Period property modernisation on a budget - success stories please!

[optimisticornaive]

We are in the process of buying a beautiful Victorian terrace that is in need of modernisation.

The property is in fairly good condition, although not the style that we would like. It is full of period features and appears to have been well kept, just very dated: lots of wood chip, dark ceilings and cornicing etc. It is over three floors with five bedrooms and one large bathroom. It is perfectly liveable for now, but we would need to redecorate, potentially plaster, pull up carpets, sand floors etc. It is likely that we will need to rewire the whole house before doing any cosmetic work.

We are putting every last drop of our money into the move, having utterly fallen in love with the house, meaning we are going to have to live in the house as it is for a while as we save up some funds, with the first job likely to be the rewire (ouch!). I am (perhaps naively) hoping that this will give us a good amount of time to just get our heads around the house - which is about four times bigger than our current terrace!) - and have a good think about how we would like the spaces to work.

We are both quite handy and have fitted out own kitchens, tiled bathrooms, done all the decorating in our current home, so we are unafraid of getting our hands dirty in order to save money. We are quite looking forward to making this house our home - this is a home we will not move from for a long time, hopefully.

However, after scouring the internet and seeing so many horror stories, I can't help but feel a slight worry that we are going into with too much optimism.

Does anyone have any success stories of homes you have renovated/restored/modernised on a budget and have actually enjoyed doing? Please tell me it is worth the hours, mess, money to create a perfect family home!

Our previous house was an Edwardian 5-bed. We got it done on a budget- we didn’t do any work ourselves but employed individual tradesmen and sourced offers on all products. The end product was lovely.

That's good to know @JoJoSM2
How long did it take you to fully renovate? Did it take much longer than expected? I am trying to prepare myself for the worst - I am not naturally a patient person but think I will need to learn to be!

Weve updated 2 houses - the first one was a 4 bed detached edwardian house which sounds a bit like the one you have. It was in very good condition but dated.

We started off with woodworming the whole house, then new central heating and stripping downstairs floors. Then we slowly redecorated. Seven years later we had the money to do the more expensive changes such as new bathroom, added a second shower room, extended the kitchen into a conservatory and fitted new kitchen and long awaited Aga. We also sourced original fireplaces and installed them in the 2 main reception rooms. Also had to re-wire and re-plaster various rooms and we eventually had it how we wanted after 8 years.

Unfortunately we had to sell this house a few years later and downsize to another smaller victoran house which was not in such good condition. We did have enough money to do the major works but it was a nightmare having to live in the house and have major works done in a much smaller house with no space to move stuff into! However 3 years later we are over it and i would much rather live in an old house than have bought something modern.

Your house sounds fabulous and you will have a great time doing it up. There will be times when you want it all to be over but the end result will all be worth it.

Good luck.

Bilbodog, I can imagine it being awful living on a building site.

We lived in rented accommodation for the first 4 months and then it was another month before the house was finished. I was a woman on a mission and had 3-11 people working on site 6 days a week. I only worked very part-time so was able to dedicate 10+h a day to being on site, chasing people, ordering stuff etc. The house was ready 5 months after we got the keys.

For comparison, our current house is the 'forever' one and DH wanted to be more involved this time (in the decision- making rather than work). It's been over 2 years and it still isn't finished as we've had builders in on and off whilst trying to find the perfect compromise between each other

I'm living in a building site at the moment and am 6 months pregnant - not brilliant!

We bought our 4 bed Victorian semi in September. It was basically a shell having been gutted by previous owner's children. Think they planned to do it up but ran out of money. So far we've had it rewired (big and messy job - definitely do it first and you can't live there while it's happening), plastering and new ceilings in a couple of rooms, and converted a dining rm to kitchen. The teeny former kitchen will be downstairs utility/bathroom. We still don't have flooring and haven't unpacked anything! Also planning to replace the windows at the front with sashes (originals replaced with pvc). We're doing the decorating ourselves but have hired amazing builders for the rest and are trying to keep costs down by sourcing materials, Ikea kitchen etc.

