To ask how much work you do to your house?

[Merryoldgoat]

We’ve been in our house for 7 years and it was utterly vile when we moved in.

We’ve had to redecorate but by bit but it therefore feels like nothing is ever finished.

In the last 2/3 years we’ve had:

New porch
New front door
New bathroom and cloakroom
Refreshed kitchen (tiling and painting)
New hallway and kitchen floor
Redecorated both kids bedrooms

The living room now looks tired, the stair carpet needs replacing, hallway needs repainting. The porch already needs a fresh coat of paint. The front render is dirty as hell and our driveway looks like a junkyard.

There’s more but it feels like it never ends.

Is this just how it is?

Not even just do-er uppers that are money pits, we bought a new build 8 years ago and it’s been never ending. Decorating is so effing expensive if you want anything other than painting done. Tiles needed in all the bathrooms and kitchen, carpets, flooring, garden left in an absolute state by the builders. We are now having our bedroom wallpapered after living with magnolia for this whole time. Think the carpet in the lounge will need replacing soon but omg the price of carpet 😱

New electric garage door openers ( converting garage doors from manual to electric)
handrail for deck
just finished tiling the kitchen today ( did it myself, first ever diy project)
roof paint, garage roof paint and re nail ( live in NZ and this is important to stop leaks, sun damage)
repainted master bedroom, hallway
new fences ( partly to stop spaniel going into the stream whenever the mood takes him, then jumping on the bed, complete with duckweed and mud, also prevent Boxer from trotting next door and wanting to play football with the children, without supervision) cost a fortune

installed irrigation system for kitchen garden/ orchard
had Bookcases built floor to ceiling ( doesn’t even touch the amount of books, but goes someway)
shelved the airing cupboard
had some lights/ sockets moved/ installed

just about to decorate the lavatory, bathroom and other hallway

been here 4 years in September

rainted kitchen, about to start on drawing room

I have never done anything to my 1930s flat. It was spruced up for sale by the seller who was renting it out. Bought in 2019.

We bought a new washer dryer and a fridge and repaired the boiler. We didn't even paint! Carpet is new.

The communal areas are being replastered and repainted and that is a work in progress. But that comes out of the service charge.

Been here 17 years done fuck all. It's a shithole.

This is what always makes me laugh when people say that they’re home is it an asset it’s rising in value but how much have you bloody spent on the damn thing over the years 🤣
I would say if we run a profit and loss spreadsheet my last house cost me 25 grand to live in

On the upside we haven't consigned a whole load of perfectly good stuff to landfill for fashion reasons so our carbon bootprint is slightly less.

Actually I tell a lie - bunged a load of extra insulation in the loft.

I moved in with my partner in 2018 into a house that hadn't had anything done to it for 20 years, so everything needed doing. We started with getting a completely new kitchen and garden - nothing too quick because of finances - and then covid hit which put a stop to people being able/us wanting to have people in the house doing things.

So since things have calmed down we've done the living room and had the bathroom ripped out and redone. So downstairs is DONE, but we still have to do the bedrooms and the stairs.

Waiting for funds at the moment!

I actually quite enjoy it, to be honest.

@Nothappyatwork but if you rented, you would be paying the landlord to do maintenance. You would still spend the money but it would be bundled in with rent. Hopefully your maintenance costs is less than your mortgage, when you pay or overpay your mortgage, it is equity you may be able to cash out in the future, i kinda view it as a forced savings scheme (except that it may be your descendants who cash out on your savings if you never downsize). It is also an opportunity to fix your housing costs for at least 5 years.

But yes whether you rent or buy, it costs around the same (that has been my experience with very low rental yields in london). We just buy because we think that we might not be able to afford London one day if we don't fix our housing costs now when we are young and have many years to overpay the mortgage! However, if I was independently wealthy, i would probably choose renting over buying my home.

