Living in a house that needs lots of work....

[Daydreaming]

I have just bought a house that needs lots of work. A Victorian terrace that has been neglected and has lots of problems, including bad damp. It has relatively new central heating and a usable kitchen and bathroom, but in general it's very much a complete renovation project. I can't afford to rent somewhere else right now and do the work immediately so the plan is to live here for a year or so before doing the work.

Has anyone done that? Do you think I can survive a year living with damp, dodgy floorboards, carpet that's about 50 years old, tiles falling off in the bathroom, etc?? Just need some reassurance....

Oh, you'd be amazed! When we moved into our house, DH said 'I can bear that wallpaper for 1 night only'. It's still up 3 years later, while we fix everything else bit by bit.

We found that simply putting the central heating on and opening windows for ventilation did absolute wonders for the damp. The previous owner of our house was an older lady who was paranoid about heating bills and neither opened any windows or put the heating on, and the result was terrible damp. On warm days, we had all the doors and windows open (this was August, mind you), and on cooler days, we had the central heating on. I'd put the central heating on high for a week or so, see it as being a repair job rather than 'just heating' IYSWIM, and try to get the place feeling drier - you'll know when it's worked,as the effect is magical.

Clean the bathroom to within an inch of its life, bleach everything, stick the falling-off tiles back on the walls, and if necessary, give it a quick lick of paint (see if you can get left-over paint from other people from Freecycle).

Just cleaning things thoroughly, airing rooms, doing small repair jobs and putting up your own paintings etc makes a huge difference to a neglected house.

I'm not sure about the carpet, though - that's the one thing we didn't have to worry about.

Thanks GM. A very old lady lived here too...
Yes, that's what I am doing - giving everything a really good clean, some small repairs and a lick of paint in some rooms, although it will all need to be redone in the future! Thanks for the reassurance.

I need more stories like that!!!

OP are you me? We have, admittedly, got on with the renovations straight away, but it is do-able. Bear in mind that the things that you think will really annoy you will fade into the background pretty quickly and there will be other things like a really badly designed shower that drenches you in cold water every bloody morning that you thought would be fine and which drive you to distraction.

It will take longer than you think of course, these things always do. But it's OK and it can be done.

We moved into a house 11 years ago that needed totally sorting upstairs and down. We did some major jobs and ran out of money. You will be surprised how blind you become to things around you.

We sort of have an opposite thing - we took on a fundamentally sound but very 1950s 2-bed ex-council mid-terrace (last decorated in the 80s we think). Central heating and windows all ok, but layout a little too open plan and choice of colour and texture mostly barfing.

We have now been here nearly two years and did the single biggest job first - adding a ground floor extension and completely remodelling the kitchen. We now have a kitchen-diner with 3m-wide windows onto a large deck (wood floor sort of looks continuous from inside) and beyond that even if I do say so myself a lovely garden. We hardly spend any time in the rest of the house. Our front room is a shit tip, full of clutter and the materials for the next phase of the project. Our bathroom upstairs is half done (units and sanitaryware in, but only half the floor tiles down and none of the wall tiles). We want to split the front bedroom into two (it's huge enough), and re-create a hall separated from the living room downstairs. Some day.

You'd be surprised, is what I mean to say, that if you have the basic minimum possible living space working ok, the other jobs can feel less pressing. or am I just a total slattern Now you'll say you have three kids and two dogs and so there's no such thing as minimal living space....

Thanks ladies. It's just hard because I previously lived in a very nice and comfortable flat. Buying a house was a goal and being in London it was full of compromises - so now I have a house, in a good location, but at the moment it's far from being my dream home!!! It's hard explaining to 5 year old dd that it may be a dump now, but it will be nice at sime stage in the future!!!

Oh we're living in a big renovation project! As others have said, it's amazing what you can screen out, though I do occasionally get depressed when I invite others round and see it through their eyes.

