Council housing and redecoration tips

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I'm a little worried about posting this with the recent spate of council housing trolls and the often anti-social housing sentiment from small groups of very vocal posters so I'm going to post a disclaimer first.

I will be paying rent. You have to do that in council housing. I do receive some housing benefit but pay a top-up rent as I work. I plan on working more/in a better paid job and not receiving any housing benefit once I finish college next year. The rent I pay will be higher than I pay now in a damp, poorly decorated, poorly maintained private rented because I will be subject to the bedroom tax. Although I believe safe, secure housing is a right and people should not be grateful for housing, it should be seen as a given I am grateful to have a secure tenancy, in a nice area. I am as grateful as I would be to have a nice, secure private rented which I would have to pay on rent on (as I will be doing when I move).

Disclaimer over

When I move everything will need doing, flooring, plastering, gutting the garden, painting/wallpapering in every room of the house. The bathroom will be made ready to use but any painting e.g the ceiling, skirting and door will need to be done by me. The kitchen will have tiled splash backs, new cupboards and a floor fitted. It's up to me to paint the walls.

I get £200 of paint vouchers (at this point I'd like to remind people I am paying rent. If it was a private letting being rented in this state, the LL would be prosecuted). Two bedrooms will be carpeted. I've chosen to have the children's rooms done.

The stairs, living room and my bedroom floors will be left bare as will the walls in every room.

My budget after moving costs is approximately zero. Family have offered to pay for flooring for the front room but I have either pay fitting costs or fit it myself. The garden is a state and the bathroom is a wet room (think old people's home not fancy, modern living style)

What I need advice on is

1. plastering - I understand it's not as easy as it looks but with tuition from a former builder is it DIY-able? How much (approx) would it be to DIY?

2. Boarding out the loft - again is this DIY-able.

3. How do I modernise the bathroom? I'm thinking tile stickers and a nice shower curtain and bath mat. Is there any kind of waterproof, super cheap, DIY-able flooring I could stick down over the horrendous blue rubber floor they have in there now?

4. Cheap (super duper cheap) waterproof bathroom storage. I've found a few plastic cabinets on Ikea but are there any cheaper/better alternatives anyone knows of?

www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/storage-furniture/bathroom-storage/dynan-shelf-unit-with-towel-rail-white-art-00318169/

www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/storage-furniture/bathroom-storage/vesken-shelf-unit-white-art-40307866/

5. Gardening - all of it. I've never had a garden. I have zero clues to the point where I don't even know what advice to ask you all for. It's a complete mystery to me. Imagine I'm from Mars and don't know what a garden is. I'd like to grow veg, if possible. I'm aware veg grows in the ground, that is the limit of my understanding on veg growing.

6. Garden shed. I'm going to need a lawn mower and somewhere to store it. Where/how does one go about acquiring/building these things cheaply? I've never noticed on any Facebook selling pages or in second hand shops.

7. The ugly concrete thing in the garden, can I put patio stones over this to make it less unsightly and how much will this cost and again, is it DIY-able?

8. Prioritising.

My plan is to complete the living room and the childrens room first and then board out the loft space for storage.

I used to have room in my bedroom to store things as we had two double bedrooms. The kids had one, I had the other. I'm moving to the box room and will longer have space to store the xmas tree etc in my room and I doubt the children want it in their rooms. That's why I want the loft doing asap. The loft is last on my list, until then I'll be storing the xmas tree etc in the kitchen. Second last is the hallway and stairs carpet, third last is my room. First is the kids room, followed by the living room and then kitchen. Good plan?

And that's it, unless I've missed essential things which I am sure I will have. It's all a little overwhelming, tbh. I've never had to refurbish a single room before much less a house. I could do with as many pointers as you are all willing to give.

You could try joining some diy facebook groups?
There's one called diy on a budget, most of the stuff on there is horrific and tacky but a lot of people post about decorating council houses, things like tile stickers and cheap ways to do things yourself!
Good luck x

Thank you. I try not to do Facebook groups. Facebook irritates me but I will reluctantly log in and check that group out.

I'd think you can store stuff under beds rather than in the kitchen :) I've never heard of a council/ HA house needing plastering before, is the old plaster off? Or is it just a bit dented in places? Easier to patch unless falling off. Also if it's got fresh plasterboard on it's quite common to just tape the edge (ceiling and board joins) and patch the screw holes and then just paint.

Little local carpet shops often offer free fitting.

