Ugly House?!

[lilaloves]

Hi,we have just viewed a house in a great location,lots of room,modernised inside and close to great schools.But big drawback is its really ugly from the outside due to it being finished in hideous putty/beige coloured harling.

Is there anything you can do about this? Can you re-render it or something? Or even paint it white.Anything but this.

If it wasn't for its lack of curb appeal it would be a great house.

You can do anything you like, the only problem is cost.

You could paint it white, although it does then show the dirt rather.

Or you can get all the harling chipped off, the bricks underneath repaired, and then re-rendered with something that you prefer.

You might be able to re-render straight onto the harling - I don't know if that's an option.

Yes you can paint or re render. Untill you are able to get that done, putting up some hanging baskets, pots with climbers etc in will distract from the colour/finish.

Is harling the same as pebbledash? We had foul, foul, foul (can you tell I hated it) grey pebbledash on our house. We had it re-rendered and painted a nice cream colour for about 3.5K iirc. Worth every single penny

Do you need to do anything? I remember reading about Kirsty Allsop in a magazine. She found a lovely street, and bought an ugly house in it - it's the neighbours who have to look out at her ugly house, while she looks out on their nice houses. Does it matter about kerb appeal if you're inside it?

Looks like things could be improved then.This is my problem really,could I put up with having the only ugly house on a lovely lovely street.

But this house is half the value of theirs so its our only chance to ever afford to live there.

Re-rendering,painting white and adding hanging baskets seems to be the answer.
It looks exactly like a council block of flats built in the 70's.No character at all on the outside.

This site might be interesting to give you some inspiration of what it's possible to do and change with the exterior of a house.

Wow!,how much better do they all look in the afters? Thanks for that.I wonder if it costs £££££?

This might have just expanded my list of suitable properties!
Sometimes I just dismiss a house if the outside doesn't appeal at first look.

We were in your situation last year. I had refused to view the house but DH insisted. We ended up buying it.

It is a great place to live, stunning views, great schools village etc. We bought our house for £150k less then the neighbours whose house has more kerb appeal but is smaller. I hope that in the long term it will be a sound investment.

At the moment we want to sort the interior out so that is where the money is going to be spent. There are ways to improve the exterior, and cheer the neighbours up who hate having to look at it.

There's a company called Decopierre which actually coats and customises a brick or stone finish over whatever crap is there, which apparently can be better than removing what's underneath. If you turn the soft rock soundtrack off, there's an . I just found it by googling DIY forums about removing pebbledash.

LeBOF,
Each one of those I'd worse than the original, especially the fireplace.
not too sure about the transformation website either.

I bought a hideous badly modernised 30s semi in a road full of nice Victorian houses. The outside was so bad I nearly didn't go in: the front fence had been kicked down, the garden was completely overgrown, the white uPVC was filthy, the guttering was hanging off, they had ripped a load of ivy off the front, dislodging tiles, they had also half built a garage and then smashed the roof in. And then I went inside, and it was worse. Nothing major wrong with the house, but so so ugly. And filthy.

I bought it for a least £100k cheaper than equivalent houses in the area. Actually, it was £400k cheaper than the houses that it backs onto, which are no bigger, but they are also in a very desirable road (mine is a busy main road).

It has given me so much joy to transform my ugly duckling home into something that is, well not beautiful - it never will be - but really quite nice. It's amazing how therapeutic it is to cover up yards of dirty orange paint, scarlet woodwork, plastic wood-effect kitchen units. It has big windows and is filled with light, in comparison to its rather dark Victorian neighbours. The outside is still unhandsome, but one day I will be able to afford some new render and a wooden porch. In the meantime, a new fence and guttering, and a tidied up garden have really helped.

Go for it!

I wasn't recommending it- just putting it out there