Anyone else living in a 'not quite finished' home?

[Misty9]

We live in a lovely three bed semi and finally own after years of renting - we've moved 10 times in 5 years
But nearly every room has something unfinished or needing doing. I took the shower screen off recently and it's now sitting in our bedroom, as are myriad unhung pictures, a redundant changing table, and other crap. It's a big room fortunately. We don't seem to finish one room before doing some minor thing with another. I think renting for so long and moving so often has something to do with it as we don't really know how to make a home iykwim.

Anyone else with this affliction?!

Mine's barely even started never mind 'not quite finished'! It's perfectly liveable-in so we can't quite seem to get going on all the work that needs doing. Each room has various DIY jobs needed before we can decorate so no task is straight forward. We've also moved around a lot, maybe we're just not used to being settled and allowed to make changes!

Oh God, me!

But! There's a good reason. This is our second house so I learned lots on the first one.

The big two for me were
Don't rush into decorating til you know all the other, less fun stuff is taken care of (electrics, damp, insulation etc)

Don't do anything til you know how you're going to live in the house.

It's horrible doing it and then realising you should have done it differently.

Oh sort of. We bought a very big house a while back that needs renovating throughout. We're doing quite well - it's water and wind proof now - but we have no single room I can honestly say is complete.
The living room needs new carpet. Our bedroom needs new carpet and lampshades. Actually almost all the flooring needs doing. The woodwork needs attention.
I need to go round and do a snagging list on the almost done rooms and get it sorted. A lot of it is either accepting we need to save for the big stuff and making a final decision on soft furnishings. It's an awkward house that needs strange window dressings and non standard size stuff. Last house was a trip to Dunelm Mill and sorted.

Yes same situation here. The key for me was to accept that there will always be things that need doing. That we will probably never be able to say that everything is done. Once I got over that, I made a list of priorities and made sure that jobs don't overlap. So the tub and the toilet are rotten, but since the insulation of the bathroom needs to be changed, we will have to live with them for a few years as redoing the whole bathroom is further down the list. Safety issues were adressed last year. This year it is basement and insulation as requested by the insurance.
I'm eager to stop adressing issues and getting to the point where we get to adress the rooms we live in, but I quite like the whole process of rejuvenating a home that was neglected for so long. And as Gibbous said, the times it takes to get to the room you want to update gives you the time to see what is functional and what is not!

We feel like aristocrats as we have bought an expensive house and cannot afford to maintain it. Unlike aristocrats we don't live in a mansion, but our mortgage is stupidly large. We done the heating, rebuilt the dangerous wall, but still got the hideous 1970s decor.

I've got a new kitchen piled up in my dining room, it's been there over three months waiting to be done. And a pile of wallpaper for a bedroom over a month. Stuff gets bought and just sits there while he does jobs for other people

Yes, and it drives me mad! Been here 3 years and still have undecorated rooms, money is part of the problem but DH is the main one. He has vetoed me doing anything because I'm a 'slap some paint on it' type, he however trained as a painter and decorator years ago (has a different profession now) and is 'prep' obsessed so everything ends up being a big job which he conveniently never has time to start. There's always something he says needs doing before we can start painting, some I agree with, all the woodwork needs stripping back before its repainted for a start but a lot of it is sheer idleness procrastination. Every house we've lived in has been the same and I'm sick of feeling like I'm 'camping' instead of being able to make a proper home

I know I feel like I live in just one room because every other room is full of stuff

I have one completely finished room however it's in a building site. I wish I could blame dh but truth is I have done thus in every house I've owned through two dp/dh and sixteen years of single parenthood. I think its me I like buying wrecks, transforming them, then when they are nearly finished I get bored. Truth is I only finish a house when i want to move.

Yes, five years in and I find it very stressful! I just want to wake up one day and find that the building fairies have come and done it all.

I'm living in three finished rooms within a building site at the moment so 'nowhere near finished' really. Reading this thread as a warning

Yes! It was a self build and it's pretty big which is my excuse.

I've just been thinking but literally NO roomisconpletely finished, which makes me a little ashamed....!

We have two bedrooms done, and the third nearly done and they took forever as there were DIY projects in all of them- like fitting wardrobes and building a high bed etc. The plans for the rest of the house involve full on wall removing, kitchen replacing works that we just don't have the cash for at the moment. I was putting off decorating as it didn't seem worth it as in future it will all be stripped out but I can't cope with the colours any more- pink walls with purplish skirting in the lounge, yellow kitchen with orange woodwork. I'm going to just paint it all white to give my eyes a rest. We also have a room that is completely trashed as the wall paper was so horrific I pulled it all off and now the plaster underneath is shot, the carpet has holes in it and there is part of the ceiling boarding missing where we took out a staircase. I just shut the door on it. DD wants to use it as a homework space so I might have to crack on with that. It's an old house so any kind of DIY leads to a chain of other issues.

To be honest I've started gardening again now it's slightly warmer so there's no chance of me doing any more in the house but my greenhouse looks gorgeous. I am thinking artex ceilings and woodchip might make a comeback and if you keep the shower screen clean it could form a decorative item in the master bedroom? so perhaps we could all just wait it out?

