DH has moved out

[Passa]

We purchase our house earlier this year. We’ve spent more than we would have liked but we can afford the monthly payments.
However, we underestimated the refurbishment cost, we budgeted £60k but it’s going to be closer to £100k+ : new kitchen, new wardrobes, new beds, new flooring and paint. The house is very dated and needs updating but DH has become increasingly bitter at the cost and placed the blame s on me. He’s had to sell his ISA and employee shares to fund this, and has regularly resorted to calling me names. He stayed in thr spare room for weeks but finally moved out back to his parents.
i don’t know what happens after this - will the house be sold off? We are sitting on a very significant loss if we sell it now.

I find it difficult to vote one way or the other, because you do not say what the conversation was with you when you viewed the property and decided to buy it and do the refurbishments.

Was the original refurbishment a gradual process, or did you intend to do that before you moved in?

Without clarity, it is difficult to know whether he was right to move out.

You both gave up your futures when he sold his ISA and shares, which means he has less pension to retire on, and that could be a depressing thought. Will you both have to save for a pension another way?

You might find it difficult to downsize when you need to if you have negative equity because you spent more on refurbishments than you intended.

Capital expenditure without being having enough money to keep up with the running costs is not a wise thing to do in the present UK financial crisis.

Could you have kept to the £60K? Did you add another £40K because you had made a mistake, or because you changed your mind and WANTED more done to the house? It makes a difference.

I really hope the husband is currently busy moving every penny he has left into non-shared accounts. This whole situation sounds nuts.
I really want to know what was going on while the husband was "calling her names" and had moved to the spare bedroom. Was she still spending money on designers and wardrobes at that point? It almost sounds from the first post that the spending is continuing even now he's had to move out to try and stop it.

In my interpretation of this, she's piling it on the credit cards and signing credit agreements that they can't honour, and he's having to cash in savings, pension etc to stop them defaulting and destroying the credit record. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it almost sounds as though the OP needs sectioning to stop her spending money she doesn't have. The bland way she just writes about getting carried away with designers and spending 100k on nothing much even when they've already stretched on the house purchase is almost psychopathic!

what proportion of the deposit and improvement work have you contributed OP? It doesn’t sound much. If I was your DH I’d be looking to buy you out of the property and doing the minimum needed over time to sell it so he can try and recoup what he’s lost. I think he’s realised you are ruining him and is cutting his losses

I think he is right to worry. He has realised the enormity of the load he has taken on and cannot face it.

I may be wrong, not knowing your circumstances other than what you have responded, but I rather think I would be inclined to do agree with him. Not sure if I would go as far as to leave home, but perhaps I would if push came to shove and the future is at risk.

How was it that he sold his valuable shares in a company which was doing so well, as he has proved by the rise in shares? They could have gone the opposite way.

Did you both look up the company in Companies House to see how well it was doing before he sold them?

The ultimate price of the house was too high for your circumstances because it is taking all you have to pay for it. You may be able to save £2-300 now, but what when the council tax and bills increase above your income?

Why is he blaming you?

She did say that she emotionally manipulated him.

But there is so much info missing it's really hard to help and advise.

For the sake of anyone else seeking to refurbish a house they are not familiar with, NEVER employ professional designers unless you know them.

By their very nature they are spending your money. They have pound signs instead of pupils once they are invited to work. You have to be really rich to employ them.

You can search online for the cost of ANYTHING. If you do that first without the help of a professional designer, then you have a comparison to work from.

Did either of you study the stock market before he sold them?

Not sure about the 'sectioning' bit because I'm no psychiatrist, but I can pretty well go along with the rest of what you say.

Fair enough. But even if the DH wasn't present at any of the meetings, the designers and tradesmen will all have provided written estimates, didn't he look at any of them? If, as the higher earner it was mostly 'his' money paying for all this, and he didn't so much as give estimates the once over then a) very bizarre and b) still as much his fault IMO.
Of course there's the possibility that OP lied/lied by omission. But I think more likely the DH went along with it, without checking anything, and now is looking for someone to blame.

I wish OP would come back and clarify the status of the renovations. She says ‘the money has been spent’ so surely the work is done and the house now finished?

In which case, she should focus on her marriage and a plan for rebuilding their/his savings.

If she’s pissed £100k up the wall on designers’ fees and no materials have been bought and no wardrobes built then it’s a different situation entirely.

It sounds as if you harassed him into buying a house at the very top of your budget and then harassed him into spending more money than you can afford on designer renovations. You now sound more concerned about losing the house than losing your DH. Do you just see him as a cash cow to pay for pretty things, @Passa. It does sound a bit like this from even your own version of events.

You can google the average cost of any work that needs doing on a house, even before buying it, even take along a friendly builder when you view.

It might be a good idea to pay a surveyor to go through your plans. Designers will spend money like water if they think you can afford it, so never let anyone think you can. A surveyor will tell you what is important to do first, before you consider the wallpaper colours.

I always wonder why people buy bathroom fittings with corners. I can just see someone making the effort and having those sharp loo corners digging into the backs of their knees, causing them to jump up, hit their head on the sharp corners of a too close washbasin, and fall down catching some part of the anatomy on the sharp corners of the enormous sharp cornered bath, which costs an arm and a leg to fill with hot water.

