Buying a complete wreck...am I mad?

[Tarrarra]

We've finally found the house that could be the house of our dreams. However, it needs complete remodernisation. I'm talking roof, windows, heating, electrics, decoration, some fairly major building work etc. It's a definite project. We can just about afford it, and we're fairly clued up on these things and not at all blinkered about the scope of works!

Has anyone ever taken on a project like this and lived in the property? Is it worth it in the end or will I feel like I'm squatting for a few years? I'd love to hear some success stories, and, advice from those who have been there, done it, made some mistakes and know the pitfalls too.

Thanks!

I'm married to a builder- he lives old buildings.
We moved to a wreck when the dc were still in nappies. There was a hole in the roof and no glass in most of our bedroom window, since then we have "done" a number more.
Yes you feel like a squatter- the dust and muck get everywhere. The kids turn feral- you learn to cook on a camp stove and to bath quickly as he has taken the roof off over the bathroom.

By the third one I put my foot down and we lived in a static caravan until it was habitable. We had a rented house while he did the self build.

If you can afford it, do that. You do at least get some separation from it. Don't get a touring caravan unless it's huge.

Now DH does this for a living and is a bit of a workaholic- if you are just enthusiastic amateurs, think long and hard. You will need more money than you think you do, and everything will take longer than you think.

Still keen? Give it a go, it is possible to end up with a lovely home in a great place.

Yep. Husband and I were so excited and very gung-ho about it (over 20 years ago now). Jeez. If only we knew. Things I have learned:

1. Whatever you think (or are told) it's going to cost - double it.
2. Some of the contractors will turn out to be useless lying bastards.
3. If you are a woman, some people won't even turn up as arranged because your time is not important.
4. Don't make final payments until AFTER the job is completed to your satisfaction.
5. Ask around and be prepared to wait for good contractors.
6. Watch "The Money Pit".
7. There will be days when you'll need an enormous gin by 10am.
8. Don't even bother trying to keep the place clean.
9. Never leave contractors unattended because every decision they make without you will be wrong.

10. Hire a portaloo or face the inevitable hideous consequences in your bathroom.

Good luck!

^^ Everything Sicario said.

We didn’t live in ours for the first year because it would have been physically impossible and I would strongly urge you to look at buying a caravan or something that you can sell on at the end.

It is doable if you have the money (and you do need waaaay more than you think) but as we near the final 5th of our project, two years later we are up to our eyeballs in debt and I can’t help feeling that we missed two years of our kids. Especially DH who has done the house mostly at the weekends.

Is it worth it? Probably. We couldn’t have afforded this house if someone else had done it up.

The main thing is to be realistic about your time. How much spare time do you have now? Really? Time is a huge factor.

And cost, of course. Double that.

We’ve done it three times and I can only echo all of the above!!
Knowledge about the process is key. DH is an Architect so he knew what we were getting into.
The first house was a complete revaluation to me. We had no extra cash, no children and did it bit by bit out of salary. It took for ages.
Second house was bigger and we had spare cash for a builder to do the remodelling up to shell standard. We did the rest again out of salary and with a toddler and baby in tow.
I look back and do think we were mad.
After a 20 year gap, in a house that only needed maintenance, the third house was completely gutted and rebuilt using a builder and associated trades.
Now when DH mentions ‘project ‘ with dreamy eyes it’s usually other people’s!
Think long and hard you will get to a point where you reach a low.

....and you’ll have days when you think you’ll never finish, and you end up sitting on a bag of plaster bawling...

This is all great advice...thank you. DH works in property industry so is fairly clued up, and I used to, so we're not complete novices when it comes to other people's projects. I think we have to be realistic though and work out if we can cope with living in a state of unfinished for a while. We can afford tradespeople for the major stuff, but it leaves us with decoration and remodelling bits. I work part time, so would have free hours for doing bits during the week, but our weekends would be spent redecorating and building furniture. Hard to know how long it would all take, but I am thinking at least 8 months - year. The costs are looking like £800 per m2 at the moment... does this sound reasonable?

