Has anyone just bought a big wreck of a house? Support thread?

[ProgrammableMagneticStorm]

We've just bought a 400 year old house and I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed.

We've just had an offer accepted on something that is just about liveable. Pretty stressed but I feel excited about it too.

Hi Frank. Will you renovate straight away, or live with it/do it piecemeal?

Our new house isn't a wreck but it's our first and we're overwhelmed a little. It's just one thing to learn after another and it seems like so many jobs that seem little turn into having to do a million other things first. It's the best location and a bigger house than we thought we could afford, so needing to do all this work is the compromise I guess. Luckily it's mainly aesthetic stuff so perhaps I don't qualify for this thread but I do commiserate.

We are moving on Thursday, into a 200 year old Grade 2 listed old vicarage. It isn’t a wreck but it’s much larger than our last house & needs lots of updating/maintenance which feels scary.

Hi francie/zelba.

Francie your first house is very excited. Congratulations to you!

Zelba Grade 2 is a bit of a nightmare, no? Is it listed inside and out?

Ours is structurally very, very sound but the previous owner was cash poor and absolutely ran it into the ground. We had a guy from the village stop by yesterday and explain that the reservoir that feeds our house also feeds the village through an undocumented goodwill arrangement and the pipes are rusted/need to be upgraded and he hopes we'll continue this arrangement in the future. As he left my husband and I looked at each other and said WTF in perfect unison.

I was absolutely shocked at how cold the house was. I'm no stranger to cold houses, but this was next level cold.

Hi :) It needs rewire, new radiators, windows, bathroom and kitchen. We're going to move straight in with minimal belongings and get going straight away! Yours sounds much more exciting though. Ours is apparently edwardian semi but not really sure of the age.

We bought our house thinking that it just needed a bit of a redecoration. Previous owner was a diy enthusiast . It almost needs gutting. Everything has been done on the cheap and badly.we were planning to do some work (go into the loft and add an en suite).......but by the time we’ve finished there will only be 2 untouched rooms. It’s completely depressing. We’ve done a huge refurb/extension before, so we know what’s ahead and we weren’t really planning this.

We bought a wreck December 2018 moved into it last may and stayed in the old place while the new one was stripped down to bare bricks and floorboards.

Never. Again.

It needed some structural work to the chimney breast, and an external wall, a full rewire, full replaster, new kitchen and new bathroom (kitchen and bathroom still need doing, they are functional but only just).

It needed new floors throughout and some repairs to the floorboards. Needed damp proofing. Needed new windows and doors throughout and new internal doors downstairs.

Boiler, electric meter and fusebox all needed moving.

The garden is still a jungle though we have cleared a lot of it will need a tree surgeon for some of it.

It's nowhere near finished yet

Ours needed new radiators in three rooms and a new ceiling in the bathroom too

I don't know where to start with this saga! We moved into our wreck 4 years ago. Whilst living here we have: new roof and insulation and reconfigured attic rooms to make 2 bedrooms and a shower room, added a 2 story side extension to house a first floor bathroom (which is being tiled as I type!) and a ground floor utility and shower room, completed three bedrooms and 2 en-suites on first floor and the sitting room on ground floor, all re plastered and rewired, new windows throughout, had a digger in to level garden and built retaining walls and patio.
All we have left to do ( she says sobbing into her coffee cup) is to knock through the dining room into the kitchen and add a small extension one end then refit it, then do the hall, stairs and landing and finish the garden.
DH is doing most of it himself. I'm sure he will be dead before it is complete.
Never again.

We've just bought one and I am definitely feeling overwhelmed. Needs some electrical, plumbing work, possible replacement boiler / new radiators, some structural work to chimneys, new kitchen (we'd like to knock through into adjoining dining room), bathroom repositioning and replacing, probably some replastering, decorating eg floors and painting. We'd also like to do a loft conversion down the line. Should be lovely once we're finished and the location is great, but now we're in the house I am feeling pretty scared!

@ProgrammableMagneticStorm it’s very important, if your building is listed, that you understand that listing always refers to both the inside and outside unless something is expressly excluded. See here

Yes! Support thread welcome. We bought in summer 2019, and moved straight in. It had been empty for two years and before that the owner was very elderly and needed caters. It was pretty dirty, cobwebby, and gloomy.

We’ve done windows, boiler & radiators, chimney cowls, a woodburner, masses of wallpaper stripping, and a new bathroom. And cavity wall insulation (not an especially old house). We are still dealing with damp and cold, but it is improving.

Rewire, more decorating, kitchen and knocking through into another room next! And the garden (1.5 acres) is under a lot of ivy, nettles, and brambles 🤦‍♀️.

All with two full time jobs and two young kids. It’s been tough!

