Advice on renovating a house from those with bitter experience!

[BathmatOfDoom]

Looking to mine the hive mind.

We have found a great house in a great location. It is a fifty year old bungalow which needs a new roof, needs oil central heating, insulating and totally overhauled in decorative terms. It's got four bedrooms and loads of space in the garden to extend a sun room from the living room in future. There's asbestos in the loft somewhere, which the home report failed to mention, so we may be able to negotiate the price downwards.

We have a builder coming to check it out on Friday but I wondered if anyone has dealt with similar and has an idea of costs and pitfalls?

Same position but bought it anyway. Loved the plot.

Our Victorian property was shocking when we bought it, loved every minute of renovating it and never regretted doing it. Go for it if you love it and are prepared for the work 👍

Thanks... I guess at the moment we're worried about costs, but as long as we can get the roof made good, asbestos dealt with if necessary and the house centrally-heated (and possibly rewired) for £40k it's doable. Eek!

If the aspestos has been sprayed onto the underside of the roof tiles you will need to replace the whole roof which could be most/all of your budget. People used to do this to insulate roofs and prevent small leaks but once it goes it is impossible to detatch from the tiles so the whole lot has to come off. If you can negotiate down though I would go for it. We are living in a half done house and are loving it.

Lots of stress lots of fun. Stupidly expensive though!

We are doing the same at the moment, 50 year old bungalow. Had terrible trouble with shoddy window fitters but brilliant plumbers took the sting out of that.

£40k might be a minimum going by our experience so far. Windows £4K, new boiler etc £4K, bathroom & cloakroom £4K, kitchen £6k, new roof on conservatory £13k, rewiring £4K, plastering £3k, all the new doors over £2k and then all the paint, light switches, handles, hinges, hidden stuff that disappears but still costs money. All very approximate but that's a rough costing of ours so far and that's not counting flooring which is going to cost ££££ and we haven't touched the garden yet which needs all new fencing and levelling / landscaping.

We're doing the donkey work ourselves to keep costs down but it's costing more than we budgeted for though we are 100% sure it'll be worth it.

Good luck with yours, op. It really makes a house feel like your own home.

It only has felt tiles so I'm expecting a new roof to be necessary anyway, unless we can find lightweight replacement tiles. The windows are all UPVC already, thankfully, and the kitchen is liveable-with, and there's a horrible but new wet room. So internally we can get by provided it's warm and dry! Main thing is making it safe and weatherproof - we will see what the builder says when he looks at it on Friday.

My top tip is not to live on site - we are and it is take ages and it is not fun at all.

Hmmmm we may be able to hold out renting for a couple of months but then we'd need in. Was hoping to get some tradies to do homers as that'll be quicker than waiting in a queue for a big builder - although if the big builder can move quick we would go with that. I hope this all works out!

I agree with not living in the property while work is getting done. I have done this a few times and it can be torture.

Make it watertight and then live with it for a year. See how the sun comes into the different rooms throughout the seasons. It will also give you time to save and give you a real sense of how you use the rooms.

Hide your dyson. That's my biggest advice from house renovations.

We're getting toward the end of this place - front and side garden shocking bad slabs to sort out, remaining bedroom gets done this month and we've got a couple of windows left to replace but we're having to do it all gradually as and when funds are there... and it's been a long and dusty slog.

Agree with PP. We had a big extension/renovation and the best money we spent was moving out whilst the builder got on with it!

Agree about not living on site. We have lived in a doer upper while we were having work done to it, and hated every minute of it. The mess and stuff not working was depressing beyond belief.

I am never doing that again.

Don't do it if it means you have to live on site, particularly if you have DC. Had to put up with this torture for 10 years in numerous properties with my selfish ex H, who is the DIY neighbour from hell. Current DH can barely pick up a paintbrush. We are now looking to move & main criteria is NO WORK, now or imminently!

If asbestos needs removing check with a specialist company on costs. just disposing of it could cost several thousand

We've lined up an asbestos survey to go ahead if the builder doesn't suck his teeth too much tomorrow!

Good luck! We’ve been totally renovating our upstairs while living here and it’s been an enomous hassle - if you can manage to get a couple of rooms ‘done’ before moving in you’ll make your life so much easier.

Definitely concentrate on getting the house secure and watertight before doing any decorating
We've done what we can ourselves to save costs but have found lots of small jobs have become complicated pain in the arse jobs. Buying an older house means you're often rectifying other people's mistakes.
Have you had a full survey?
Check plumbing
Get wiring looked at
Does the house need repointing
Is the roof flashing in good condition
Buy a builders vacuum even if you won't be living there during the big jobs
Costs, expect to go over by at least 15%
If you have a toddler then don't do it *voice of bitter experience

It will cost more than you think and take longer than you thought. Problems will crop up along the way that you never knew about until you started. You will spend a lot of time in B&Q. Great fun though...

Thankfully my toddler days are behind me!

Looks like the roof is an easy fix up and the asbestos is no biggie. Builder was pretty positive but figures yet to come. Meanwhile the estate agents are trying to persuade us to put an offer in on a walk-in-condition three-bed house which DH loves but will cost £20k more to buy and will be too small the day we move in. Not budging