Temporary fixes to make new house more liveable

[salema]

We’ve had an offer accepted on a 1950s bungalow, owned by an elderly couple who have lived there for 30 years. Carpets are stained and tired, same with curtains, and lighting, bathrooms, kitchen are all ancient.

Long term, our plan is to make major changes (if we get planning permission), extension, rooms upstairs, layout changes. However we can’t afford that for 12-18 months.

Question is, how to make the house nicer to live in in the meantime? I think I’ll need a new lounge and bedroom carpets as a minimum as have 2 toddlers who spend their lives crawling on the floor and current carpet is bad. Not just stained but badly fitted with ridges in the middle of the lounge.

What about bathroom? Bath and loo stained, cracked, pretty awful looking... but don’t want to replace with new for such a short time. Kitchen - wondered about painting it just to freshen it up a bit? Curtains - can they be dyed?

Thanks for any advice. I’ve always bought new builds before so never purchased a carpet or kitchen!

I’d get rid of the carpet and out cheap Lino down and I’d get the walls painted white and then replace the curtains with cheap ones from Ikea. I’d just live with the kitchen and bathroom.

I wouldn’t have my kids crawling around on 30year old carpets even if they had been cleaned.

carpet offcuts
Go to several carpet suppliers (see if there are any small out of town ones or those in industrial centres) & get quotes for cheapest & ask if they would do offer for whole house fitting

When we bought our first house it was terrible and we put very cheap carpet in a couple of rooms, offcuts or exhibition carpet. But having had professional carpet cleaners in rented flats it's amazing the difference it makes. Definitely don't waste money on new fitted carpets though.

Replace the carpets, or look underneath to see if the floorboards are ok. They'll need cleaning up before any renovation/new floors in future anyway so do it early on and may be ok to buy floor paint then cover with cheap rugs.

Cheap lino in bathroom and kitchen.

Replacing a toilet is cheap, do it! £50 for a basic loo then £100 to get it fitted if it's just slotting into the same space. We tried scrubbing, bottle of coke, bleach, a fancy toilet cleaning kit from Amazon, nothing shifted 30 years of limescale and filth.

Buy cheap curtains in Argos/IKEA.

Thanks so much, this is all really helpful. I hadn’t thought of painting floorboards and I have no idea what the floors are like underneath the carpets. Will have a look as soon as we get there.

If a new toilet is £50, it has to be done. I was tempted to post a picture to show how bad it is (there is an online ‘virtual tour’, it’s not featured in the property photographs!) but I don’t want to offend the owners. It’s very yucky looking and has not exactly been looked after... there’s no toilet seat as it has one of those commode type seats over the top of it.

I’ll try to get the kids booked in to stay with grandparents for a few nights so me and my husband can blitz the place once we get the keys.

Where I live, people seem to be constantly re doing their houses and on the free/ give away sites/ Facebook there is a steady stream of off cast bathroom suites etc. If you are particularly hard skinned you could post a "wanted" post - I am sure I could easily get a decent sized bit of discarded last season's carpet and a newish loo.