Where to start?

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We have recently finished our extension which pretty much demolished every room in the house - everything needs decorating & furnishing. We also ran out of money!

We have the kitchen units in, but no tiles.
The kitchen/dinner/family room is open plan & needs flooring & painting. I can’t decide on colours at all (plus flooring will either be wood or Amtico)
The front room needs 2 sofas
The hallway needs re papering plus the bannisters probably should be replaced
DD needs carpet plus new bed
We need carpet/furniture (but not bed) & decoration in our room
En-suite needs sink splash back tiles & cabinet
Utility/downstairs loo needs flooring and cupboards

Given that we need to accumulate money each month to pay for all this (not keen to whack it on CC or loan) where do I start?? We are ok with it taking a little bit of time but I am starting to feel paralysed by indecision and inertia.

Oh, and the garden completely needs doing as well, as does the drive!!

Sonw of those fint require much - carpet and a new bed fir your child is a few hundred, splashback times and cabinet maybe not even £100. Figure out how much each elements costs, how much you have now (or by the end of the month) and prioritise. I'd probably want the kitchen finished ASAP, but my child's room would be up there too.

Make a list of all the jobs that are needed and their cost

Rewrite the list in order of priority

Look at which ones you can do easily/cheaply and focus on those ones first and save for the bigger jobs

Do you have friends who are in trades that could help out?

Tiling isn't rocket science, I retiled my old kitchen from watching YouTube videos. It is worth giving it a go.

Agree about writing a list - I'd put it in a spreadsheet with the task in one column, with urgency, interdependencies (e.g. can't paint until you plaster), estimated cost, estimated time (e.g. you can buy a sofa in 5 mins but it might have a 12 week lead time) and person needed to do it (you/a trade person).

That way you can group activities that can be done by one person, have an approximate budget for everything and the act of writing the list will help you feel better and can be used to delegate if there is anyone else you can ask to book people in, measure up for tiles etc.

i would start with your bedrooms DDs first thats probably around £3-400. then your room this is what we did as ours was doer upper from top to bottom and having a nice bedroom to retreat to was a life saver for my sanity

wall tiles for kitchen are not as expensive as people think we went to a tile warehouse and they came to just over £100 and tiling isnt that hard get a good tile cutter for round plugs, and then go from there

look at cheap sofas from ikea or on facebook market place as temporary measure till you can afford more long term expensive ones

hallway are the walls good enough to just paint for now and bannisters leave till once again you can afford the nice ones you want not what you can get on the cheap now ,

We just finished an extension too.

Agree to making a list and agree dds room first.

Flooring makes a big difference. Once our amtico floor was in the open plan room it felt ‘complete’ and we used the room all the time. And we do like amtico and would recommend it.

We did things this order: bedrooms, kitchen, sofa and furniture, hallway, and are saving money for landscaping at the moment.

Don’t let funds stop you from booking trades or looking for long term furniture though. Most trades are booked up and you can plan how much you can save by when they are available. Furniture can have a long lead time too but not all websites require full amount when ordering.

So a lot of good planning!

Thanks all - I am glad you think DD bedroom a priority, it feels like it could be quickly achieved & finished so a good starting point.

Because the floor will go from the front door to the back doors the whole downstairs feels so unfinished, and not something we feel we can do ourselves. Think the quote was either 3 or 6k - either way, It’s something that won’t be done immediately but will make such a difference. Doing the other things first moves that particular goal further away iyswim?

The list & potential cost is a very good idea & will do that tomorrow.