And programmable it has been a very cold winter for us too. I sympathise!

Me. Well not just-we've been here 2 years.
The house is 520 years old in parts and those are listed.

So far we are have rewired
Put in a new bathroom.
Renovated an old kitchen (upcycled cupboards but new floor)
Re rendered the front (which was ££££ because we had to use traditional listed plaster)
Renovated the windows (couldn't straight replace so new windows were built around the tiny slivers of wood in the originals that weren't rotten...also ££££ and very faffy).
Repointed the chimney which was about to fall off.
Replaced floor boards in two rooms, one listed so had to be reclaimed ones.
Unblocked a very old drain that was proving to be a recurring issue.

Next job is doing something about a very old beam in our cellar that is scaring me as it's integral to the house and a bit of it needs to be replaced (but as listed, with some magical unicorn wood )
We also need to do something about the oak panelling in the living room as there are holes in some of it-but so far no trades man wants to touch it (except some man that worked on the old panelling at Hatfield House-and I might have stately home taste but I don't have stately home finances!).
And we need to look at the roof.

I love our house but it is like the Money Pit. Once we do one thing it causes us to have to do something else-usually something costly. We knew it would be like that but sometimes the things that come up are an unpleasant surprise when you have the money ear marked for something else in the house.

And I'm a bit more fed up than I thought I would be living with old thread bare carpets etc in the serviceable bits of the house because we've had to use that money on the less fun bits that couldn't have been predicted.

Ooh I’ll join this one! We are in the process of buying a large Edwardian Semi. It’s been rented out for the last 10 years and not had anything done to it bar a new boiler. It’s incredibly neglected and needs a lot of work. We’re getting the full survey report on Tuesday so I’m bracing myself to read that with a large G&T.

We are going in with about £15k, this needs to cover the chimney repairs, leak repairs, minor roof repairs, full rewire, fixing all the floors upstairs (they are so out of level it’s untrue, but DH is a cabinet maker so it’ll only cost us materials and time) and popping insulation between the joists at the same time, putting in a new en-suite and decorating all 5 bedrooms. I’m hoping it’s enough. We’ll then save for the main bathroom, kitchen and downstairs rooms. I am excited but so nervous. Of course all that is based on the survey not throwing up any horrible surprises....

@MurrayTheMonk, can I ask how much it cost you to repoint your chimney? That is a job we need to do straight away, along with replacing the cement fillets around it for lead flashing, as there are wet patches on the breast in the bedroom below.

No renovations but find it fascinating. Anyone blogging/ instagramming? Would love to follow progress!

It was about £800 plus VAT. Nothing was leaking with ours though, it was just a bit crumbly and I feared for it in any high winds.

Ah thank you that’s useful to know. I think the source of the leak is definitely the fillets but the pointing doesn’t look fantastic.

@zazzyzaz me too! I think once we’re in I will be instagramming. Anyone want to share their Reno handles? I love a bit of house porn.

I don't post about the house much really other than once on here when DP and I had a massive row because the person laying the kitchen floor had ground down the tiles that were there before and hadn't shut any of the doors in the house-so literally everything I the whole place was covered in a thick layer of red brick dust. He had been 'supervising' but not very well. It was on my 40th birthday. I cried.
I'm still finding dust in unusual places 3 months later.
That was the lowest point for me so far. The rest is just low level stress on an ongoing basis

Ah, I forgot the new boiler, pipework and radiators throughout, rebuilding the chimney and fitting a log burner and the constant, constant cleaning. DH builds, I clean.

Ooh @MurrayTheMonk that’s not a pleasant 40th! We knocked down a small (weird) cupboard that was a cubby in the kitchen that took loads of room out of the downstairs bathroom. We shut doors and hung sheets but my word, the dust got EVERYWHERE.

We are knocking through from kitchen to dining room via a disused chimney breast. It’s going to be FILTHY. We need to raise the lintel and put in steels. The builder says he can put 3 steels in and we won’t need a structural calculation, but I’m not sure! Any advice?

@zazzyzaz we aren’t but I sort of wish we had been posting to insta, now!

Ooh we have just replaced all the old asbestos guttering, too. Forgot that!

I would not be putting any steels in without calcs! Ring your council planning department and ask them if you need building regs for the job. If you do then you likely need calcs too. We paid about £200 for ours last time plus the same again for building regs.

Yes, moved in last summer to a big Victorian detached house with separate Grooms Cottage. We haven’t done a lot due to lack of money. Structurally it is ok, apart from needing a bedroom replaster and some wooden windowsills fixed. But there are lots of things we are planning to do over next ten years (new kitchen/ bathroom/ redecorating). Husband currently in the Grooms cottage painting with view to air b and b