If your brought a house that needed a lot of work

[IsabellaofFrance]

How long did it take you?

We got the keys yesterday. Its a fabulous house but it needs work to alomst every room and area. Damp problem downstairs (its a split level bungalow), garden needs completely re-doing. Bathrooms need replacing, kitchen needs gutting, plus DH has some rather grand plans for extensions within the house.

Please give me some hope that I wont live in a building ste for years. DH is very handy and gets things done, but still, with the scale of work that needs doing I fear we are in for the long haul.

Two years. A year of panicking, planning and finding a builder. Six months of said builder. Six months of getting over it all.

So the actual messy awful stage wasn't so long. We did it in one big hit, you might prefer to do it in stages (pros and cons for both, but for us it made sense to do it all at once).

Have done/still doing ours in stages. Make a 5 year plan.

It all comes down to money really. We found our own workmen for the best price for the work, but this means they workmen don't all come neatly after each other. I believe if you get teams of people in it may be quicker.

We took 11 months to find money, get quotes, do the legals/planning and realise the scale of the problem. 4 months actual building work (we moved out) and then a while to recover and complete some bits. We still haven't finished decorating / furnishing and that was over three years ago!

We bought a bungalow that we completely gutted and redone. We have done all the work on our own and it has taken 5 years with another year to go. This also included outside work. I hope to move once we are finished as i have never settled into the area but once we started the renovation we had to finish, will be lucky to break even. We done 1 room at a time, inside work done over winter outside work done in the summer. Only worked on it one day out of the weekend so that we still had family time. We have saved what we have spent again probably by doing everything ourselves.

It took us 4 years. We thought it would take 7 years. We had a spreadsheet of costs and saved up to do room by room, after doing the wiring and heating first of all right after we moved in (no point doing anything until they are sorted).

Every unexpected windfall/spare bit of cash we could save was put into the house - it was our main priority (no holidays, meals out etc). Worth every penny, to us!

Our next plan is to extend and again we have a two-year saving-up plan for that.

We had people to do plastering, kitchen and bathroom fitting and building work, but did most of the decorating and all the gardening ourselves.

It is our forever house and we have immense satisfaction out of doing it even though at times it felt slow and the mess was at times hard to live with. But doing room by room made things liveable. The advantage of doing this slowly is that you have a chance to live in it and really decide how you'd like things.

Our last house needed a lot of work, but as OH and I aren't experienced or keen DIYers we factored this into the price and paid professionals to do everything for us.

We had:
Two new bathrooms
A compete rewire
Plumbing and central heating given a good overhaul
A stone faced wall taken down and replastered
A bedroom replastered
All the bedrooms redecorated
A gas fire installed
A gas hob installed
A burglar alarm installed
New carpets in one bedroom, dining room, lounge and both bathrooms (yes I know, but there were just the two of us)
Replacement floor in the conservatory

I repainted all the downstairs rooms and the bathrooms.

It took three months

We lived in the bedroom and the kitchen for three months and it wasn't nice. I wouldn't live in a "work in progress" house again.

We did it in stages and it took us 2.5 yrs to get it how we want it, aside from a future extension, loft conversion if doable and we haven't done much to the huge garden either so it looks a bit unloved.
We moved out twice - luckily we have family nearby, and had work done when we were in holiday. CRucial is finding a good builder. As other said it was good yo live in it as our plans evolved as a result. Good luck x

We sold, rented then bought from rented. We got the big things done in the month before we moved in - floors, boiler, bathrooms, walls, electrics etc.

We'll do the rest when we've saved up again. Mind you, nothing needs done. Any future work will be for personal preference.

Three years and we're just about finished. Just got to have new windows at the front and have the main bedroom decorated.

We moved in with a toddler and three week old and I'll never do it again! Stressful isn't the word.

I love this house to pieces and the area we live in is great but we've spent every penny we have and spent far too long getting it finished.

We were contemplating a loft conversion this summer but we've shelved the plans because this will be the first summer holidays we won't be having any building work done or saving up to have it done and we want to devote it to the DCs who have been very patient.

The worst bit by far was having the rewiring and plastering done when DD was a few months old. The dust was beyond horrendous and we had to move out for a while.

Still, we can laugh about it now (just).

2.5 years. A year to get planning & wait for the builder. 18 months of work.

I love the end result but would never do it again.

it's taken us 10 years and still got to do the garden. That included damp proofing downstairs, every wall back to bare stone to be reinsulated, jack hammering the concrete off the stone staircase and replacing spindles and bannister, two bathrooms and a quick kitchen tart up. DH has done pretty much all of it himself though.

