I have the money for repairs but cannot face dealing with trades. AIBU to just live in the house as it is

[Eastie77Returns]

Just that really. Bought the house a few years ago. I had threads going at the time about my horrendous experience with Trades. In one particular case (main builder) the police ended up getting involved. We thankfully found decent builders to fix his awful work but even they made errors and ruined some of our new flooring with paint.

We did find some good trades: a Carpenter who did our in wardrobes and shelves, the joiner who put in our doors, the flooring team. They were amazing. But the guys we employed for the bigger stuff…it was awful.

Eventually we ran out of cash and just accepted we would live with the shoddy work we couldn’t fix. Now I’ve inherited some money and I’m in a position to get stuff fixed and add a loft conversion. However I’ve decided for the benefit of my mental health that I cannot do it. I cannot face dealing with Trades again. The lies, the dishonesty, the unprofessionalism. It’s too much. I feel it’s inevitable I’ll be ripped off and a loft conversion will involve so much time, money and disruption.

On the other hand, the house looks shabby. It is a bit embarrassing having guests round when so much needs doing.. The walls already need repainting, skirting boards are awful. The house needs a glow up. I am not handy and neither is DP so we cannot do it ourselves. And we really do need the extra room the conversion will bring. I don’t trust any trades.

The funny thing is I do actually like the house. It has grown on me. It’s old but I like the character. I just feel a bit depressed when I look at the grubby walls and all the bits that need doing.

I’m not even sure what my AIBU is. Should I just live in the house as it is for now and protect my well being?

exactly this. We have a decorator in at the moment doing staircase, recommended by a friend. We need a tiling repair done, tiler is a friend of the plumber who has done good work.

I absolutely hate it too. Am currently getting wardrobes fitted. He didn't turn up Monday and no message. Eventually arranged Wednesday, I'm not expecting him to show.

Getting quotes has been a clown show. I have other work that needs doing and am dreading it.

My brother and I talk about this ALL the time. he'll do plumbing, I'll do electrics, we'll both do carpentry. I'm over using tradies and I had decent builders doing my extension except where the contracted stuff out towards the end and it was awful.

Mind you next door have an unsaleable house after their extension....

I wish there were more women in trades, I also detest having unknown men in the house to do work.

Yes and often the self employed ones have gone out on their own as they have no experience or can't hold down a job.

Did you hire during the covid years? We did as well and ended up with the worst people. I don't know what was going on with them but one guy who had done a great job of our kitchen 3 years prior absolutely f'd our bathroom and didn't know how to fix it, cost us 10k to sort out.

Since then we're hired about 30 different people and thankfully most of them have been ok, although there are some it beggars belief that they actually think their work is good. It is shitty, but you'll get through it.

I've found the best thing to do is either find one good person (easier said than done) and get recs from his contacts, or find an estate/lettings agent who has recs because they see landlords use the same people all the time.

Avoid all people on checkatrade, who have their own fancy websites, only a handful of reviews even if all good etc - they don't know what they're doing. Also a good sign is if they're only working on your job till it's done (not doing multiple people's jobs back and forth at the same time).

Can you do the painting and skirting yourselves ? A paint pod would be good if you aren't handy some tutorials online may be beneficial start in a room you don't use as much practice makes perfect, as for tradesman. There is a site called check a trade and on there are fully approved trademan best of luck x

Absolutely this. You can do pretty much everything bar gas and electrics and roofing.

not for a minute suggesting you do your own loft conversion but anything else is doable. There are youtubes for everything.

Jobs I’ve done supported by youtube include carpentry including new skirtings, building a stud wall, painting, wallpapering, refitting kitchen cupboards, plumbing in washers and dishwashers, replacing fences and gates and building an outdoor kitchen plus a couple of sheds and a woodshed.

People always tell me I’m “handy” but I’m not particularly. I’ve got a social science degree and work in an office role.

But I am diligent, hardworking and know what I don’t know, if you see what I mean.

honestly, for the smaller jobs do it yourself. It’s gratifying, cheap and will make you even more furious about the utter fecklessness of many trade.

ive just had a useless roofer who came round to quote in November 2024 and then never contacted me again, get back in touch asking if I still needed the work doing. What?? No - not if you were too fucking shit to even send a one-line text at the time saying “sorry, I’m too busy/ don’t want the job” or whatever.