It's due to be done end of feb which will have taken 5 months. Prob could have been faster if we hadn't had to live here!

I agree with PPs that the hardest thing will be living in the chaos that the work creates. Rewiring and plastering are not nice, tidy jobs. Ideally, you'd want to do them before you moved in, but it is survivable if that isn't possible.

It sounds lovely and if you are handy anyway it'll be fine. We bought a similar sounding enormous Victorian terrace and don't regret it for a second, even the months spent without a kitchen etc. Space in a home is so important and once you have lived with the huge rooms and high ceilings you can't imagine going back. Ours was good ish condition underneath but badly dated after a couple had lived there for 40 years. We had no money beyond paint for the first couple of years, but white walls and wood floors is a good look! Eventually finished ours after 5 years and about 50k, doing little bits at a time. We remortgaged after 3 years to fund some of this. We would never be able to afford a house this nice if we didn't do it this way round. Go for it!

We bought a house last summer which sounds like it is a similar property and in a similar condition.

The one thing I would say is do as much as you can before moving in. We've done a bit of re-wiring, we've knocked a wall down, replaced and moved the boiler, ripped out the old kitchen and replaced it, and completely re-plastered almost every room.

Unfortunately woodchip paper hides a multitude of sins - when we removed it, most of the old (and badly applied) plaster came off too, and we had to have it hacked off where it was damp (also common in old houses).

We've nearly finished now, nearly 6 months later and I am beyond grateful we had someone to live in the meantime as we have a 10 month old and I'm pregnant again. It will be lovely, but it was much, much more work than we anticipated!!

Good luck

Thank you @bilbodog So good to hear you think it was worth it - both times!

Wow, that sounds like you are on a real mission @harrietm87 I will definitely take on board the comment about not living there during the rewire. I think we are going to have to just move our stuff in and not unpack for a couple of months while we save/beg/borrow some funds to get the rewire done. I know I will itching to start decorating, and sanding etc. but after researching it seems like it will be a waste of time. Compared to a shell of a property, ours is in really good condition (dated but fine bathroom and kitchen), so I think I should just stop worrying and get on with it! Good luck with your renovation! Fingers crossed it is done by Feb.

My house is a Victorian terrace and the decor was stuck in the 1940s. When I pulled carpets up, there were newspapers from the mid 1940s - early 1960s used instead of underlay!

I spent every last penny on buying the house so just had to live with it for a good couple of years before I could afford to do anything other than paint over. All of DS1's baby photos feature swirly brown and orange carpets and woodchip walls. It got done bit by bit eventually though and was well worth doing it the way I did. I considered borrowing more money to do it all in one go at the start, but it would have crippled me financially (and as it was, I then had a fire that wrecked everything I'd done 4 years after I moved in. It all had to be redone by the worst, shoddiest, lying, incompetent builders in the UK, but that's another story! But glad I did it but by bit when I could afford it).

My house is Victorian too.
We bought it 30 years ago when it was deemed as "unfit for human habitation" a little old lady had been living in it. Her son did nothing to help but wanted completetion in 6 weeks!

We had three young children so we had a friends house for pepper corn rent for six months. We had to have all downstairs dug up to lay a damp proof course, re - wired, Re- plumbed stripped 14 layers of wall paper off one bedroom.the other had just lining paper on it. Wood chip horrible stuff to get off. Get under it and spray and leave takes a long time. Hire a steamer.
We sanded floors sent doors away to be stripped as too many layers of paint to hand strip. I did the stairs though.
I tiled bathroom and kitchen. Kitchen was much better and years later got someone else to do bathroom when we changed it.
Two years ago we could afford to replace windows. New wood burner as well as the one we put in eventually gave up.
The cottage became too small but we didn't want to move and neither did the kids so we rode it out and now it is fine for the two of us. The views are amazing, the village is lovely and I can't imagine living anywhere else.
Don't rush and certainly don't start before rewiring. They will make a mess and it is dusty. See if you can stay with someone for a few days. I moved in with the kids once the floors went back down. We lived in two rooms. The kitchen- stand tap, Rayburn, table and chairs. And mattresses on the bedroom floor with duvets and blankets over us. That was October by Christmas we had a wood burner and carpets in sitting room and dining room. Kitchen was rough flooring and a carpet square over it until we could afford tiles and cupboards. We are about to change it and the tempory permanent shelves will be coming down. Not sure if I will like new kitchen it looks to tidy and clinical on plan compared to cluttered, cottage kitchen.
Good luck.
You could make mood boards!