Garden shed can def get cheaply on gumtree, helps if you've got a mate with a van as they often need dismantled and driven home.

A few of the rooms were wallpapered. I assumed they were papered as the walls needed plastering but I could be wrong. I've been told everything bar the bathroom and most of the kitchen is up to me to do and I figured this would include plastering but I could be wrong.

I don't know anyone with a van (hence high moving costs) but my parents have a big seven seater car. A shed should fit in there. My bed has no under bed storage. The children both need new beds as they have bunk beds which came with the house atm, so I don't yet know what their beds will be like. Someone is building a bedframe for DD2 as I have a spare mattress, which will have underbed storage she was going to use for storing her toys/books shoes. I guess the tree could go under there for a while.

That's another thing, this house was part furnished (as in former tenants left crap the LL couldn't be arsed to get rid of) so I also need beds, wardrobes, drawers etc but was gonna peruse Facebook selling sites for these and/or have my friend build things for me.

I have living room furniture and my bedroom furniture was all mine, as were the kitchen appliances, including the oven. I'll need bedroom furniture for the children and dining room furniture.

The floor in the living room I was just gonna fit myself. It's click and fit laminate how hard can it be?

Ah, I was wondering what the awful concrete thing was. Anyone I know with sheds has them propped up on bricks rather than on a proper base. I shall leave the concrete alone and put the shed there. That makes sense now. It had been confusing me.

Find your local Freecycle group and join it. You can join more than one Freecycle group so do join ones in other areas that you or family members can reach.

Often on Freecycle there are DIY items such as paint, loft boards and tools. Also, furniture features regularly.

www.freecycle.org

In terms of DIY guidance lots of places like Wicked, Homebase and B&Q do free leaflets on things such as how to wallpaper a wall with step by step guidance. Also, your local library will have DIY books that you could borrow for guidance.

In terms of gardening you will probably need to start with trimming everything and it may take a few weeks of filling your green bin before you can assess what you have.

Creating a few pots of herbs that you enjoy cooking with is a great idea and minimises the garden getting overrun with any particular herb (mint spreads rapidly). Most seed packets will clearly explain when to plant the seeds and when to harvest. You could start some pots off indoors then transfer outside. Again if you ask on Freecycle for plants you may be offered some great ones to start you off. Why not look out for seeds for vegetables and fruit that you and your family enjoy? Also, if you know a keen gardener or spot something you like ask the owner for a cutting that you can put in compost and grow at home.

Your local allotment may well have a shop with some affordable plants and seeds. Also, great advice on growing- www.allotment-garden.org/articles-advice/

Sorry, there were paragraphs.

Wickes not Wicked

Are you anywhere near Bedfordshire? We have a spare lawnmower you could have

Click and fit laminate can be tricky; it's the edges normally that make it look crap; as often it's left unfinished. I would properly cost carpet if you have the option. Shouldn't need to replaster just tidy up any odd bits when you take wallpaper off. Wet wallpaper scraper to smooth on and fine sandpaper to finish.

I wouldn't bother about the flooring in the bathroom - get a cheap very colourful shower curtain and the floor will disappear.

Borrow a lawnmower - I bet there are people on your street who would help you out with this.

Go to charity shops to look for cheap rugs that will cover up bare floor for the time being.

I got plastic drawers very cheaply - Wilko do a tower for a fiver.

Plant directly into the ground for veg, you'll need to clear some grass which is hard work but fairly rewarding. Potatoes are good for breaking up the earth - but in general, grow stuff that is easy to grow but expensive to buy (i.e. soft fruits, beans, peas, etc...)

Garden sheds - try freecycle. Lots of people get rid of sheds but you'll need to have a mate or two and lots of them won't be dismantled for you, you'll have to do it yourself.

Ugly concrete thing. Freecycle for pots, put plants in em and watch it disappear.

Don't do stuff that doesn't actually need doing. Boarding out the loft, unless you have really heavy stuff to store you just board with ply - it's easily DIYable.

I second Freecycle. When I lived down south I furnished my whole house from there. Also, some councils have furniture stores that people on low income or without furniture can get stuff from for free. It's worth ringing or googling to see if there's any in your area.
Wilkinson do cheap seeds if you want to plant veg out. Also, I've had great results from the 99p shop bulbs. Also good for cheap pits. I also trawl the charity shops for interesting looking container's to put plants in.
Garden sheds: we got a free one from Freecycle. We had to dismantle it and cut the sides in half to get into the van. Never again!