It can be so demoralising. Ours is Victorian semi. Since 2006 we have painted twice. replaced a number of sash windows. replaced the kitchen. repaired the roof. repaired the dining room ceiling which collapsed due to a leak we did not know about. repaired the downstairs loo ceiling (ditto). We have an ancient poorly built conservatory that needs something to be done to it as it is unusuable (rotting floorboards) as the floor boards were laid direct onto mud with no foundations. And then we had a fair bit of strom damage in Storm Eunice (hole in roof, shattered glass and side of porch ripped off) that still has not been quoted for because all the builders are up to their ears.

I've been at it since 1995.

Yes, our list is similar. We moved in around 7 or 8 years ago and the house didn't look too bad, but was actually pretty bad. It was a fairly cheap house (mostly to do with location) and we didn't really intend for it to be a doer upper.

Within that time we have done:
Full rewire
New boiler
New fence panels
New kitchen
New bathroom
Dug out a skip full of rubble buried in the garden
Replaced all windows and internal doors (and this house has a LOT of windows including a lean to and conservatory etc). If I had to hazard a guess I'd say we've spent more than ten thousand just on upvc windows. They're all bloody massive too. I have two sets of patio doors downstairs which seem to be past their best but there's no way I'm shelling out for those too when they're still functional.

Still need to:
Get a leak in the roof looked at and tiles fixed
Redo the entire driveway as the bricks have actually crumbled away and it's dangerous to walk on
Redo the patio as it is crazily sloped and you can't comfortably use a table or chair on it
Have living room and hall/stairs/landing replastered (we actually just have areas of bare brick and chunks of plaster fall off the walls when the kids slam doors during tantrums) with new woodwork and flooring in those rooms
Ceilings in bedrooms fixed.

And those are just the things that HAVE to be done to be decent and useable. Not anything extra. So it doesn't even touch on the fact that I need to line a cupboard with shelves or that the bathroom needs repainting AGAIN and the soffits and facias need to be replaced and the guttering has sprung another leak... I had to repaint the kitchen last weekend which seemed crazy when I haven't even touched some areas of the house yet. And I need to buy plants for the garden. It feels so overwhelming at times.

Ours too but only 400 years old - a mere stripling compared with yours!

Mines rented from a Housing Association, which people think means you don't need to spend much. In actual fact I've spent a fortune over the 15 years I've been here. New flooring throughout, some rooms more than once. I've decorated the whole house a couple of times now. Changed light fittings etc. The garden was full of brambles and other weeds, actually higher than my head! So paid a lot to get it cleared as I tried to do it myself but it was all growing faster than I could deal with it.

Next on my list is the kitchen. The work surface is old and scratched up so I need to replace that. The sink taps are terrible (don't match and leak) but HA won't do anything as they still "work". So a new sink/taps etc. Realistically, if I can afford it, I usually pay for most stuff myself as the HA always do the cheapest/crappest job they can. That's when they even bother to do repairs at all (I've had to take them to Court over a leaking roof!).

I am lucky obviously in that I don't pay for structural work. But I have still spent a lot.

Been here 10 years.

Main bathroom
En suite bathroom
New carpets
Kitchen extension (inc new boiler)
Repainted each room at least once
New patio
Garden room
New path

About to get new windows to replace single glazed
Need to do main bathroom again because we've had leaks and damage
Hallway carpet needs redoing
Most rooms need a lick of paint too
Driveway needs doing
Utility room needs sorting too

It's never ending

Usually do it with additional borrowing on the mortgage. I've had a couple of lump sums too so fortunately the LTV is still around 50%

We've been in our house 5 years. We knew when we bought it that it was a proper fixer upper, but we were OK with that as it meant we could afford to buy a detached house in our ideal location. So far we've done the kitchen and main bathroom, replaced all the windows and both external doors, redecorated all three bedrooms, the dining room and DH's office, insulated the loft and replaced the garden fencing, two gates and the garage doors.

We still need to do the downstairs bathroom, repaint and replace the flooring in the hall, stairs and landing. We're planning on doing this by the end of the year but I'm sure there will always be something else that needs doing.