To want to spend money on the house

[MizzyDazzy]

My husband and I really wanted to move, but have decided to stay put for the next 5yrs largely due to schools. We’ve both fallen out of love with our hose (it was always meant to be a stop gap) but now we are staying I want to at least like it / have it be as nice as it can be.

So I’ve said if we’re staying I want to spend money on the house, we’re due to remortgage and can borrow £30k to do the work and I have £10k saved to put towards it. Without touching other savings so we wouldn’t exactly be pushing ourselves. We’re cutting the mortgage term too and can still easily afford the additional £30k to borrow - we’ll have paid off the car so our monthly outgoings would be the same.

No major work like extensions, or even taking a wall out - but I’d like to do the driveway, new floor downstairs and worktops in the kitchen. Whole house needs repainting and a few other bits like swap my son’s room and guest bedroom to create a proper study. Will involve buying new furniture too.

My husband is a builder so would do / organise most the work.

I want to spend the full £40k and possibly more to do everything ‘properly’. For example, we did an extension years ago and cut some corners ie a smaller patio than I’d like, didn’t put some internal doors on, didn’t buy any furniture for the spaces just got what we could / used old as we were on a budget. Then we never finished everything as my husband needed to go back to earn money so never got a second coat of paint on some rooms. And it shows. I’ve never felt anything was finished and the garden is a mess.

I know if we don’t finish everything now the same thing will happen again, so I want to do everything now.

My husband just wants to do a lick of paint and cut corners again where we can. He says “it costs too much” but admits we can do it in the budget. So then he says he doesn’t see the point of spending that if we are moving in 5yrs and that he “doesn’t want to do the work”.

We’ve just had a big row about it as I said I hate the house and he stormed off. Am I being unreasonable / a bit silly to insist we do everything ‘properly’?

If you dont think you'll stay long term, will the resale pay you back the 40k you're putting in? Id be twitchy about writing off 40k. If you were staying forever, resale value doesnt matter.

Is there not some in between from spending £500 on paint and £40k

£40k or possibly more?

You want your head examined.

I’d only spend that if it needed doing and id get the money back there is no way I’d spend 40k to make me love it for 5 years.

Of course, not that you could paint our house for £500, my husband said his decorator would need at least 2 weeks. So it would never be that little.

We could do less, but we tried to sell our house last year and got offers £50k below asking as people said work needed doing - so as a minimum it needs the driveway and painting, if nothing else.

But I would like to swap playroom and dining room just for quality of life and turn guest bedroom into my office as I wfh a lot.

So anyway you look at it we’ll be spending upwards of £20k.

Just think what you could do with 40k in the next house op.

It does need doing. We tried to sell last year and people made silly offers £50k below asking because the house needs some work.

So I think we’d get the money back in 5yrs by putting it back in the market at the same price as before.

I would never spend money on a house I didn’t love….can’t you do the painting yourself?

Yes, that's why we wanted to move… but we struggled to sell as the house needs work, and even when we did get some ridiculously low offers we then couldn’t find anything we liked where we could get back to our kids school, so we’re trapped until the youngest has finished primary school.

If we decided to re market tomorrow we would need to spend at least £5k on getting it look presentable.

Does the driveway really need doing? If so what are you planning? There’s a big difference on types of driveways.
I think painting/decorating is worthwhile as is moving rooms around & getting new furniture but £40k is a lot. I would try to cut back if I could.

I’d list out the work, price each job (materials only if doing the work yourselves) and then figure out what the priorities are. You need to be happy where you are living, and if you received lower offers because the work needs doing then it makes sense to do it yourselves as buyers will be costing in paying labour costs. I wouldn’t want to spend more than £20k tops though if it’s not really neccessary

Have you got an old rightmove link so we can see what it’s like? 5k seems reasonable - 40k seems an obscene amount of money to spend

I’m always doing home improvements and my DH is the same but wouldn’t be spending £40k on generic work that doesn’t add value if you’re planning to move in 5 years.

Many areas will not increase by 40k just from mild cosmetic work.

It’s not really worth my husband doing it as he then isn’t earning doing other work, it makes more financial sense for him to pay the decorator and earn more elsewhere. I can do some but to do all would take months as I’d have to do it at weekends as my holidays are taken up by childcare. Plus we need to paint the outside of the house so need scaffolding.

Team husband. Why would you spend £40k with every intention of moving? I'd just do the bare minimum and wait to borrow that £40k against your next home.

I can’t see why changing guest room into office and swapping play room and dining room is going to be any great expense

Why can’t you paint it yourself
I wouldn’t be borrowing to buy furniture just get it as you go along

the problem is there’s a lot we did this we did that but I suspect the reality was he did it and can’t be arsed to do it again
it’s the old saying builder house mechanics car they do it all day and don’t want to do it in there free time

as for the drive I do think it’s worth doing as it increases kerb appeal and would be reflected in the value of the house again this can be done within a budget that’s the only thing I would borrow money for

I wouldn't be willing to spend that sort of money on a house that isn't my forever home. It will not increase the value of your house by 40k.

Surely your husband has the skills to cost it though?

Work out all of the jobs and price it all up. Then borrow that amount.

You'll be paying an awful lot more back than 40k. You'd pay another 10k in interest over 15 years on a 3% mortgage.

Prioritise the most important jobs and work out what is a nice to have rather than something that adds value.

Also borrowing money via a mortgage for furniture to suit this specific house only to move is crazy.

For context, this is the budget so over £40k but you can see a lot is on furniture that we would obviously keep and take to the next house:

• driveway (brick pavers, landscaping, brick wall, lighting) £7.5k
• Tile kitchen floor, tile kitchen wall, and dining room, plus new granite work top, new island, paint and decorate both rooms, new kitchen table and chairs (current won’t fit in new space) £8k
• New floor for playroom, new sofa (current one has holes in and arm fell for heavily stained), paint £1.5k
• New sofas in lounge (we have my parents old conservatory sofas), built in cupboards, new curtains (don’t fit as inherited), new rug (,current has a hole in), new coffee table (current is stained) £3k
• Sand back stair case (paintwork is chipped and gloss which I hate), repaint, new carpet and paint and decorate x3 floors £2k
• new doors in entire house as required for fire regs from extension £2k
• move son’s bedroom so paint & decorate, new carpet (current carpet got chewed by a mouse), new l wardrobe (he doesn’t have one), new bed (he’s outgrown), new curtains (again inherited so don’t fit window properly) £3k
• reupholster dining room chairs £2k
• blind for bathroom, retile floor as cabinet fell off wall and damaged tiles £2k
• New patio in garden - front and back and landscape garden £5k
• £2k scaffolding to paint side of house
• paint and decorate guest room / office, new wardrobe, new desk, new sofa bed, new curtains £3k
• £5k contingency / to cover cost of my husband’s bills while he’s not working

The £10k savings is for the furniture - I wish we had bought 10yrs ago when we moved in.

Just posted the budget which he has costed

Our house was valued at £850k, we got offers of £800k. I suspect we’d get more like the £850k if we did the work, maybe more

You lost me when you said you don't have a second coat on your walls because your husband didn't do it. Unless you are going to drip feed some kind of disability - do it yourself!

When exactly? I work full time. Someone needs to look after the children and ferry them to clubs at the weekends. And when I take leave it’s to spend with my kids, not paint. My husband is a far better painter than I am and was meant to do it over weekends, but you know life with two small children. If he takes time off work to paint he doesn’t earn and he earns more doing other jobs than painting so we need to pay his painter and decorator but we just never got round to it.