in as channels may need to be cut into walls etc and the amount of dust is incredible.

Do the bathroom first, you won't feel clean if you use a grotty bathroom, I speak from experience.

Then the kitchen, then the living room and then the Bedrooms and do the hall last as you will damage it bringing through building supplies etc.

You can clear a space in the garden to work yourselves, it wouldn't take long with a chainsaw and strimmer. Then do the garden last as you will see what is growing throughout the year.

You can get the Kitchen units and bathroom suites for a good price, you just need to shop around.

Decorating is the easy bit after all the hard preparation.

You will be shattered after working at first but you get used to it after a while. Make sure you have a well stocked medical kit, you will need it.

There will be dust settling for months and months after you have finished.

I really enjoyed renovating my house and love that everything has been done by us. The sense of achievement is wonderful.

I wish you good luck.

Why not find a smaller house in a similar condition in your ideal location, do it up and in the process learn about how you do up a house, then decide if you want a bigger house?

That would probably be sensible. But I love the romance of buying the special, beautiful forever house and restoring it to its former glory! I don’t want to live in another house where I know I’ll be moving on again in 5 or 10 years - I want to settle. Plus moving is so expensive.

We moved 4 times in DD1's first 6 years. Yes it was expensive and inconvenient, but we ended up in a 5-bed house on an acre of land that we've gradually been doing up since then.

It was perfectly livable when we arrived but we've redone all the bathrooms and most of the kitchen, added walk-in wardrobes, reroofed the garage, added/removed doors and windows, replaced multiple windows, made a spare living room in the basement, and our final plan will be to rejig the downstairs to make it absolutely perfect. We're also rebuilding the deck to double its size, add a firepit, and probably a gazebo.

DH has done almost all of the work himself with some help and tools from our neighbour. He has a full time job that involves a lot of travelling so it hasn't been particularly easy and I'm very glad we weren't refurbishing from scratch.

I really would be careful about deciding you're going to rebuild a house from scratch when you're not even sure why the heating pipes are where they are...

Are the kitchen and bathroom useable?

I’m trying to get a kitchen installed now... there’s no-one available to do it till February....

I suspect if there are pipes across walls it’s because they couldn’t be concealed as the walls are solid, or the person who installed them was extremely lazy. Which then bodes ill for other bodge jobs they may have done.

@Dopeyduck

Life’s short and cruel. Do it now whilst you have the chance. You’ll never know what’s round the corner - this year has shown that. Make decisions that make you happy.

I completely agree with this. I would do it - in fact, I'm planning something very similar. My children are older, but actually I wish we had done it when they were small, like yours. Otherwise, our circumstances are very similar, except that we've done up a couple of places before and are used to slumming it while we earn the money for the next stage. I say this cautiously, as I don't know what field you work in, but in general terms I would say proximity to London and other urban centres will only become less necessary for people who can already work from the end of an internet connection.

Does anyone know why the pipes from the radiators would all be external and not plastered in? Would that be because radiators were added later, and they didn’t put the pipes in the walls to save money?

Exactly that, I should think. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever lived anywhere where it wasn't so.

I'm dying of curiosity now about where you're looking to move to!

Depending on your tastes £50k doesn’t go that far, if you need to factor in tools, ovens, white goods for the kitchen, flooring, carpets. Then there are bigger items you need tradespeople in like electrical rewiring, new boilers, windows, plasterers, damp proofing.

If you are very rural you might also have a borehole for water. We had to have a new oil tank as our one was falling to bits. I paid £800 for a second had but never used tank. This was half the new price, we also had to pay for the van rental to collect it, plus fuel plus put a cement base down to put it on, luckily we had a mixer but that was going all day. It then had to have pipes put in so it could be plumbed to the house so above ground and some under. This was another £150 plus a pipe to keep it safe underground at £50 plus a lot of digging. We then paid plumbers to fit a new boiler and hot water tank. The rest of the plumbing was already in place so the tank and boiler and connecting of the ends of the pipe to the tank and boiler was £6500 and this was the cheapest quote. On top of this there are the pipe clips, cement, sand etc

If you want to do a wreck please put some costings together. It’s not just the big things, but it all adds up, tools break and unexpected things happen, our last house had a rotten wooden lintel that needed replacing, the chimney wasn’t tied in and needed rebuilding on the ground floor, the electrics needed rewireing and none of that came up on the full survey we paid for.