So your house is actually fine? Wouldn’t it be easier to just move in and live in it while you save for a refurb? Our big project had crumbling walls that hadn’t been plastered for 100 years, some electrics from the 30’s, only very partial central heating with a 1967 boiler etc. But your house sounds like you could live in it while you plan the work and save up for it.

I've recently come to the end of a major refurb (Georgian terraced house). We had builders in for about six months and for four of those months I was also living there without a loo some of the time.

I wish I'd sanded the floors while we were waiting for Listed Building Consent for other stuff. No idea why we didn't just crack on with this. As it was, we ended up sanding while simultaneously decorating. Big mistake. I spent at least a week vacuuming wood dust off the walls. So please learn from my idiocy and do any floor sanding* before you try to make the walls look pretty. Once they're sanded, you need to seal them with one coat of varnish or wax. The rest of the coats can wait until after you've decorated.

*Even if you use a sander with a Hoover attachment, there will still be dust everywhere.

It was awful while we were doing it but I love my house now

I'm with the OP who said that woodchip wallpaper can cover a multitude of sins...my house was covered in the stuff and when it came off it pulled most of the plaster with it. We had to have her whole house stripped right back to brick.

Thank you so much for all the replies! I feel genuinely reassured and comforted by the fact that people have done this (in much harder situations) and can speak positively of it. I am managing to feel excited by the prospect and less nervous now!

We did a victorian terrace up about 8 years ago. We finished about a year ago. Just about to move into a house which I have completely fallen in love with but no gas no central heating, currently no electrics and has been empty for ten years.we have hardly any budget for renovation so will be doing most of it ourselves and saving up for a long time. Glad to know we aren't the only ones!

If it is fine but dated I agree with JoJo just sit tight for 6 or 12 months and save like billio to get a refurb done. Will end up being more cost effective and take less time.

Just coming to the end of 21 months working on a traditional croft house, which we ended up stripping back so far that at one point we had bare stone walls, no internal walls upstairs or down, and the roof off! I haven't dared add up the spreadsheet recently, but I think we're around £65k spent in total, and £20k of that was the new roof and sorting leaking chimneys. We did the strip-out, fitted all the insulation and plasterboard, taped and jointed (no-one plasters full walls up here, apparently), and decorated, but brought in a roofer, electrician, heating engineer and joiner.

You'll probably get days where you just want to run away from the whole thing (I did, and I wasn't even living there), but it's an amazing thing to do - hope it goes well and you enjoy it as much as we have! Take lots of photos all the way through, so when it seems like the whole thing has stalled and you're getting nowhere, you can look back and see how far you've come.

We did a house some time ago now but it was nearly all DIY, we did everything right down to digging drains. Make friends with your building inspector, I advise!

The thing is to plan out in detail what you want to do, cost it and then work out a logical order. Then choose your specification to suit your budget. Become a very savvy shopper and bargain hunter.

Our approach was that things that stay part of the house like windows needed to be good quality. Kitchens regrettably people rip them out, our buyer replaced our handpainted kitchen only 4 years old. The more easily replaced something is, the cheaper it can be. You can always come back and do a better version later.

When I look at interiors magazines the houses that stick with me are the ones where people have had a more creative and quirky approach and worked with the features rather than stripping back to a shell and doing the identikit bifold doors/granite kitchen/grey walls thing.