Yes unfortunately! Done all the big stuff apart from sorting the loft conversion room - insulation is rubbish so needs redoing to make it more comfortable but every other room has snagging to do - paint touch ups, skirting boards, boxing, redoing paintwork where my FIL decided against the knot blocking undercoat etc.

Frustratingly DH is ill and we have a 7mo so I would need to get rid of them both for a day or so to get anything dusty/painty done so I'm stuck looking at the things I need to do!

'Not quite finished'? More like 'not quite started'

We've been in this four bed detached period house 15 months and haven't finished a single room yet. Otoh we have started loads - master bedroom (awaiting reclaimed fireplace to be fitted and a bit of painting to be completed), bedroom 2 (floor to be painted and reclaimed fireplace to be fitted), breakfast hall (limestone flags to be purchased and laid), kitchen - this is being moved from a different room so not so straight forward - (units from Handmade Kitchens were delivered last April and are in situ but not actually fitted as plumbing/electrics need doing, walls & ceiling need stripping/painting finished, need to order worktops & DH build island), study (DH currently building shelving, walls half painted), snug (have just started stripping textured wallpaper & woodchip ceiling so needs finishing & reclaimed fireplace fitted), family bathroom (panelling needs painting finished, carpet removed and new flooring laid), two staircases (woodchip stripping needs finished). Outside I started painting the twenty-odd Crittall Windows last summer so that also needs doing......

This is the latest in a long line of DIY project houses, some more major than others so we're used to camping out on a building site. After the last one - unmortgageable thatched wreck - this place is a walk in the park, but tbh we feel pretty burned out after doing that almost entirely DIY over an intense three years so are taking things more slowly here. In time we plan to reconfigure the large family bathroom into two smaller bath/shower rooms and the large garden was allowed to go neglected while house was for sale (two years) so needs major work, plus we'd like to build over the garage.

I can relate to so much of this! I should have clarified - we've been in our home for 2.5 years now...so we know how we use the space but keep changing our minds. The main issue is we are crap at diy. I'd be happy to give it a go but dh won't and that reduces my confidence. I also find that I am constantly returning things or finding that e.g. Furniture items I've bought don't really work. So, even less confidence to make decisions!

It is definitely not a building site on the plus side...

I'm liking the idea of the shower screen becoming a decorative item lightninggirl

Yes - nothing is decorated (large new build) and no curtains - been here since November. We wouldn't attempt DIY ourselves and would opt to pay to get it done ...but its not money that is the constraint, its the time to make decisions. Too many choices, its all so complicated, so we avoid it

Definitely relate to this. We moved in a year ago and we're about to extend so there's been no point doing up rooms that will be ruined in the process. There are also a million little, medium and large DIY projects on the go at any one time. And we have two children under four. Lord knows what people must think...for us the half finished stuff has become our normal - after a while you just don't see that the plaster needs painting in the kitchen.

Another serial doer-upper currently living in a barely started. In my defence we got the keys three days before DD2's due date and she is just 4 months. She came two weeks late, so I got the kitchen started and had an electrician and a builder round. The mains gas connection, insulation, repointing and rewiring is done and the kitchen is almost finished but still needs a floor. The HV told me to put the drill down when she came for the home visit. It has a fab (or maybe naff) chevron-striped pinboard/ organisation corner though. (I need to spend less time on Pinterest). Every other room is a bomb-site/parlour of 70s horror.

I'm vacating with the kids next month while we get the old oil boiler replaced with shiny new central heating and then in summer the whole downstairs is being ripped out and replastered with new wooden floors going down. We have to strip loads of wallpaper by then though. I'm also going to let DH paint DD1's room and lay a laminate floor while we're away (bit scared but will leave strict instructions and Youtube). When we get back, we're having a 'pity us and help us clear our hazardous garden' beer and BBQ for friends. I'm hoping all that will give us a critical mass of 'done' rooms so it feels like a home afterwards. Bathrooms won't get done til I go back to work and pay off the credit cards.

Same here. We've been here a year- DH promised me we could do it all in 6 weeks. It's nowhere near there but things are slowly improving- it feels like home now.

That said, I'm 7 weeks pregnant and feeling horrific, so I think things are going to come to a complete stop slow down for the foreseeable future!!

We have tinkered with houses over the years but the last house was a stepping stone house and we used it to truly test our DIY skills by installing bathrooms, tiling (had only tiled kitchens before) laying flooring etc. We gutted that place from top to bottom.

This is our forever house and we are 80% done. Just waiting on summer when we are having new boiler and new radiators, then redecorate and new carpets. We have done, double garage conversion, kitchen extension, garden make over which involved diggers so a big project and we have decorated the bedrooms, dining room and lounge.

As we have been here a while now I am repainting some rooms but by next spring the entire house should be finished.

I have Pinterest boards for every room and I am giddy with enthusiasm as I love this house.

We are about half way through and 18 months in. Kids rooms are finalised but ours still needs some finishing.