I would multiply all costs and time frames by 2 so 50k won’t take you far. Doing DIY without any experience will be slow and expensive experience, it’s achievable but you need to be realistic about your sacrifices. Are you ok with them? And what about your DH and DC?
I would also try to picture your life in the dream house literally day by day, thinking about activities you usually do and next stages of your family life. It helps a lot.

It's hard to tell figure wise without seeing the full condition of the house. I have done quite a few renovations and my favourite houses are period restorations. I absolutely love sourcing the fixtures and fittings, restoring houses back to their former glory. I've just completed a 1930's three bed semi. The house had one owner since built and needed a full renovation.

Work included having gas piped in, combi boiler and full central heating system installed, full electrical re wire, new kitchen and bathroom with tiling to both, some plastering work of the walls and ceilings, areas of rotten floorboard replaced, loft fully boarded, everywhere decorated and new carpets, exterior woodwork, drainpipes and facias painted (we kept the original Windows) outside gardens cleared and planted. The cost of this was £35,000, employed were a plumber, joiner, electrician, tiler and a decorator for exterior work. The renovation took around 7-8 months and we were lucky enough to have somewhere else to live, living in the house would have been nearly impossible, it was stripped back to a shell.

You need to be prepared to do as much as possible to save money, this means no free time and spending evenings after work and weekends at the house. Basically working all the time between your job and the house. Having no spare time and money can be very stressful and cause arguments in the best relationships.

Good luck if you go ahead 🙂

not saying dont move but think youre being a bit naive to think it will be easy

if you have to work twice as much when are you ging to renovate and you say u have to do it straight away because it unliveable

you will have to pay for certain th8ings to be done by trademan electricians certain things you cant do yourself

and all these fmaily member willing to come hundreds of miles alot really

we usually see dhs family about 3 times a year and thats only a 200 miles away-you cant buy a house based on how much people will be coming to stay

I just saw ..money pit.

I’d buy a house a bit more sorted if I were you.
I’m always forking out on my house, it’s 45 years old and a modern semi bungalow..but still needs maintainance

Could you wait 6 months?

Because this has been such an odd year, because all the fun things about city life have disappeared, because everyone is sick of their own four walls.... of it’s really the move for you, it will still be in 9 months, post-vaccine, no lockdown. We’re in such a strange mood and situation just now, I’m not sure it’s a great place to make big decisions that could wait.

We bought a country house, 30 minute drive to the nearest town. As much as we loved the beautiful nature and quiet, it soon got very annoying having to drive for absolutely everything. And yes, it’s such a money pit, there’s always something. We sold it after less than 2 years and moved back to city.

I think the project is too big for you and with limited budget it sounds like years and years of living in a building site.

It’s not what you wanted to hear, but I also had a dream of peace and quiet and drinking tea in my garden.

In life, I generally do believe that you regret the things you don’t do, not the things you do.

My sole exception to this is buying an old house to do up

I was totally swept away by the bad boy house out in the wilds, all acres of land and potential, all 60s kitchen and avocado suites in the bathrooms, all falling-down lean to for a utility room and all. I thought all it needed was me, riding in on my white horse to restore it to its former glory.

Seven years down the line, I have discovered these things:

• My £50k budget didn’t touch the sides (spent knocking on £90k so far and it’s not fucking finished )
• My husband, while handy is so slow I think daily about bumping him off for the insurance so I can pay someone else to finish it
• I don’t actually give that much of a shit about the Homes and Gardens lifestyle, find choosing fittings unutterably dull, and would rather stick pins in my eyes than ever stain woodwork or paint a wall again
• People will come to your remote location a couple of times, but then it will be “much more handy” for you to go to them, and your spare bedrooms won’t see air from one year end to the next.
• big sprawling old houses, even when they’re not building sites, keep you enslaved to a daily grind of cleaning, gardening and maintenance, and cost a fortune to heat and light.

Don’t do it, OP! Money pits drain the life out of you, and agree with a PP that they throw grenades into your marriage to boot.

Are you are your DH the type that get things. When you get a new print do you frame it and get it up on the wall straight away? Or does it sit in the tube for weeks.If somthing needs doing either fixing or would benefit from a lick of paint, does it get done.
If no to these- and not judging because I'm the second - think long and hard about a lengthy renovation project.

I was totally swept away by the bad boy house out in the wilds, all acres of land and potential, all 60s kitchen and avocado suites in the bathrooms, all falling-down lean to for a utility room and all. I thought all it needed was me, riding in on my white horse to restore it to its former glory.

