What to tackle first?!

[SuperVeggie]

Hi everyone, we have just exchanged on our first house (finally!) and we are due to complete next week. It's a 2 bedroom semi and needs a fair bit of work, because the previous owners have not kept on top of it really. We are hoping to do a kitchen/downstairs bathroom extension in the next 1-2 years but we will need to save up so for now it's a case of making the best of what we have. Although we have a one month overlap between rental and new house, because of work and badly-timed holidays we only actually have about 10 days to do as much as possible. We definitely need to do the following:

• Rip up all carpets and replace (after decorating is finished)
• Completely redecorate - walls, ceilings and woodwork are dirty and house smells from smokers. I'm thinking just paint white throughout for speed and ease and then think about colour if we have time? I like a neutrals/light anyway. Might just do feature walls/chimney breast etc a stronger colour rather than whole rooms.
• Replace bathroom flooring (carpet currently)
• Repair floor joists in lounge - may be rotten, not sure
• Move and widen loft hatch - not sure whether to do this now or later. But can't currently access loft as too small.
• Survey showed damp in a bedroom from leaking chimney stack so needs repair. However might wait until the extension for this if poss as surveyor said it would be cheaper to get someone to do it as an added extra when already on site. Not sure if it will cause too much damage though.
• New front door but this would move for extension so might wait

We would also really like to be able to do the following:

• Remove gas fireplace in lounge and see what's behind... originals in all other rooms
• Somehow refresh kitchen/bathroom on a budget. No point completely redoing all of it because of extension plans but they are both horrible and want them liveable for 1-2 years. Tiles are ok but everything else yuck. Thinking of painting cabinets and replacing worktops?
• Garden is a bit of a dump and currently can walk off the street and round into the back garden. I want to secure off access but not sure if there's point because if we do extension then it would all have to be taken down again.

So... how much can we do in 10 days?! What order should we do it in? And am I mad?!! There will be me and my husband, plus my Dad helping us for 3-4 days who is a carpenter. He will do the floor joists but I was also hoping maybe the loft hatch if time. We also have a couple of friends who are happy to help a bit with painting.

Sorry for the long post... oh and if anyone can hazard a guess for how much this will cost us that would be great! I've estimated £5k. Thanks.

If it's that fun down, doesn't it need new electrics or possibly plumbing?

I'd start by dealing with rotting joists (massive issue), damp and the loft hatch if you've got a keen carpenter.

The carpets will need ripping up to get rid of the stench but it'd probably be premature to put new down. If there's lining paper under paint, you might need to remove that to get the smell out. Alternatively, I'd look at washing/steaming the walls- in a similar house we literally had brown gunk dripping down walls when we too a steamer to it.
If you repaint, I'd probably just slosh some cheap pure brilliant white as you're likely to have to redo it all soon.

In 10 days, not much can be done so I'd just do the remedial work and take it from there.

Thanks for the reply. We don't think there are any problems with electrics or plumbing, although we would move the boiler and probably have to do some rewiring if we were fiddling with stuff for the extension. The house hasn't been neglected for years and years - think it was in an ok state until current owners bought it in 2010.

Don't think the walls have lining paper - just paint. Everywhere is magnolia apart from one room which was a bright pink child's bedroom. So apart from that think a couple of coats of pure white should be ok as a base. Pink walls will prob need 3-4 coats!

Hmmm I think this is all going to take a long time...!

I would get a roofer to take a look at the leaking chimney stack first. Then I would prioritise getting that fixed. There’s no point spending money on superficial decorating until you’ve solved the source of the damp. Same goes for rotting floor joists. You need to find out what’s causing them and deal with that before replacing them. My guess is your budget will easily be eaten up by those 2 damp problems. Sorry.

Definitely First

• Survey showed damp in a bedroom from leaking chimney stack so needs repair.
• Repair floor joists in lounge - may be rotten, not sure

First

• Move and widen loft hatch - not sure whether to do this now or later. But can't currently access loft as too small.
• Rip up all carpets

Middle

• Remove gas fireplace in lounge and see what's behind
• Replace bathroom flooring (carpet currently)

Last

• Completely redecorate

Definitely Last

• replace carpets
• New front door but this would move for extension so might wait
• Garden is a bit of a dump

Thanks Pesto, the chimney stack is only causing damp in one spot in one of the bedrooms so hoping we could decorate the other one and have it habitable ASAP. The surveyor said it wasn't an urgent issue as obviously very gradual small leak but I agree it sounds like a good idea to get someone to look at it ASAP. Surveyor estimated total cost at £1000-1500 for full repair.

He also said that the cause of decaying floor joists on ground floor is lack of ventilation as the current 70's kitchen extension means that there are no longer air bricks at the back of the house to let air flow through. Fortunately my dad will be able to redo all the joists himself and he will treat them to prevent further damp. He is not charging us labour and so only have to pay for materials fortunately... he has estimated £300-400. I was hoping this plus the chimney won't cost more than £2k total to leave some leftover for other stuff...!

Oh thanks Dan, sorry I didn't see that you'd replied as well. Really helpful - it's difficult to work out the order of everything when we have so little time! Thanks again :-)