If your house is "nice" inside how did you get it that way

[Designless]

Do you know lots of good workmen, did you get lucky calling them in, are you really good at stuff yourself?

I've only ever lived with chaotic stuff that's in various states of disrepair. If I get a new kitchen the hall needs plastering and the bathroom is falling apart and it's an endless cycle. I've never lived somewhere that's just all nice and fresh.

Teach me your ways!!!

You either have to buy it that way in the first place, a new home or a good renovation, or meticulously work through room by room, replacing everything worn, shabby or in disrepair with new.
A lot you can do yourself to keep costs down, because its grunt work of removing the old, chipping, scraping and sanding. But if you've not got the skills, the finishing is best done by trade. For example in my hall, I removed 130 years of anaglypta, chipped off the artex and sanded the paintwork back to the wood myself. I got trade in to plaster, then painted and emulsioned myself. If I'd wanted wallpaper I'd have got someone in for that too.
The trick is knowing what bits you can do yourself to a good standard and which bits are best left to the professionals.

By prioritising nice indoor space over having more space and a garden.

I have a newish flat because I would never be able to afford a house that’s the same standard or to maintain it.

DH is a joiner so competent in other trades. Saved us a fortune. Got in plumber and electrician when necessay.

We DIY the stuff that you can’t see. And pay good trades to do the visible stuff. So insulate the loft ourselves, but pay a good flooring expert to lay the floor. We do plenty of research, try to prep properly and get the right tools. Unfortunately we don’t have loads of money as I actually hate DIY 😂

Money. I say that as someone who is very good at DIY. I can do the work to a high standard but when you’re working full time on your day job it takes forever because you spend maybe a day per week on redecorating and quickly get to the stage where the first room was done so long ago that it looks tired before the last room is finished. You need a good builder/decorator to do it all in one go.

Other thoughts:

1. Focus on getting building and repair jobs done first. We had an unfinished fireplace for years with “arty” pillar candles, as we never wanted to prioritise spending money on a stove and surround. When it was finally done I realised how depressing that hole in the wall had been. A kitchen with cupboard doors askew will look bad even if the walls are freshly painted.

2. Plan your whole scheme and layout if possible for every room before doing or buying anything. This makes the house look coherent and not like every room has been decorated by a different Changing Rooms team. It feels like a waste of time when you want to get started but you have probably lived with it like this for ages, and that three months pays huge dividends.

3. Planning also prevents expensive mistakes. You do not want to be regretting the sofa, or having to chase additional sockets into the wall because it’s completely dark where you want to sit and there’s nowhere to plug in a lamp.

4. if doing a major reno, planning the whole scheme beforehand is essential because you do not want to be choosing a sink and tiles at the last moment when the builder says “we need them next week.” That’s when you make mistakes. When they come to the end and ask you what colour you want the walls misted, you will also have no energy to choose a wall colour at that point. This is how I ended up living in a white box for a decade.

5. Pets damage stuff and they shed fur which in London makes the dreaded moth more likely.

6. If doing building works allow money in budget for decorating and furniture or you will end up living in a white box that also looks slightly like a second hand shop. I did this as well as after our building works we were broke for ages.

Ditto.

Married a tradesman and then tell him I'm going to fix something - normally gets it done in no time!
Seriously though it is relentless, one room gets finished then theres a leak, another room gets done then a plug socket stops working. I have a lot of sympathy for people that aren't good at DIY it must be so expensive

Our house needed renovation when we bought it, and we found a good builder. It has taken years and a lot of money to get it to this stage. I did all the painting and decorating, but i can’t do DIY.

Room by room, over time with a lot of patience and hard work (and money).

Just coming on 3 years and we are just about happy. I still have my hallway to finish off, just little bits to touch up but that is my plan for this weekend.

I'm not keen on my living room colour, the shade just isn't right but it was Lick paint and it kills me to think how much it cost for me to just paint back over it so it can stay for another few months.

I think it’s a mixture. We keep things in good repair eg if it breaks we repair it as soon as possible to avoid it going really downhill. We try to learn how to do small jobs ourselves to save money. A room being nicely painted and tidy can make all the difference.

We do all the filling, sanding etc and very neat cutting in, putting up shelves and curtains etc. DH was putting up a blind and drilled through a water pipe so we got a professional in to fix the pipe but couldn’t find an anyone to fix the big hole for love or money. So we watched videos and patched this ourselves, and once the wall is painted this will look so much better.