That ugle concrete thing is a shed base, you'll need a level patch to put your shed on so use that

Charity furniture shops are BRILLIANT for cheap furniture. then get to a Johnson's trade paint centre, or a scrap store if you have one nearby. both have tins of paint that came out the wrong colour when mixed for pennies

As far as prioritising, i'd get the house clean and painted then worry about everything else. The garden can wait until summer, it doesn't look too awful in the pics, just keep the lawn mown, it will thicken up and become more even with regular mowing. Gumtree or shpock are great for lawnmowers and basic diy tools. with a drill, a saw and a set of screwdrivers you can achieve a great deal. youtube is great for tutorials on everything from fixing toilets / changing washers / making shelving etc

Re: the bathroom - definitely work with what you've got.

In my first house, there was a dreadful pink suite. The previous owners seemed to be in denial about it, and tried to pretend it wasn't pink by putting up a blue shower curtain and a funky loo seat. It did not work - just highlighted how pink and dreadful what was there was.

Instead, I put in a white loo seat and shower curtain, and stenciled some pink blocks around at dado height (yes, yes, I know - but it was the 90s, and stencilling was OK! Linda Barker used to do it any everything) And suddenly, by working with the pink and embracing it, it looked a million times better.

So I reckon, go with it. Try and find some bargain blue/coordinating stickers, bathmat or duckboard, and see if you can make the rubber look modern and edgy rather than disguising it.

Good luck! A friend of mine was in a similar situation with her council house, and she's made it look really lovely.

We've had a couple of very poor condition council properties and we just improved rooms as and when funds allowed.

Glossing all woodwork and fresh paint everywhere improved things massively.

Boarding out your loft is easy to do yourself, you can buy click together boards from b&q fairly cheap. I did my old loft.

Carpet fitting isn't expensive, only £30/£40 a room. I used to think it was mega expensive!

B&M or The Range is great for inexpensive wallpaper, DIY, plastic drawers and home stuff.

If your walls are terrible but you can't afford plastering yet I would buy plain textured wallpaper that you can paint over.

Actually, thinking back to when I viewed the house, the ugly concrete thing is directly in front of the back living room window, so a shed cannot go there. Potted plants would work.

The lady who lived there previously had a dog, I think the concrete thing may have some kind of kennelling/toileting area for the dog. From the large clumps of light grey dog hair all over the house, I'd guess her dog was one of the northern breeds, so quite a fair sized dog.

Where the black squiggles are, there is a big patch of soil. I was gonna use that for veg growing. It's about four feet back and runs the length of the garden. I was stood at the edge of it to take the picture.

Freecycle - I'd been under the impression you had to first give things away before you could bid for things? I have an old exercise machine I could shove on there and some board games the kids don't play with but my mum does boot sales so most of my unused stuff goes to her.

Charity shops I love. Almost everything I buy comes from charity shops and most of ours deliver, so I will def be looking there for furniture.

Stickers on the wetroom floor is a great idea. I was gonna look for a funky blue themed shower curtain and bathmat, so that will help and find some blue or silver tile stickers to stick over the black ones.

I'm not near Bedfordshire but thank you for your kind offer. I do have family spread around the country, so checking out selling pages and Gumtree etc close to them is a good idea. I will get on to that closer to moving.

The heaviest thing I'll be storing in the loft is a x-mas tree. It weighs quite a bit. I can't lift it alone but I have a retired builder helping me. Unfortunately he's in ill health so can't physically help but is on hand to direct and give advice, he should know if ply board will hold the tree. DD adores it, we found it in a charity shop and would never be able to afford a tree like that again, so I don't wanna get rid of it. I had just thought, if I put it in plastic storage box, would it be able to go in the shed?

I may be wrong but our local HA, they plaster and do general repairs. So get in touch with the council . I suppose on your area?

Be aware that if you DIY in a council house and they judge it to be botched they will bill you to fix it when you move out. Plastering isn't easy to get right - I'd definitely hire a professional. Boarding out the loft is a DIY job (assuming it's for storage only and not for any other use). Sheds and lawn mowers can be acquired from Freecycle or Ebay. In terms of growing veg, your best bet would be to dig it over and build some raised beds. Veg can be grown from seed fairly cheaply.

I've freecycled a lot in my time, and while it is generally considered good form to give as well as receive, I honestly don't think you should worry too much about that.