Costs will vary depending on where you are and finish, but 2k per square metre is the figure I read about most often

Sounds doable but I wouldn't class decorating and building furniture as DIY (unless you're talking beds, built in cupboards, wardrobes etc) - you'll probably want to do some plumbing, plaster boarding, ceiling, insulation, tiling etc yourself. We had an extension done (so tiny compared to your project) and kept the costs down as DH (computer scientist so I'm sure your DH will be more experienced) did a lot of the plumbing, stud walls, preparatory carpentry for the roof etc. It's not just about the costs to be honest (and £2000 is nearer the mark I think) but most plumbers, electricians or builders have work lined up 2-6 months in advance so you need to be able to do some of the prep work yourself. I'm seriously thinking I might retrain as a plumber as £250-300 a day should be nice.

I am living in a "wreck" and doing it up right now. If you can keep your sense of humor over dust and chaos then it's worth it. I haven't had a kitchen yet but all the cabinets and slate tiles are sitting in the kitchen now so getting closer.

I bought my wreck at an auction and it had been vacant for 7 years and needed roof repairs, had no boiler, windows, kitchen, bathroom and pretty much everything.

I'm doing it on the cheap and bought most items off Ebay and have found some amazing bargains to help with costs. I bought 18 sq. meters of new slate tiles for under £100 and bought a display kitchen for £155 with appliances and sold all the appliances I didn't need and cut costs down further. You can check your area for programs for boilers and energy savings programs and I'm in County Durham that has programs for properties that have been vacant for 1 year plus that you can get up to £20,000 in free grant money if you live in the house for 5 years or more as owner occupied.

There are ways to cut costs but I get the professionals to do the major works and I've been plastering, tiling, and repairing as much as I can myself. I've bought second hand tools on Ebay and there are videos on Youtube for just about every DIY job and helped me replace doors, locks, door handles and other things I had no experience with.

I love my house and getting to the end of the project and it will take twice as long as you think but I have the house I love and I've become a wiz at using my slow cooker which currently has a stew going for when I'm done with today's projects.

We moved into a doer uppers in 2012. My dh convinced me it would be a good idea and he'd have it done in 18 months or so. 6 years later ...... it's still mainly a doer upper 😢

Consider what if your circumstances changed. Surprise pregnancy, illness, redundancy etc.
Otherwise, everything Sicario said.

I would also factor in whether you can actually find decent tradespeople, they are as rare as hens teeth in London, and pretty crap when they do turn up .

We bought our last house when kids were 2 and 3 and needed dampproofing, gas and electrics redoing, downstairs bathroom taking out and knocking into bigger kitchen, new kitchen. Also survey showed up one chimney was unsupported and so would be un mortgagable and to fix with beam. Plus issues with chimney and roof, garden.

Took it on, neither of us property experience. Lived in it when works were on and did as much of work ourselves as possible. First part no electrics/gas was a nightmare - cold baths, no heating (thankfully over spring), no means of cooking so takeaways. These are nice at first then get fed up. Had to put kids in nursery full-time even though I was just working part-time due to chaos. Kitchen took 2 months - bit of a nightmare but beautiful when done and the perfect kitchen. Contractors variable and some rather sexist comments like I can't believe you know about electrics and you're a woman and you're a fit bird but just ignored those.

Did try to clean inbetween but it is a bit of a losing battle but otherwise the dust gets terrible. We also went for a chimney rebuild - during that they said kids bedroom floor may collapse so got a few nights in Premier Inn and the kids thought that was so exciting. Got greeted by the kids Headmaster saying I heard your floor nearly collapsed and you had to go to a hotel . Took fair bit of planning. Financially all work did come in similar to what I had expected but previous flat there was more so I had put in an unexpected provision and would recommend that. Definitely a full survey. Did garden - that's not so bad as outside.

Still jobs left to do which will probably never get done tbh. If you can afford to live elsewhere it would be nicer.

Lots to consider... I'm not taking this lightly. Some days I think we can do it, and other days I'm not sure we're made of strong enough stuff so it's good to hear from people who have been through it already. I'm now rethinking the budget and increasing it further so that we don't run out of money. There is a few possible ways of either renting out rooms once finished or creating a separate annex/flat to rent out which would fund works, but create more headaches possibly. (I think this is a whole new thread for landlord advice!) I just wish I had a crystal ball!

