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.

ATeam the seller will no doubt be very nervous that your survey has unearthed structural issues. They know that anyone else is going to find the same and you're the bird in hand rather that in the bush.

but DH has unbeknownst to me put half the renovation budget into a high interest savings account that we can’t touch. Which I’m annoyed about because if we can’t touch the money for 2 years we should have just taken a smaller mortgage!

He's invested half your mortgage for two years without your knowledge? I wouldn't be too happy about that.

The2ATeam our plasterer skimmed our artex ceilings

Do you mean you can plaster over the bumpy wallpaper? Our house is absolutely covered in it, but I expect we'll have to tear a lot of the walls up for wiring and plumbing anyway.

Has anyone done the Ikea kitchen carcass + more expensive doors? If so, can you say a bit about it?

My latest great crashing disappointment is that we can get a guaranteed..... 0 MPS broadband. The joy of rural idyl. The teenagers are delighted.

Not half the mortgage, just half the budget we had set aside to renovate the place. Means we have a temporary cash flow issue that I wish he had communicated. We took a larger mortgage than we needed to buy the house so we could just renovate it straight off, but turns out we could have reduced it if the money wasn’t going to be available

I'm reading this thread with fascination. I think you are all very brave or completely bloody mad. A big reno job would be my absolute worst nightmare, painting is my limit!

ProgrammableMagneticStorm. What did your survey suggest the bumpy paper was? We have ours tested and confirmed as Asbestos. If yours isn’t you can just steam it off or plaster over.

Loving this thread. We're nearly one week into life in our dilapidated 1900s terrace, had a few tradespeople round but quickly realising how interconnected all the work is so have set up appointments with some architects to start thinking about a grand plan for the whole house so we can make sure we do things in the right order... I'm both excited and daunted in equal measure, feeling very impatient so trying to remind myself this is probably a years-long project. We're going to try to live here throughout the work (including 2 small DCs) but have had a few raised eyebrows at this plan so hoping we're not in for too much of a nasty shock

@Moreisnnogedag I'd approach chemical door stripping with caution. It certainly can dissolve the old glues used to hold the door together and they can then fall apart. We won't be doing ours that way as a result and they will probably just get a good sand and repaint. One side of the bathroom door has been done this way already, and looks great! It's never going to look new, but then I don't want it to!

@MunsteadWood if you have any specialist jobs (fitting a woodburner/fireplace etc) you could have these done independently while major works are going on. This is what we've done, our main builder doing almost everything, but some of the smaller/luxury jobs have been done by others so that we could some things moving. And the wood burner was a godsend when we had no heating for most of October last year while the 40 year old boiler was decommissioned!

Great idea for a thread. We've just had an offer accepted on a grade II listed (outside) farm house. It's liveable in, but needs a lot of modernization. Windows are rotten, no central heating, wonky floorboards, ancient toilet, bizarre old kitchen. Probably the survey will say to rewire. We've agreed not to actually complete/move until the autumn partly because I'm having our 2nd baby in June. So if all goes according to plan, we'll be living in a potentially freezing, quite remote house with a toddler and newborn, in an area where we know nobody. We both work full time and I will be returning to work after maternity but we'll be scraping together ALL the pennies just to buy this place. God knows when we'll be able to do the work needed! Wobble.

@RestorationInsanity Thanks this is a good tip. We need some work doing on chimney stacks unfortunately (which we'll probably tackle alongside a loft conversion) so can't go straight ahead with a wood burner, although we definitely want to get one! I'm looking to get some curtain poles made for our bay windows though so we can put some nice curtains up, and I figure we can just take them down for a bit while work is going on. I really want to paint but longer term we'll need to strip the hideously ugly wallpaper and replaster, so I'm trying to resist the urge...

@MunsteadWood - yes to stripping woodchip wallpaper, but rather than replaster, you could consider getting someone in to line the walls ready for painting. We picked this approach up from friends who did similar to their house, and it's looking great on our cracked plaster. We have an excellent decorator who comes and repairs the cracks in the plaster, tapes them up, and papers over the top. Replastering properly involves going all the way back to brick (a skim coat on old cracked plaster will just crack too). The lining paper gives a lovely soft look which fits the age of the house, and the transformation is incredible (we have a lot of very cracked plaster that is still very sound). Some walls have had to be stripped back to brick where the plaster has blown, but this is both very messy and very costly.

@The2Ateam we are going to second view a 1930’s house. I’m worried about asbestos ceilings. Is there any way you can tell by looking? Did your survey pick it up? Thanks.

We’re trying to get quotes today for chemical anchors on a side wall. They’ve said they have to come out and look at a cost of £150 plus vat 🙄 I just need a ballpark for my budget! So annoying.

I’m also getting roofing quotes and wondering if it’s worthwhile having the chimney stack lined at the same time, we can’t afford a burner yet, but while the scaffolding is up it may save money long term?

@MunsteadWood We had a similar issue, but the roofer working alongside our wood burner installer agreed to fit the bit that comes out the chimney despite the hideous state of the stack because he knew we are having it rebuilt when we do the loft (straight after the extension/kitchen) so probably in about 2 months time! Mind you, it has held up through Storms Ciara and Dennis, I did get a bit worried some nights!

