Yes I do, and I also feel the house is tainted now so even work needed is done, I feel like I won’t be able to get past the shit show it was.
We bought it 5 years ago, and I was aware that it needed a lot of work. We did the basics and had it replastered, rewired and new floor when we moved in. What’s left is a new kitchen, bathroom, patio, and the front needs sorting out.
The bigger jobs were expected but it is the more smaller or straightforward jobs that have really ruined it for me. The previous owners bodged things I didn’t know you could bodge so every time we get try to tick a smaller, cheaper job off the list, it just creates more work and ends up looking worse than before. For example a section of the patio is a mixture of old kitchen tiles and some sort of vinyl. Only uncovered as part of a smaller ‘quick’ job.
At the front of the house, there were some old reflective panels screwed in to the brick. I can’t remember why we took them down, I think it might have been to do with capping a gas pipe near it, but it revealed whole missing bricks and there are some sort of clear plastic bags filled with what looks like cloth stuffed into the gaps.
There are lots of odd things like this, which individually don’t seem like much but when there are so many odd things it is very wearing.
What has really had the worst impact though is the back garden.
The garden is a decent size, and it looked nice on at face value but I have pulled out 3-4 skips worth of bricks, concrete slabs, and rubble (large pieces) from the soil. Also asbestos and iron. Most of it was buried at surface level, with just a layer or two of soil over it, enough to not be visible but not deep enough to be ignored. It was all along the borders, all around the back.
Over time, weeds and ivy roots tangled up around it all in in the ground. I have spent the last two summers pulling it all out. Many of the existing shrubs etc were damaged in the process, and there are still little bits of broken rock embedded in the grass which makes mowing a deathtrap, because they fling around.
It actually hurt to straighten my feet for months last year because of the impact of trying to push in a shovel and hitting concrete every time.
We’ve got just about one last skip full to get rid of, now that the weather is picking up but because I was spending much of my free time in the nicer months digging out the rubble, the rest of the garden has become badly neglected and I really can’t face starting all over again, trying to make it nice. Can’t afford to outsource it though as we have the other big jobs to get done.
We are finally in a position to get some of the bigger jobs done, and I have spent years looking at ideas, saving images of this and that, but now that we can do it I think a) what’s the point and b) what on earth are we going to find when we rip out the existing kitchen or bathroom.
The only, and I mean only good thing about it is the surroundings. Behind us there are council bungalows, so even though our street is mainly terraces, we are not overlooked from the back, and we know it will always be quiet from that side.
Our neighbours are all nice and I feel safe for the most part, not just from crime but from all of the nightmare neighbour stories you hear, which was one of my biggest worries as a FTB.
Also, I like older houses with good sized, established gardens but I honestly don’t know how I could be sure that the garden situation wouldn’t happen again at the next house. I can barely bring myself to pull out a weed now, let alone any more concrete😂
I would post pictures of the before and after, and all of the shit we have pulled out but I’m honestly ashamed. One of the neighbours told me it used to be called the junkyard, when the previous owners were here because the garden was always full of shit so at least I don’t feel judged, as they know it’s not our doing!
(So sorry for the novel, but I needed this)