I honestly think this is why so many men voted for Brexit - to get rid of the cheaper and better EU workmen. Now they can charge what they like for whatever they give with no guarantees.

Talk to your carpenter and joiner, and ask them for recommendations. They won't want to work with anyone not up to their standards so hopefully you'll find someone good.

Agree about females

I think part of the stress is caused by having to let a male stranger come into your home - it goes against everything we're used to.

God yes!

I had some renovations done a few years ago. Still recovering…. I now have a few small things that need to be done and for the time being I am just living with them as finding someone I can trust is so hard.

I tried to use a recommended tradesman once, but he was so busy that he never actually start my work.
I then reverted to finding people on checkatrade with mixed results. I must say that I ALWAYS chose tradesmen with multiples reviews, all positive. I do really try to vet them. However:

• I once had a constant leak behind my bathtub (when using the in-bath shower) because the installer didn’t bother to sit the bathtub on legs. He just let it rest on a thin wooden frame around the edge. Three plumbers came to investigate, none of them figured out the cause of the leak (but charged me for replacing the seal around the bath). In the end I figured out by myself what was going on by googling the potential reasons.
• i hired a carpenter to change my doors. A week later I had a house with no doors and damaged doorframes. I remember I was at work and I suddenly realised that something was very wrong with the carpenter as he was simply unable to complete the work. I texted him and told him to stop whatever he was doing and leave my house. He threatened to walk away with my new doors unless I paid him 😀. I’m laughing now but at the time I was so worried he’d go into a rage and smash my furniture and my appliances so I paid him.
• I hired a plumber to install a new toilet. He bought the wrong fittings so, to make it work, he suggested building a wooden pedestal on which to sit the toilet. I could have been sitting on a high throne every day, with my legs dangling, but I declined.
• i hired an electrician to install an electric extractor fan anywhere in the outside wall of my bathroom. He chose to dig the hole in the concrete lintel above the window 😂. Some hours and much dust later, he managed to make the hole.
• i hired a carpenter who did a good job, but then harassed me to date him (even though he was married).

There are also lots of people who gave me quotes but I didn’t hire, because they were either very expensive or completely insane - like the guy who offered to refurbish my bathroom but said it was necessary to demolish the external bathroom wall in the process.

I did get lucky when I did eventually refurbish my bathroom (no demolition of walls involved). I got a lovely team of people who did an excellent job and who were very kind. My Chinese plasterer is the hardest working person I’ve ever met, and charged me a third of what other plasterers charge. I subsequently used him to plaster my entire house.
I absolutely love my house now but omg, the refurbishment process was sooo stressful. And because of everything I’ve done to my floors, moving radiators etc, I seem to have caused a chain reaction of leaking pipes under my floorboards. Finding leaking pipes is sooooo difficult and so stressful. 😣

So you are not being unreasonable for not wanting to invest any energy in refurbishing your house.

i've just completed on the property and what started originally as a bathroom renovation is now a full house renovation and for quite some time the builders were coming at 8 am and then leaving at 1 pm, I meant today they were supposed to come and just never did and I blew my gasket with them. As I've had no water for over three weeks.

I just wish they would communicate with people

Maybe we should all buy mobile homes and site them on private land. Honestly, I’ve fantasised about such tiny homes, because they just wear out after a few decades and you replace the whole thing. In the meantime almost zero maintenance… maybe the issue is our expectation of perfectly presented, sizeable houses! Sometimes I think I’d like to live in a tiny caravan - no clutter, no dealing with plasterers, builders, electricians, decorators, gutter cleaners, soffit replacer-ers, driveway layers, or any of a million other trades.

I'm in the same boat. I had such awful experiences just trying to get trades to come quote (I have to laugh when they say get 3 quotes, you can barely get 1 to come and quote)
They seem to appear and disappear whenever they want. dates when they promised they would start the job, came and went. Then they would come out, be here for 2 hours, and declare they needed another part or material and it would be another week before they showed up again. You can't plan anything.

Op we live in a scruffy half renovated house for the exact same reasons.

We have plans to extend, plans to do a ton of work totalling over £150k but right now I'd rather keep the money in the bank and my sanity.

We've done 3 renovation's and the trades have got way worse over the last 20 years.