Speaking as someone who is in the fortunate position that I only had to give things away and not look for things people were offering, I generally just wanted it gone. I didn't mind what the people who accepted the offers had done previously, I just wanted to pass on my stuff to someone who needed it and avoid sending perfectly good, usable stuff to the dump.

It's meant to be socially egalitarian, and by barring people who, through force of circumstance, have little to give, it would be anything but. As long as you pay it forward when you are able to in the future, you can rest easy.

Frankly, as long as you actually turn up to collect, people will be delighted - I can't tell you how many time wasters just didn't bother!

Unless I win the lottery or something drastic happens, I'm not planning on ever moving. I survived an insane number of crappy private LLs. Only the house actually falling down would make me move from social housing back to private rented but I will bear that in mind.

I'll check out Freecycle for sheds, furniture etc.

The woman at the viewing went through a list of everything they'd be doing before I moved in and plastering wasn't on that list but I will make sure to double check next time I speak to them. As far as I remember only the hallway and stairs were papered, the rest of the rooms were ready to paint.

Wrt fitting carpet etc in the living room - both myself and the dog are allergic to dust and dust mites so carpet is not great, plus with a garden, two kids and an elderly semi-continent dog, laminate would be the most practical downstairs. I will try and find someone to fit it cheaply for me if it proves to be beyond my capabilities.

Paint - Relatives are going to lend me decent brushes and the vouchers are for Wilkos, so I'm hoping £200 will cover anything I need. My mum has some coloured paint she is willing to give me left over from when she redecorated, which luckily, is the colour DD2 wants in her room, so that's one room already paid for.

I've been spotting things like this on that Facebook DIY group. Is that just the bare stairs sanded down and painted with stick on tiles, or is there more to it than that?

That might be cheaper/easier than carpeting the stars and then I could find an off cut for the hall as it's quite small.

Freecycle and freegle are brilliant. If you ask for something, make sure you:
list it as WANTED
Name what you are looking for and why you need it.
Only ask for one thing in each post.
Check your spelling.
Say please and Thank you.

If you reply to an offer:
Be polite
Suggest times when you could collect it.

I have listed things and rule out anyone who seems grabby or rude or who hasn't read the listing properly. It is lovely when your junk finds a new home.

If you have an elderly dog which has accidents, I'd go for vinyl sheet flooring (sometimes called "lino") instead of laminate.

Laminate can be slippery and dogs find it harder to grip, which isn't great for an old dog which may struggle to get up. Also, the joins in laminate aren't waterproof and can blow if they become very wet - for example, urine or repeatedly heavy mopping clean up after an accident.

You can get some quite nice wood look vinyl sheet flooring now.

Bare stairs are very noisy, the only place we are definitely keeping carpet in our house is the stairs due to this.
Bare stairs can look lovely, but expect many hours of hard work putting tacks and sanding to get them looking like that - personally I'd put that time into filling, sanding and lining the walls, and have the stairs carpeted

That's a good point re the dog and laminate. I might take him to visit relatives with laminate and see how he copes. If he doesn't cope I will switch to vinyl floor. Cleaning won't be an issue as yet. His incontinence isn't full incontinence yet. I'm not sure what's going on with it, it only ever happens when he's left alone for more than an hour or so but it is in dribbles along the carpet as though he's trying to make it to the backdoor rather than cocking his leg up the furniture. Alls I know he used to be housebroken, now he is not but he's very important to me. He helped me through depression and an abusive relationship, so long as he still has quality of life, I'm willing to cope with a bit of pee. He was going to be sleep in and be confined to the kitchen/diner when I'm out/in bed which is being done with vinyl. He'll only be in the sitting room when I am and when I'm in, he's sitting on me, not the floor. Still, I'll keep it in mind.

It's a semi-detached house and the stairs are on the detached side so noise isn't too much of an issue. We all wake at roughly the same time. I'll see what state the stairs are in once they rip up the current carpet and decide from there what will be the least costly and easiest to do.

Boarding out a loft is DIY able. Plastering can be tricky but as others have said, unless the plaster is very damaged behind the wallpaper (ours was but friends have a similar aged house and theirs was fine ) you can just fill in the odd dented bits then paint. Or if bad, wallpaper over again.

I'm pretty sure you don't have to give things away to get things on freecycle.

For vegetable growing and other gardening it might be worth asking a on the gardening board. I tend to grow vegetables that are easy to grow but a bit expensive or hard to get in shops. That is mostly beans, sugar snap peas and salad leaves like rocket. Also Kale and leeks for winter. I also grow cucumbers and courgettes because I like growing them.