This made me laugh - it’s exactly what I’m like. I’m a sucker for an avocado suite, don’t ask me why!

@SophocIestheFox would you really not have bought the house though if you could turn back time? Sorry, but it does sound rather fabulous!

I think the finances are going to be so tight that I’m too scared to proceed. If we had another £50k then it might be just about doable! Also the fact that we wouldn’t be able to commute to London makes me nervous, as if our freelance work did dry up and we needed to find employment again, it would be tough. We both work in the arts and I think the majority of jobs are probably in London. I just wanted to escape the south east - I know there are some beautiful parts but property here is just so expensive!

Could you wait 6 months?

Because this has been such an odd year, because all the fun things about city life have disappeared, because everyone is sick of their own four walls.... of it’s really the move for you, it will still be in 9 months, post-vaccine, no lockdown.

Perhaps you’re right - but will things really be back to normal in six months? I don’t think I can go on like this for much longer - I’m so desperate for a change of scenery and a new lease of life.

If you're happy to move away from the city why don't you find a property in-between a complete doer-upper and a pristine finished one. One that just needs modernising rather than an overhaul.

Surely with the move out of London that would work financially?

DH and I are both self employed, and the way we have always thought is if the worst happens and we lost our company, could we afford our mortgage on two minimum wage jobs?" If the answer was no we waited and increased our deposit. I think from the perspective of your mortgage, I wouldn't worry about it at all, £600 is not that much to have to find and if you both lost your jobs you probably wouldn't be able to even rent much for that price.

That is a good way to look at it. Although it would obviously be £600 plus bills - so probably more like £1000-£1200 a month in total. Hang on - that still sounds doable!

I have to say there’s nothing like having no functioning kitchen/bathroom as a kick up the arse to start work after the 9-5. I found we used to plan our holidays to take at least a week off to start a big project. Ideally you’d have two weeks but for some reason we rarely did. By the end of that week we’d be at the point of no return and would just have to fight our way onwards in an attempt to get things liveable again. Go with IKEA kitchen and a cheap bathroom suite for now - they look just as good as the mid-range stuff and you can get posh doors made for the kitchen cupboards down the line if you want. The trouble with DIY is not the quality of the work itself - that can be much better thought-out than a crap tradesperson’s work - but the fact that you invariably get 90% there and then get too knackered to do the rest so it remains never completely finished. My bathroom is all done except for the windowsill and door frame because there’s a patch job needed on the door frame where some previous person cut a chunk out of it for a water tank that no longer exists. The kitchen is similar - we seem to hate painting door frames! The living room is all done except removing the 80s gas fire seemed a bit daunting so it’s still there - down the line I’d really like a wood burning stove instead.

I’ve also assumed in my calculations that we can sell our current place for what we bought it for 4 years ago, and that we can get £25k knocked off the asking price of the new place - both big “ifs”!

Plus I’ve factored in £20k to cover our first year of living costs to take the pressure off finding work immediately, if our freelance work dries up.

big sprawling old houses, even when they’re not building sites, keep you enslaved to a daily grind of cleaning, gardening and maintenance, and cost a fortune to heat and light.

I have a large house and garden and agree with the above. I frequently wish I didn't! Especially when I had toddlers and they dragged endless crap through the house. Have you factored in the time (and money) it takes to clear and maintain a large garden too? I could easily spend a day a week in my garden. That's without any extensive landscaping. Who is going to clear all the brambles? Clean all the windows and gutters? Will you have a cleaner? If not you'll spend at least half a day a week doing the basics. You can of course pay for help for the above but it can be ££.

If I were you, I would look for an arty town where you can realistically carry on working if your freelance work dries up, and go for a middle ground. You say you are an all or nothing person but there are loads of 'normal' houses out there you can out your mark on and make exceptional. Where I live there are lots of affordable period homes which in other places would be twice the price. I think you should think outside the box and not become fixated on an unrealistic dream which it sounds like you don't have the right budget to achieve. Sorry to be negative. Probably ten years ago I'd have said "go for it!"

OP, do bear in mind the emotional side of this - the friends and family you might be leaving behind. I made a similar move, but for different reasons, seven years ago. I missed my old life and the people in it terribly - and for a very long time. And your nearest and dearest might not always be keen on trekking miles to see you. Or be able to.
Good luck with your decision.