Friend is a surveyor. He said

1. Roof
2. Damp course
3. Plumbing/electrics/windows
4. Kitchen
5. Bathroom
6. Leave the garden for a few months until things flower and then you can see what the are, where they are and you can then decide what to keep/move/get rid of.

He also said how long it takes depends on how much money there is...

5 years. When we first moved in we did paint most rooms to freshen it up but the major work has taken us 5 years. Admittedly there were long gaps between some of the projects but by doing a room at a time, it was bearable. We did a hell of a lot ourselves and luckily we have family and friends in different trades who did us favours.

The worst room for disruption I felt was the living room. I was desperate for somewhere to relax and chill as found out I was pregnant the week we started it and had terrible morning sickness. I lived in the bedroom after work for 6 weeks but it is completely worth it. I can never see myself moving as we've put our stamp in it and plenty of room for our soon to be expanding family!

Just do one room at a time and make sure you leave yourself someone to go and escape. Otherwise it begins to overwhelm.

About eighteen months. Six for the builders to build the extension and convert the loft and a year for us to finish rewiring the rest of the house, make good, decorate, fit two bathrooms, a kitchen and a utility and build a big deck to hide the rubble. We still haven't finished the deck, repainted the ceilings in the bedrooms (builders had to repair once the loft conversion was done), made good the garage from where the old extension was removed or painted the extension. Some of that is summer jobs, like external painting. Some of it is can't be arsed jobs. It probably would have been done quicker if I hadn't gotten pregnant half way through the build as I do the DIY.

I'd say 5 years.

We're 1 year in and still have a lot to do. We could go all out and do it in less but we're trying to balance it with family life and other day to day commitments. In the winter months it is too cold to do a great deal ime.

We've also had 2 projects that we didn't anticipate (minor flood meant new wall in the kitchen, new fireplace needed in sitting rom means redecorating a room that was a low priority for redecorating).

We are paying people to do the work. Patience is key. We started the planning process in October and we only submitted to planning in January. We won't start building till the winter. We've been lucky enough to rent the house out and live in another family owned flat so we can build up funds whilst we wait. It takes a very long time, so best not to be fixated on a certain deadline.

Oh dear. Am I being insanely optimistic then as I need to:
Rewire
Fit boiler and central heating
Strip woodchip wallpaper, skim artex ceilings
Move loft hatch and board loft
Replace front bay window
Move bathroom upstairs and fit all new stuff
Reduce size bathroom window
Widen doorway to kitchen
Fit new kitchen
Remove chimney breast and create stud wall corridor
Sand downstairs floors
Carpet upstairs
Decorate throughout
I was hoping to get it done in 6 months! Feck.

I think that is doable in 6 months if you get some professional help.

I hope so. We've got money to do most of it professionally, but I'm hoping I've budgeted right! So if the quotes come in higher than I thought then I'll be doing more myself, at least the decorating anyway.. Moving in on Monday, sitting surrounded by boxes and beginning to panic!

Don't panic! You'll get it done and have a lovely house and only a minor nervous twitch by the end of it

Smell, doable if you've lined people up. Less so if you need to start looking and working out which month they are free...

Think it will take three years with ours due to it taking a while to make up our minds as to what we wanted. Was a complete doer-upper so;
to turn three flats back into one house needed to:
Remove three kitchens and two bathrooms, take down a few walls, go back to bare brick in kitchen to damp-proof, re-wire, new roof, re-plumb and plaster, add new bathroom/downstairs loo/kitchen, replaced all windows and radiators (took ten weeks for the builders to do)

Left it a while to recover from initial building works and have since:
had one ceiling restored, and three more taken down and re-built
had all woodwork painted
had back garden walls rendered, shed built and path laid
carpeted (one room - haven't found what I want for the rest)
added solar panels

Still need to:
Move a few more electrics around
Restore two more ceilings
Find original bits and pieces to replace the ones that are missing
insulate the attic
update the top shower room
re-do the top bedroom
design/plant back garden
finish planting/design for front garden
finish carpeting and rest of interior decor
restore original stained glass in front door and surrounds

Hmm - anyone want a mostly finished house?

Is fun though, but definitely worth making sure to get the professionals in as necessary to speed things along. Sis is doing the full DIY route (admittedly her DH is a perfectionist so anything done looks amazing) and reckons on a six - ten year time-frame for completing something similar, but smaller, as they have full time jobs as well as the house...