To think I can do all this for £10,000?

[Iremembertheelderlykoreanlady]

My house desperately needs a revamp, to the extent that it's causing my depression to rear it's ugly head just living in it.

(I realise I sound horrible and entitled...at least I have a house etc)

I was hoping to get additional borrowing on our mortgage and do a renovation for about £45,000 knocking through some walls etc but OH says we can't afford the payments.

So I've been looking at what the minimum we would need doing to make the house feel nice and this is my list.

Laminate floor in living room and kitchen/dining room

're paint downstairs

Get kitchen cupboards sprayed and over professionally cleaned

New sofas

Coffee table/tv stand

New interior doors

Carpet upstairs

Paint 3 bedrooms

New floor in bathroom

're tile ensuite
New floor ensuite (more like a cupboard, very tiny)

New bed x2

New garden fence on one side

I've spent the day on Pinterest and looking for ideas of costs and I reckon we could do it for £10,000 if we are careful.

Both of us are shit at DIY so would have to pay for everything except the painting which we can do ourselves.

Are we kidding ourselves that it can be done for 10 grand?

It does depend on size of rooms etc.
paint is not expensive if you are going to repaint yoursleves but for a whole house probably a few hundred.

flooring, about £500 per room, assuming medium sized. Carpets you can negotiate fitting as part of purchase.
Laminate you will need to pay for fitting.

Sofas and coffee table etc, so much depends on size and taste. But decent sofas x 2 are going to be £1,500

new doors are about £100-£150 so it depends on how many. You will then need to paint them, which is fiddly and time consuming but do-able.

I repainted my kitchen myself, so only cost of a sander and paint. More to professionally spray.

fencing. well, we have just been quoted £3,000 but it is a long garden! (and we aren't going with that quote)

It is very tight.

Do you have a car?

If so then there are bargains to be had on Gumtree and Facebook marketplace, I would never pay £1000 for a sofa, there are plenty of second-hand sofas, tables and chairs, great stuff, often barely used (if that is important to you, hang on and find someone who bought a sofa then hated it!) Or needs to move urgently.

My sofa is second hand because the person suddenly wanted a corner sofa, it was used for two weeks and cost £50 as they wanted it moved quickly. Now, it's not a top of the line sofa, but it's great, and if the rest of the room is decorated, then it looks just fine- same with my table and chairs.

The most important thing is to decide now on any structural changes, there's no point redoing the kitchen then wishing you could knock through a few years later. Decide on any structural stuff, do that first and the rest will happen over a number of years.

I think you are biting off more than you can chew if you are starting to do every bedroom, all downstairs and so on in one big chunk especially if you are depressed. It's hard work doing that amount of DIY.

Ikea also sell half price or less ex-display stuff on the local FB marketplace/Gumtree, if you prefer to go that route.

I would move

If you can’t afford to do what you need to then it is always going to be there in the back of your mind.
I think £10,000 is doable if you could do a lot of the work but I think you are underestimating how much labour costs. As well as the problem of trying to get a reliable trades person to come and do it

I'd say it would be tough unless you bought ALL the furniture from Facebook Marketplace - we got a Laura Ashley armchair for £100 last week, and two lovely leather sofas for £70. But not otherwise, and even then it would be hard.

Pick one project and work on that. Our project is the garden. We have done what we can and now saving to replace the fence and put in a small patio. Second hand doesn’t mean crap by the way. I have some bits to upcycle and it’s saved me a fortune. We are going to do my daughters room next and I plan to use mostly second hand pine and up cycle the lot.

Of course it can be done. Just don't ask a load of people who think Farrow and Ball, John Lewis and artisan traders is where normal people get their homewares.

If you can’t afford to do what you need to then it is always going to be there in the back of your mind.

I can afford to get done what I need to get done. I don't need to knock out walls and get an extension. I don't even want that it was my brothers idea.

As for finding the route cause of my depression, it's the house! I don't need medicating, it's making me feel down that's all.

We renovated a 3 bed house for about £10k.
The following we did ourselves:

• repainted throughout
• new engineered oak in living room & kitchen
• new sink & loo installation and tiled floor & walls
• new kitchen from IKEA, fitted it ourselves including white goods and oven and sink plus tiling

We used professionals for:

• minor electrical works (less than £300)
• new carpets in three rooms (about £1100)
• plastering in some rooms (£800)
• minor plumbing & new boiler £2k

It was hard work, quite grim to live through all done at weekends and took about 8 months (I was pregnant so there was a deadline!). YouTube tutorials proved very useful! I would say we are both perfectionists and as it was all for us (not just doing up and selling) we were pretty thorough about things being safe, hardwearing and not just a superficial quick fix that will need redoing in a few years. Everyone always comments on how lovely the house is so we’re very proud of our hard work!

We’d never done anything like that before so if you’re not proficient in DIY right now, that’s no reason not to learn!

Forgot to say though that no that didn’t include new sofas! But beds from IKEA and the cheapest flat pack wardrobes we could find from cotswold company!

See list of coatings upthread.

I have factored labour into the costings for floors/Kitchen spraying.

The one I had missed was doors, but as I've said I think family will be able to help with that particular job. Hinges etc do need factoring in. I have found doors i like for £35 each. We need 10. Just plain bog standard doors. What can i say, I have cheap taste 🤷‍♀️

I have no desire to turn my house into something out of the next/john lewis/ laura ashley catalogue. I just want it to be comfortable and make me happy.