I'm not sure hence I'll have the drive to be bothered, I can tile, paint, plumb and I'm tempted to learn how to lay bricks so I can build the extension myself and I find the best trades are the ground works..

I'm so with you all. Had our house pretty much rebuilt last year, nearly killed me, I ended up quite unwell with the stress of it all. Fell out with them over the floor which they totally messed up, it's horrible just horrible. Yes, urgh to all those bloody awful blokes in your house with barely 3 teeth between them, smoking, swearing and making you feel so uncomfortable it's unreal. Loathe loathe the whole process

Our ‘electrician’ reliably told me before Christmas our induction hob wasn’t tripping the fuse box because of the electrics. It was a faulty hob which needed replacing.

There is only one hob in existence which will fit in the current Corian worktop, so I had that imported from Germany. I waited 8 weeks for it and it cost me £4k.

It was installed today - surprise, surprise, there was nothing wrong with the old hob. It’s an issue with the electrics after all, so I’m back to square one, trying to find an electrician who can find the fault and fix it. Only I’m £4k down and have not had a working hob since before Christmas. I do have a spare, back up hob now though I suppose.

The boiler is also on the blink, the 5th engineer is due out on Thursday.

It would have been cheaper to move house.

I do wonder whether this is a result of the higher education entry rate going up massively (albeit slightly less so for males) plus brexit stripping out competition.

I know there are some really good trades out there but many of the ones now in the marketplace will be those who couldn’t stay in school past 16 even with loads of support. Problems applying themselves etc.

The ones who can stay in education, will generally do courses other than entry level apprenticeships because they promise greater returns.

Brexit has meant that the ready supply of well-trained, skilled labour has disappeared and so people are completely desperate and will employ anyone with a tool bag.

it’s all a bit of a mess.

Am definitely in favour of a women’s trade collective - I reckon we could take over the world.

I understand your reluctance to have major work done; incompetent or disrespectful tradespeople are a nightmare to have in your home and can leave worse mess than the original problem. But I bet you could find a reasonable decorator to paint or paper the main rooms. Get a recommendation, employ the person to do one small room initially and stop there if it doesn't work out, or ask them to do the next room if you're pleased. It will make the place look much nicer. Good luck.

Just learn to do the small bits. Barring plumbing and major electrics we never had a tradesman in our house once growing up as my mum taught herself everything needed. Pre YouTube too! And that was with two kids, ill parents, a job and a husband on shift work who didn’t do DIY himself. Painting for ten mins a day will soon add up.

Is there anyway you could afford to hire a reputable local interior designer or similar (someone who works on showhouses/with builders) to manage the project for you? From experience the trades turn up/do the work if they are working for someone who has repeat business for them. They know you are a one-off so they will always bin you off for business that is going to be repeat (developed/designers etc).

I understand how you feel.
We moved a few years ago and four major pieces of work on the house have been incredibly stressful. Two done in the winter left us cold and miserable. Incompetent trades, constant mistakes or issues and one even took a deposit and we never saw them again. So stressful.
We've just had a bathroom refurbished which went ok after a minor flood episode where they forgot to cap a pipe.
We've decided although there are further things we'd ideally renovate we are done. No more.
We might go for a new build next time.

I think unless you can trust someone who has been personally recommended and you can move out during major work then it's all too stressful.

If I didn’t work FT, study and have young DC I would follow the advice to do the work myself but I just can’t take on extra work right now. I know it can be done via YouTube tutorials etc. But I can’t spend the small amount of free time I have doing DIY. It sounds straightforward to pick up some paint from B&Q and start in one room. I just don’t have it in me.

I’ll look into the suggestion to find a reputable Interior Designer who can take on the management of Trades. The problem is so many people set themselves up as Interior Designers today, often with little to no experience so I’ll have to try and find someone with a proven track record.

I have found a Loft Conversion company that seem like the real deal. They are booked up until the end of the year which I took as a good sign. They came round and seemed very professional. I have seen them in the area working on a few houses over the past couple of years and saw the work they did on another house a few doors along and it looks great. The home owners said they were excellent (a few issues but nothing major and most importantly, they worked hard and resolved them). I asked if they have details of any other customers they have worked with recently who I could contact and they said not a problem, they would be happy to do this. Work wouldn’t begin until 2026 so I could mentally try to prepare for this.

I’m just so sceptical about it all though.