Anyone living with a house and waiting to do it up? Want to share the frustrations?

[GolightlyMrsGolightly]

Most of the upstairs just needs a good redecorate but as we are putting in new stairs to the attic and New bathrooms and changing doors we can’t start any redecorating Till then. So stuck with orange dado borders, weird foamy wallpaper and crap doors that don’t shut.

The hot water crlinder isn’t big enough to allow a bath.

The conservatory downstairs is so loud when it rains you can hear it upstairs, our fridge isn’t in the kitchen,.".

Highly recommend getting one room 'done' so you have an escape from the chaos.

I insisted on the living room when we moved in.. OH wanted to do the upstairs bathroom, until i pointed out we wouldn't sit as a family in the bathroom of an evening!

We moved in a few months ago. it is an old house where most of the work was done carefully and in keeping with the age of the house so no avocado green as upthread, hahaha. We do have "cigar" covered wallls in the sitting room, and a tiny cupborad upstairs that houses a toilet. I cannot even fit my legs in! However, the previous owners went nuts in the kitchen. The ceiling was half popcorn and half GOLD with huge plastic GOLD crown moulding! The cupboards are solid enough but were custom built in 1950s and have decades of grime. They also had different requirements and kitchen kit back then so they are small and akward. However, I do NOT want to spend tens of thousands for a new kitchen so I set my self a target of a "new" kitchen, working with the existing structure on a minimum of money.
So far I have turned most of the lower cabinets into huge drawers, and simply turned the existing doors on their sides as the fronts. I took out quite a few uppers, and turned a narrow akward upper and lower cabinet into one pantry by using an old Ikea wardrobe. I put a little money into a new sink and contertops, and will paint it green and white with brass finishes. Oh - I took out the ceiling and put in some beadboard.
So far so good and the cost is very contained. A good handyman helps. Painter comes today so hoping we finish by next week. I am VERY happy not to have spent a lot on it.

I am not in the UK obviously!

early this year ... not last.

Covid just makes it feel like 12 months more than it has been.
We are only in it since end of July.

I had flood damage which was botched by the insurance company. Finally had a builder replace the boards before we fell through the floor but the floor is still wonky!
Have a terrible bathroom - cracked bath panel and floor tiles. Wanted to replace the bath and floor this month but am on lockdown (Wales) so no shops open.
I need a big skip to dump all the old guttering I had replaced and my kitchen is really scruffy. Can't afford a new one.
And Christmas is coming so all my money will be going on presents for the kids.

May I join?

We have just moved into a 1930s semi-detached 2 bedroom bungalow. We hope to convert the loft and have two bedrooms and a bathroom up there. We have been in the house to weeks.

We plan to do the work in 2 to-3 years' time (could be longer depending on the market) when we can fund the work through savings and remortgaging. For this move we borrowed almost to the maximum for affordability so we could not have borrowed anymore even if we had a good LTV of 60%.

On moving in, the house is basically not offensive in the deco, if anything it is boring magnolia so all rooms are ok for now, apart from the kitchen.

When I tried to open one of the kitchen drawers, the whole front came off. This was within 15 minutes of being in the house. The first night we had wanted to replace the kitchen with a new one. The hob was right next to the sink. Is this even allowed?. I ended up with soapy water splashing into our food and food splashing on to clean dishes on the drainer. They had left us the cooker but on using the grill, the toast caught fire so we decided to get rid of the cooker altogether. It turned out the grill element had been bent in the past. The taps were separate ones. The hot water was very hot and the stainless steal sink was stained and dented in many places. the fridge they left us froze half of the food in it with in 24 hours. We then turned it down to see if the temperature was set too low but then it died. We decided that that corner of the kitchen needed some work.

The rest of the kitchen we are painting it to give it an update. I have got a 2nd hand induction hob and undercounter oven and the cabinet to house these in from Wickes, cheap. we found a fridge freezer in currys clearance, a dinks and scratches but perfect and now DD can't open the fridge every time she feels like it. The sink has been moved to the window. The drawer front cupboard that I broke has been removed and replaced with our dishwasher that we brought with us from the old house. New laminate worktop put in on that side of the house so now we have a bit more worktop space and at least 800mm worktop space between cooker and hob.

It has cost us a few hundreds but

Yep ... it's been 18 months and we're probably half done. Lots is DIY and there is a large garden and outbuilding. We started with new boiler and rewiring and have them done every room/part of garden one by one. I prefer it that way as hate living in mess and having tradespeople one the house. Going for an all or nothing approach so some rooms are still bare plaster while we wait to do them. Also have areas with just bare floorboards and rugs. Saving up as we go although did need to use credit card for recent bathroom refurb, but planning to pay that off before spending any more.

My people! Just bought a beautiful big garden flat. It was renovated early 2000s and then basically abandoned for years. We did all the urgent stuff (wiring, repainting, installing air conditioning as we live somewhere hot). But the bathrooms are HIDEOUS and every effort has been made to erase every bit of character the place had.

I'm dying to rip out the bathrooms and re-do them, and do something about the crappy oven in the kitchen, and the solarium needs blinds but we're out of cash for now :(

Oh and don't get me started on the state of the garden...

Also joining in on this one.

Bought a 200 year old house last year. Structurally sound as a pound but the inside hasn't been decorated since 1981.

I have a brown kitchen (various shades of brown, but a brown floor, counter top, units, tiles, walls and, believe it or not, ceiling. One bare lightbulb to light the entire room. Needs a small extension and a garage conversion to make it a decent sized family kitchen/diner, but that's going to cost £60k at least...

Our upstairs bathroom is avocado green with peach carpet.

Our main living room has a heavily stained mint green carpet and a 5ft x 5ft double sided chimney breast in the middle of the room, meaning we can only actually utilise one side of the room at any one time, and each side is only big enough to fit a small sofa and a tv.

Brown ceramic tiles throughout the rest of downstairs. No shower in either bathroom.

2 days after we completed and moved in I found out I was pregnant. I had to wash my hair with a plastic jug over the bath whilst simultaneously throwing up with morning sickness.

We are getting there slowly, we have now installed a downstairs shower room, carpeted the yellow (yes, yellow) wooden stairs (that I fell down when pregnant), renovated the snug, new boiler, and obviously one of the bedrooms to use as a nursery.

But we can only afford to do one room at a time, so it's probably going to take us 20 years to get the house looking in a reasonable shape.

It's in a nice area though, so that's ok. Right? 😩