The only downside of going elsewhere is not so easy to watch what contractors are up to.

I asked our surveyor - had a full survey - to give an estimated cost of works and his figure was pretty accurate at £20k though didn't include things we wanted like new kitchen. He was a bit reluctant to give this and had to just get it over the phone. When I had full survey I had good idea of costs, flat before had only had basic one and was first time buyer so clueless.

Have to admit when bought this one went for one which needed nothing doing immediately.

I’m doing number 4 at the moment. Agree with everything sicario said. Plus you will spend at least 5 years with short fingernails.

On the other hand, dcs generally don’t mind as long as they are warm, and the basics - loo, bath - work.

My kids found it quite exciting and when I was adding 1 tonne of pebbles to the garden I had a fair few toddlers walk past asking their Mums if they could do that at their home and their Mums saying no and DS being very pleased with himself.

Yes to a full survey. Our surveyor said our £80k budget was nowhere near enough and that we needed to nearly double it. Silly man, we thought, we’ve done this before, DH is an experienced DIYer and can turn his hand to most things.

The surveyor was more or less correct.

If I had done a price per m2 for the whole house (I was familiar with the £1500 per m2 for an extension but didn’t apply to the house) we would have been far more prepared. Though we would probably have walked away but we have just about managed it so maybe would have been a missed opportunity. I think £1000 to £1100 per m2 for a proper renovation (not just decoration which lots of people label as renovation these days) is about right if you want to end up with a house you actually want. We haven’t gone for the highest end products (and I don’t include new furniture in that amount, only fixtures and fittings like a mid range kitchen and bathroom) and have had to compromise on quite a few things but have mostly got what we wanted. It’s the materials as much as anything. Wood, plasterboard, paint (bloody hell paint is expensive), screws, nails, tools - it all adds up.

Also, even a surveyor won’t do everything. Ours pointed out that there may need to be some underpinning but he wouldn’t take up floorboards and couldn’t dig into the concrete to see how far it went down. Nor could he pull back MDF boards covering fireplaces to see what state of repair they were in, see how many dead rats were under the floor boards or see that steels under the plaster boarded ceiling weren’t sufficient to hold the upstairs. So bear that in mind. I think you need a structural survey for that? There is always something you do not expect and it’s soul destroying.

And I agree with everything people have said about trades. Having to go through small claims is no fun .

I know I sound really negative but I do wish that I had been more realistic with our budget. That said, I still can be found gazing around the house in wonder and pride at all that we’ve achieved. And it is an achievement because we have done the lion’s share of the work. As I said upthread, we could never have afforded this house otherwise and on the whole I’m pleased we did it so don’t let me put you off, just be realistic and go in with your eyes open (and be prepared to make a million small decisions a day!)

We bought a do-er upper 7ish years ago and did all the jobs on your list except the roof and extension. I'm so flipping glad we stayed in a rented flat while the work was done. It took about 3 months or so for the builders to rewire, plumb, rebuild damp internals walls, put in bathroom, kitchen, some expensive surprise structural repairs, plaster, put in flooring etc. There is no way they could have been so quick with us and our stuff there too. Doing the decorating, tiling and carpentry etc yourself when the main messy stuff is done is possible.

I bought a house at auction which had been empty for 7 years and untouched since it was built in the fifties.
We took a short term for the first few months so we had a bathroom etc.
Ex partner was a builder so wasn’t too bad.
It’s been a good deal financially.

*rental

Yes, never again. We had to replace bathroom, kitchen, internal insulation currently looking at roof options. The extension was the worst.

Everything costs far more than you think eg quotes for roof are around £30k

Going for another look tomorrow, we have to make a decision really. Have just about got to grips the finances. It's tight but doable and long term we will benefit... We just need to look at it without the rose tinted glasses and decide if we can live in chaos for a year or so... 😃 It's 50:50...

Thanks for all your input, it's been really helpful x