Yet designers have persuaded tens of thousands of people to install them.

On the off chance you're ever looking at this thread again..

You've pushed him to breaking point, spent money like its water trickling through your fingers, and almost certainly on things you want rather than focusing just on need.

You really need to wake up and realise how ridiculous and manipulative you've been, and if you can grasp that, apologise profusely, show him you understand what you've done wrong and the pressure you've put him under and how this wasn't acceptable.

I'd also start coming up with a plan to understand the household financing and some suggestions of how you'll increase your income to put back what you've spent.

Then... he might... just might.. reconsider.

It could be that she is one of those people who think spontaneously and want it done yesterday.

I blame the programmes on TV which make it look so simple and reasonable. I am astounded at the low costs some of those designers swear they spend. I wish they would either stop producing them or be more realistic.

In case anyone is interested, the small town I live in is surrounded by new builds and estates of 1960/70s houses are being refurbished all the time. They are being bought up by property management teams and some turned into two homes with the addition of a porch extension and rented out at enormous rents, probably to keep out undesirables?

That in itself has put up the cost of repairs and maintenance for the rest of us, because local traders are all involved in the same partnership as those managers and letting agents.

I was reading a property update put out by a very prolific estate company who have been building new builds by the thousand near me. One of the most significant things in the report is the fact that the fad for open living is not now as popular as it was.

New build and expensive properties had open plan living to make the small areas appear larger. Then owners of large older properties were quite taken with the idea of opening up all their rooms making the area look like a palace, even though it meant sitting in the living room part with the smells of cooking and overcooking wafting everywhere, and seeing the kitchen sink no matter where you were.

Apparently now those who design the refurbishments are saying people want to be able to divide off the rooms with sliding/folding doors.

It sounds like most of that 100k went on paying the designers because even in London that amount of work should not have cost that amount of money.

What do you want to save more, @Passa – your marriage or the house? If it's the former, then you need to admit to your DH that you got it wrong and you're sorry he had to sell his shares and you'll do whatever it takes to put things right – if that means selling the house and downsizing to replenish his savings, are you prepared to do that? If you are only concerned about the house, you need to find a way to raise the cash to buy him out but, really, at the end of the day it's just bricks and mortar and stuff. It's not the man you married that you presumably wanted to spend the rest of your life with.

Are you very literal in your understanding? I think @marxistmagscomments went over your head! Or maybe you're very stressed.

Do you want to save the marriage? You may need to show him how you are planning to get an extra job, or make cuts to your spending so that you can start repaying the savings

This 100%. There is nothing like renovation work for causing trouble with couples but it's sounding like OP has spent well over budget.

Will he get his money back if the place is sold as it is OP?

bloody hell, where are you? we're a very long way from London and it would cost twice that to get it done here!

OP - I get that its possible to spend tens of thousands on a kitchen, I could easily do it if I won euromillions, but surely you have a basic understanding of what things you're signing for are costing?

Yes to what everyone else has said - assuming this is genuine then there's no way on earth that work can have happened yet surely? - you've actually managed to have the whole house refloored and an expensive, presumably bespoke cabinetry, new kitchen installed within 5 months? If you've actually had the work completed already thats some type of miracle.

If not - then it is possible you can cancel some of the work and just look at losing the deposit - or pay for the materials and store them in what sounds like a house large enough to do so while you save up and so don't have to pay for the fitting until you can afford it.

Either way if you want to save your marriage and/or house I'd suggest sitting down with your husband and discussing possible savings and even what could be sold to help reduce overall costs - do you have some spare Louboutins or a vintage Mulberry bag which you could at least offer to trade in to pay for the new taps? Less flippantly are the movable furnishings still within the returns period?

If he's let you go this far then showing you understand its both of your responsibility and that you need to contribute in some way might go a long way towards reconciling things.

Bloody Hell!! You got designers in, no wonder the costs spiralled

You say you rented beforehand but that doesn't mean you wouldn't have been capable of overseeing renovations yourselves.

The OP says they went to top of budget because it was one of only a few she liked. I would guess the other couple she liked were over budget otherwise they would have gone with a cheaper option.
They had set a budget, she went over that. He obviously wasn't sure hence changing his mind but she emotionally manipulated him. None of the PP saying he is just as much at fault would be saying that if the roles were reversed. They would all be saying abuse, ltb

The OP seems much more bothered by the thought they'll probably have to sell the house than the fact that her husband has left.

Basically,

You've spunked all his money up the wall.

I am not surprised he's left, and I'm not surprised he's really fucking bitter about it. There's a difference between agreeing to do renovation for 60k - and being emotionally manipulated by your wife to sell your retirement fund for her dream kitchen (and wardrobes, and beds, and flooring, and whole house redecoration.....)

Not being funny but it seems like you've been very irresponsible @Passa. You took on a house at the top of your mortgage, that needed work, didn't budget effectively and allowed yourself to be upsold things you don't need. I'm sorry but what did you expect the outcome to be?! You've used every single scrap of money possible and have absolutely nothing and your husband has absolutely nothing. Scale back renovations, claw back as much money as you can and then sell. Because it sounds financially unaffordable.