I found the grotty carpets hardest to live with so we ripped them all up and had bare boards. (They are now sanded bare boards - infinitely nicer!)

If you can get one room relatively nice, that's a huge thing. It makes it lovely to have a haven.

Kids will pick up on what you tell them, so try not to go on about the damp etc, rather stress how lovely and big it is compared to flat, great for hide and seek, how fun to now have bedtime upstairs - whatever you can think of really to make it positive!

I've lived in 3 renovation projects -2 by choice lol

the first house we bought we were inexperienced first time buyers and as such didn't realise just how bad the house was -we had thought we would just need to redecorate

for 8 months we lived with a microwave and a kettle on a picnic table in the living room, and a sink in the kitchen, plumbed in but proped up on lumps of wood. 2 deck chairs, 2 bean bags and a bed -we hadn't budgeted for any of the work and it was tough but there was a massive sense of satisfaction at the end so we did it twice more -deliberately this time though

get hold of a dehumidifier, heating on, windows open -will make a massive difference to the damp
hire a rig doctor -if the carpets disintergrate is it really going to be worse that what you have now? but potentially will make a huge difference

while you are doing the work try and keep at least one room 'nice' all the time rather than hitting it in one go
prioritise your DDs room and get her involved in planning it -it may not seem as important as the kitchen/ bathroom etc but will make a massive difference to how settled she feels in your new home

don't talk about 'the house' when talking to DD, it's your home and she can have her own ideas about how you are going to make your home special you don't have to use them but she doesn't need to know that

We did something similar however for me no matter how much we cleaned, the carpets and curtains had to go.I do second making sure you have one room done, for us it was the bedroom, realistically the easiest as it was just ripping out old wardrobes and decorating and fresh carpet..major difference.

I do struggle with it however as it inhibits me from having friends around and I find it at times depressing. We did go to the expense of putting in a decent shower as I worked on the basis that it was minimum we needed.

One thing that might work for you is that the house is larger..for us the house was actually smaller than the previous place (until we extended) so fitting our stuff in was a major challenge

Carpet can be fairly cheap - carpetright etc so perhaps change the main living room one or keybedrooms? I think £200 Inc under lay for neutral cream carpet for av bedroom?

how is your roof? if that needs attention, do it first

also if any plaster is dodgy, don't bother trying to patch it, get it all hacked off & redone properly (if you have rising damp you'll prob need to do that anyway...)

Thanks for all the suggestions and moral support!
I have already done a few things like rip up some of the carpet, painted my DD's room, etc so the bedrooms are ok. But it's a bit like taking pain killers while waiting for an operation...

Ooooo this is us too.
Tackled the two boxrooms / bedrooms first. Just finishing off two more beds. For me it's the fact it's not just a strip and paint job and a case of bunging our stuff back in. Stacks of fitted furniture has needed to be ripped out (not to mention the carpet). We've had to fill in missing picture rails and skirting, rehang doors. There's a desperate shortage of power sockets and the plaster everywhere has been horribly patched and is badly cracked all over so needs redoing. Light fittings are also all twenty or so years old and we've just made a huge difference by replacing the lighting in the darkest area of the house. Then it's a matter of buying new storage etc so we're not so drowning in our stuff that is piled up (literally) all over the place.
Have to say I don't think it looks too bad now (have got used to it), but know visitors to our house are generally horrified by how we live.
What keeps me sane is knowing I will sort it out eventually. Miss our old house which was beautiful, albeit far too small.

Yep us here too. We have been here for 3 years and have done around 85% of the work including a full rewire. We are currently doing the kitchen and it's horrible living in the dirt and dust! I keep telling myself it will all be worth it but progress is slow as my dh is doing all of the work and can only really get stuck in at weekends, still we are saving thousands (dh does this for a living and said he would quote around 6k for the works). I was hoping to get it done of Christmas but with only 5 weekends to go I know we have no chance! Oh well :)