@AGreatUsername you might not need scaffolding for it ( we didn't despite it being very high). If you know who you want to fit your wood burner, it might be worth getting them in to spec it up so you know what you need to do/not do in advance.

IpanemaGallina No because we only had a homebuyers report. We paid a private company circa £200 to come and inspect and test for asbestos. Found in Artex ceilings and some outside.

The2Ateam thank you. We had an asbestos flue removed from our current home (which was a major renovation project) but no ceilings.

IpanemaGallina We can’t make a decision what to do! Remove them completely- which is my preference or skim over. We have to live there whatever we decide. How much work was gettingvthe flue removed? Was it expensive?

Asbestos in artex is a minor risk. Having sought advice on this it is perfectly acceptable to skim over ceilings as long as the surface is sound and prepped well. I wouldn't pull down a ceiling with confirmed asbestos simply because by disturbing it you are creating a problem that is otherwise not there

Great thread. We are considering a house which is amazing but needs almost everything fixed! Ie new roof, fix chimneys, sort damp and woodworm at back of house, new windows, new electrics, new plumbing, new heating, replace kitchen and bathroom
I mean it’s ridiculous how much it needs done - and it’s listed!
I reckon to make a dent in that will cost about £150k. House on market for I think 2 years and condition clearly worsening the longer it is empty. It’s barely been reduced in price which makes me think seller is unrealistic. Any offer we did would be about that much under the crazy asking price but no idea how that would go down!
Anyone else gone more than £100k under asking due to worsening condition of the house???

Our interior doors can't be chemically stripped because they would fall apart...

Had anyone moved a boiler? How much did it cost? We have a cellar that we can only access by going outside at the moment-would like to be able to o it stairs in off our hallway-but the only way to do it would be to move the boiler about a metre.

Another weekend of painting coming up. I want to get dd2's bedroom finished before we start some big works on the stairs and landing and dd1's bedroom in a few weeks...so at least she will have somewhere nice to be in the house, dd1 will have to camp out in our room with us whilst her room is being done. She'll love that 🙄

It's bloody tiring when you are trying to renovate and work FT and have a life at the same time!

@MurrayTheMonk in our current house we were quoted a thousand to move the boiler onto the wall directly behind where it already was! For that money we may as well have stumped up a bit more and had a whole new one!

@kilbranan we haven’t done everything on your list to our house- but since moving here 8 years ago we have:

Re-roofed a pitched slate roof and renewed a flat roof on extension

At the same time the chimneys were repointed and rendered whilst scaffolding up- added another £2k!

Replaced old boiler and moved new boiler to new cellar, some extra radiators etc

Landscaped back garden with lawn and stone patio

Replaced the roof and door on garage

Added french doors and installed a new (much larger) kitchen in a new location

Decorated about half the house, some rewiring done

We’ve probably spent circa £60k so far. Depends on how extensive the works are for the house you’ve, but £150k looks like a healthy budget.

@The2Ateam from memory it was £1500. It was in an old boiler room which was then knocked through to a wood store to make a larger utility. It was a straightforward removal but still required a specialist (builder subcontracted).

@MurrayTheMonk I'd echo @AGreatUsername and suggest that £1k to move a boiler is probably a good ballpark figure. It's generally more cost effective (unless the boiler is very new) to replace it at the same time. The cost of moving is pretty much identical to the cost of installing a new one. We paid £3.5k in 2015 for a new boiler moved 4 inches (!) to the left.

We bought a large very neglected Edwardian semi nearly 5 years ago now and had all the really dirty jobs done before we moved in (complete rewire and almost all new plumbing, some replacement floors and repairs to others, lots of dodgy old built- in cupboards ripped out, lots of replastering - some all new, some skimmed).

We moved in about 6 months into the project with a new kitchen but only half a bathroom and have been gradually finishing things since then, one big job at a time - bathrooms, garden, decorating, tiling the kitchen floor, wood burners, floor board sanding.

For the last couple of years there have only been small things left, which we can live with - and so we haven't got round to getting them done (still not painted the internal woodwork, for example). We've had lots of other stuff on (family illness, bereavement etc) but mostly just ran out of energy. And of course, 4 years in, some of the decorating etc really needs re-doing, which is a bit dispiriting.

So if I had a top tip, I'd probably say - push on, don't leave the small jobs to drift on... Most of the time I don't even notice, but then someone who hasn't visited before comes round and I feel a bit embarrassed as I can hardly say we're renovating still. I hope we might get these things done this year.

@Moreisnnogedag - floor board sanding was one of the few jobs that was less unpleasant than we thought! We paid a local specialist firm to do it and re-finish them and there was surprisingly little mess/dust - almost none, in fact (only did downstairs though - might be worse upstairs). They use specialist sanders with very high quality built in dust extraction - I've heard horror stories about how much mess it makes if you do it yourself, and it actually wasn't all that expensive, maybe £500-700 for a large room, including reoiling and polishing.