I love DIY and have had lots of practice, buying fixer uppers over the years and learning new skills. I particularly enjoy decorating because you can completely transform a room in a day or two for £100 or less. For things like plastering an entire room I would probably get a tradie in. Each to their own but I would far sooner have the short term stress of dust and building work to live somewhere that I love rather than putting up with a ramshackle house longer term.

I keep it simple. White walls are easy to spot paint and very bright and airy, which means I can use low lighting and colourful accessories which are easy to change.

I stay on top of manky things, like keeping mould away and stripping sealant and replacing it. I don't let small jobs go past 2 weeks (currently need to replace a hob light, under counter light and bath plug washer which are this weekends job). If I can't do it, i pay someone and where possible rely on word of mouth. Do you have a local town Facebook page?

I'm also always decluttering. I don't buy more bookshelves or wardrobe storage, I get rid of stuff to fit the space. Then the organising looks tidy which makes me happy.

I'm also on a massive bender for using what I have before letting myself buy new stuff, whether that's a new kind of tea, craft supplies, books etc. It's hard!

My advice on DIY is don't wait for a man. Once you start on the DIY, you realise how easy it is and can usually do a better job than them anyway and if not, it lights a fire under their arses to see you doing it while they are left to do childcare. And if you do fuck it up, you can pay someone to fix it.

It's also quite frustrating to realise how long culturally men have been riding the gravy train of doing less chores because they do the DIY, but I digress!

We did a big extension/renovation on our 1900 farm cottage. Husband is handy (is a plumber), so did some of the work himself. I did all the decorating (properly - filling, sanding etc). I keep it clean now, and we recently went round redoing small cracks that had appeared where the building had settled.

This is what I was going to say. I’ve finally got my house looking ‘nice’, but it cost a hell of a lot of money.

Oh and my DH absolutely isn’t any good at DIY, but on the plus side he earns a lot of money and is happy to pay other people to do it! I am a dab hand with a paintbrush but otherwise we get tradespeople in.

DH is very good at DIY so any small jobs are done as soon as they come up, whereas I'd just ignore things for ages. For the big things like bathrooms and kitchen, we had them done by professionals and used local firms with good, long-standing reputations.

Having a DH who is good at basic DIY
so painting decorating

having a brother in law and stepson who are both carpenters so if we need some electric work done they give us the contact details of someone reliable

house is just painted white all the way through so it’s dead easy to touch it up when needed ( normally paint every 2 years )
having spotlights

leather sofas so easy to clean wood flooring
high gloss kitchen with granite worktops every easy to keep clean and looks really nice even though it’s around 12 years old

clean something every day

Any tradies that we use we always offer to pay in cash 😂 give them plenty of tea and biscuits and a cash tip when finished
this has meant they are always happy to come out and do small jobs for us

I think it's the constant thing that gets to me.

Sure I could buy a new build but, leaving aside snagging, it's going to need fixing by year 5. Unless I just swap to another new build at that point?

I’m very lucky to have a DH with good skills, great taste and bags of energy. He can do a mood board of soft furnishings but also plaster walls and plumb in radiators.

And Pinterest is his way to wind down so he does excellent shopping research.

When I sold my late parents house I left a little book with the names and numbers of all the tradies that had done work on the house over the years for my parents

I saw the buyers a few weeks after the sale and they said that having that little book of good tradies had made a huge difference to the work they got done

I bought my new build 9 years ago. There was virtually no snagging and if anything did crop up, I could report it on site and somebody would come and fix it within a day or two. (It's a very small development and had friendly staff.) What's missing in a new build can be things like shelves, coat hooks, curtain rails, toilet roll holder... The walls are usually bland magnolia so decorating can be a priority. And all the things that were new when you moved in - dishwasher, fridge, boiler, washing machine - could start packing up around the same time!

P.S. I don't think many things would need fixing by year 5. Most things last longer than that.

Do you reckon? My kitchen is four years old and could already do with sprucing up. Things like chips on the kickboards.

No one is replacing a kitchen after 4 years though. Well, only if they’ve got more money than sense.

Bought a newly built one, and spent time and a lot of thought on finishing decisions. Then have continued to plow most spare pennies into it. We don’t have DIY skills, and we don’t have friends in trade, we have to pay for any work but we do get several quotes and check reviews/ recommendations before committing - there are still some excellent tradespeople out there who charge fair prices, but I find you need to look harder for them these days. It will take a long time to finish things (are we ever really finished?!), but we’re very happy with it.