I'm happy to do all the wallpaper stripping and painting myself. It'll be a project I think it will be good for me. When we are allowed I'll get my mum round to help, she loves a bit of decorating 😅

I'm not the sort of person who would pay someone £1400 to paint my bedroom, but I'm also not the sort of person who could watch a couple of you tube videos and then do a good job of tiling or spraying cupboards. It would look like shit and the stress wouldn't be worth what I'd have to pay someone else to do it for me.

A lot of the suggestions on here have been good ones so thank you

We have just bought a house and done the following:

new boiler - 2k
chimney lined and new log burner etc - 2k
laminate flooring in lounge/diner and hall - DH fitted himself - about £500 for all the materials, new skirting etc
Painted 4 bedrooms, 1 lounge, 1 conservatory and 1 study - about £400 in paint and other items
new oven and hob - £600
new doors x 3 - £500
Had plumbing for washing machine moved - £150
New furniture for a lot of the rooms and bits and bobs of furnishings etc - about 4k
plus loads of misc that i dont want to add up!!!!

You can clean your oven yourself - £5 for oven cleaner and marigolds. Elbow grease is free - then you’ve got £80 ( would never pay this much for oven cleaning) to buy paint!

In our experience you can make your money go a long way by

• doing as much prep, simple work and decorating yourself as possible.

• not getting carried away with standard of finishes. I wouldn't buy the cheapest of everything but widely available reasonably solid doors, hardware, good quality paint but not bespoke colours. The sort of thing you get from Wickes or Screwfix.

• keep your style simple - plain and understated designs look more expensive than cheap fussy faux-antique fittings.

• really shopping around. Don't buy anything at full showroom/brochure price. Tiles, flooring, furniture: there are lots of warehouses/seconds outlets/clearance stores.

• Get tooled up to do things properly - if you are decorating, get some good dustsheets, masking tape, brushes and rollers, and look after them. Also only buy either trade quality paint (Leyland/Johnstones) or Dulux.

Since moving into a house with it, I've become a convert to wood effect vinyl tile flooring but it doesn't have to be actual Amtico, there are lots of cheaper versions. A well laid floor will make everything else look expensive.

Op, canny northerner here!

New beds can easily be got off eBay
I just bought a beautiful one this morning for £90 originally John Lewis

Tiles - clearance tile mountain and topps

Carpet - I only buy room sized remnant - look for burts flooring on eBay and others

If I see anything I want, I always check it’s on eBay before I buy. Recently got a vanity unit for £500; originally £1k which I wouldn’t never have paid for in my wildest dreams

We have plenty money but expensive tastes and I enjoy getting a bargain

Good luck

Oh also why do you need new doors?

I stripped and painted mine
Changed door handles
Added beading

They look amazing. Cheap doors are horrendous.

New handles - £16
Paint - £15
Sanding sheets - £8

At a minimum you’ll need to double that but I still think you’ll struggle. I mean, even to get really nice beds and sofas you could be looking at £3-4K. Especially if you want them to last for ages.

2.5k quote for a very small fence here. So I think you are overly optimistic sorry

We did most of what you want to do to your house last year and it cost up just over 3k to carpet 3 bedrooms, hallway and stairs. This was the best we could get after alot of shopping around.

What's up with your existing doors? Are they original or bad replacements? I would at least get solid wood, the engineered wood ones are less prone to warping than solid pine.

More advice 😁 I really wouldn’t put laminate anywhere with water or steam, kitchen or bathroom. Vinyl is cheaper and costs less to get laid (much quicker to do you see)

You can spend as much or as little as you like on all this “having” to spend 3.5k to get decent beds and sofas is hilarious.

£250 for a decent bedroom carpet, 4x3 metres, with underlay all trims and fitting from carpetrite who are not the cheapest either 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Iremembertheelderlykoreanlady

But if it’s so easy to plan to be rich - go get rich and then get this done to a high standard, without wasting money on interest.

It was a joke love.

Of course it was a joke - “love” 🙄

But it really shows your dismissive attitude to thinking about other options than spending money you don’t have.

You’ve accepted you need to increase your planned debt from £10K to £15K pretty quickly.

Honestly... I’ve read your previous posts. In a problem relationship, I think it’s better to avoid debt because debt makes it harder to split, if you need to. I would be increasing my debt if I resented my boyfriend because he didn’t want to marry me, because he threw keys at, and most of all - if he had a habit of putting his 6ft 2” self up in the face of our 8 year old, shouting at him.

I think your depression might not just be because of some tatty cupboards, and I think adding debt to your relationship if a bad move at this point. Love.

You can also get this kind of thing instead of expensive tiling. I know a few people that have done this and it looks great.

You can do it but only if you put in the effort to learning how to DIY - there’s so many tutorials on YouTube now that diy skills are accessible to everyone.

Also second hand furniture can yield great results. But it takes time to find the best bargains.

I’m really proud of my living room/ diner and it cost me approx £700 in total. Second hand sofa (£200) that looks brand new, free dining table that someone was going to bin, second hand dining chairs (£100 for 4), second hand sideboard (£5) that I upcycled, second hand tv unit (£15) that originally cost £450 new, second hand armchair (£40), DIY wall panelling and DIY built in shelving. Only things bought new are the rug, paint, mirror, artwork and plants.

To answer some previous points.

The doors are fucked. However some may be salvageable so I will rethink whether painting them is an option.

£250 for a decent bedroom carpet, 4x3 metres, with underlay all trims and fitting from carpetrite who are not the cheapest either 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes this is the kind of thing I'm talking about really. Very similar price to what family and friends have had done.

I have looked over all the comments and taken lots on board