Is there anything you can do to improve pebbledash?

[PaintingOwls]

DP and I are looking to buy our first house but for whatever reason a lot of houses in our budget are pebbledashed and I am 'vetoing' those houses because I find it so, so ugly and am at a loss of what we can do about it.

Take this house for example - www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67129880.html - it is not the fact that it needs gutting that puts me off, but that hideous exterior.

A similar house down the road which has exposed bricks is about £40-70k more expensive...

Please give me some hope about pebbledash. Ways to make it look better, cover it, reinvent it, anything - inspire me!

Oooh, that is gorgeous, WildCherryBlossom but it's for auction and I feel like it might go for a bot more.

We hadn't considered Isleworth though, thanks for this!

I really hate pebbledash and it was on our deal-breaker list, until our perfect house turned up which was pebbledashed.

We had big plans to do something about it but 4 years on haven't done any of it...I've kind of forgotten that it bothered me. How often are you really looking at the outside of your house?

Yikes if money is tight and neither of you are in the building trade I wouldn’t touch that house with a barge pole.

So much work, so many additional costs.

BUT white painted pebble dash looks fine I think.

SilverSpot

Yikes if money is tight and neither of you are in the building trade I wouldn’t touch that house with a barge pole.

My dad is and I suspect he would be able to pull in a couple of favours for some of the bigger/nastier parts of the job.

Not a fan of pebbledash either but there are a few houses like it where we are and as others have said they’ve been done in a cream/white paint and reptiles in red tiles ad they look great

Obviously not reptiles lol but new tiles 😂

Paint it white

@WildCherryBlossom it sounds lovely. The point I was making is that as cash strapped FTBs you can’t afford to be too fussy about cosmetics. It’s all about making a safe, sensible decision on that first rung of the ladder - which is pretty damn high in the SE! My first three properties added together were worth about what the OP is planning to spend.

Yes Dorislessingscat I do appreciate that. SE property prices are brutal! Hopefully the OP can find something she likes and make it look and feel like her home.

I was going to say that you can't see the pebble dash from inside. Then I saw the inside of that house

Is there someone living in a shack at the bottom of the garden? Complete with cooker?!

I wanna know what the spray paint says 😂

I think the bodged extension at the back with the 'kitchen' in it is way, way scarier than the pebble dash! That could cost a fortune to sort out - my fear with a house like that is that every tiny little thing will have been done cheaply, badly and non-compliantly, so every job you start escalates into a horror show.

Re pebble dash, it actually bothers me far less on a 1950s semi like that than on a Victorian house. It's bad for the brickwork on Victorian houses as damp gets underneath it and can't get out. Saying that, I live in a Victorian flat with a horrible rendered front but couldn't give a monkeys 99.99% of the time.

please OP if you do buy it can you update on MN a room by room please?

The house looks to me like a 1950s ex LA, and they were usually well built. A dd recently bought one similar (different area though similar price) and though it had been well cared for, evidently loved and is liveable it is terribly dated (probate sale) and will still need everything done eventually, almost certainly re-wiring, new boiler, windows, all the walls skimmed, kitchen and bathroom, etc.

But if budgets are tight such houses can be a very good buy IMO, and usually more spacious than (usually) much more expensive newbuilds.

BTW I would put money on that house being an ex rental, LL anxious to get shot.

You could have it rendered smooth. There are some self-coloured products now that are supposed not to need painting. I forget the name. but plasterers/renderers know it.

K Rend?

www.k-rend.co.uk/

Some people round here have re-rendered their houses with a smooth finish. Personally I think half of what makes those houses look so much better after is the fact that they've had some tlc. Am sure painting it would achieve a lot of the same effect. Also think pebbledash is quite common on a lot of estates, so it won't detract from the value either as there's so little other choice.

This one in Mitcham is probably too expensive but I think it could be lovely with some TLC (ok, I’m also swayed by the street name - who wouldn’t want to live in Love Lane?) andrewsonline.co.uk/sale/details/336012/love-lane-mitcham-surrey-cr4-3ag

"K Rend?"

yes, that's it.

The price of that house!! You could get a 4/5 bed detached in good condition for that price round here!

My first house 25 years ago was PD. I hated it and remember having quotes to hack it off, re-point and restore bricks [because they make quite a mess of the existing bricks when hacking PD off apparently] The quotes cam to the equivalent to about 8K now.

So we painted the house and it was fine..

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-50421420.html
Any good?

Seems to be loads of 3 bed houses within 3 miles of st helier for under 350...... mainly in Carshalton, Wallington, a few in Epsom, and Croydon. Have heard good things about Carshalton and wAllington.

Yes Captains but presumably op and her dh could earn a lot less, or not do their jobs at all if they moved way across the country. And they would have less access to family help with renovations, etc.
House prices vary massively across the UK, but it is not arbitrary.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-69295760.html

Had to wait all the way to post no. 5 for the shock at prices in the London area. MN must be slipping.

OP, The problem with that first house is that it is a ugly wreck, not that it has pebbledash!