We are in the process of purchasing a 4 bed Edwardian house a few roads away from where we are currently living.
The house is enormous, with potential to extend out the back to put in an amazing open plan kitchen, and up into the loft and put in a further 2 bedrooms and ensuite.
As it stands currently it needs a load of work doing to it, but it's the only way we could ever have a house like that in our area.
We're stretching ourselves massively and taking out a non- high st mortgage in order to borrow what we need, and will be interest only for at least the first couple of years, but we can do it.. there isn't much left over for renovation though.
I'm not currently working although looking with a couple of potential jobs coming up 🤞🏻. So reliant on OH's salary alone at the moment, which is ok.. not amazing but reasonable for London.
OH is pretty handy and can put in bathrooms, build stuff and turn his hand to most things ( his dad practically built his childhood home so he learnt a lot from him). He has done loads to our current property, and is really excited about getting stuck in with this old pile.
Kitchen ext will onviously have to wait and be saved up for, but OH is confident he can do a lot of stuff himself.
I'm under no illusion that this is going to be a ling term project, and will be messy and stressful along the way, but even a few improvements will make it better.
Has anyone else done something like this on a minimal initial budget, and with doing a lot of the work themselves?
We have 2 DC (5 and 8) soobviously that brings extra challenges. We did up our current maisonette and lived in a building site, but it was only us.. no kids!
Long term the house will be a proper family home with space for the kids to grow. We ate currently cramped where we are, so it's def time to move.
Anyone got any words of widom/caution/comfort?