Tips for Refurbishing old house on a SERIOUS budget

[LemonSwan]

We found a lovely house to make our own. It requires the full works (rewire, replumb, new ceilings, new plaster/skims etc, refurbish windows, new flipping everything!. We planned to have 45k for immediate work fund (first year or so) and to add what we could afford later and work room by room.

We were already going to have to make compromises with the above budget (ie. wait for kitchen), but we have now found out we have lost just over 30k on our mortgage offer and now only have 15k for at least the first 6 months - potentially one year.

Where would you start?

Can you plumb/rewire part of a house and add later?

Thanks in advance

Eeek that’s going to be tight.

Did the hood get downvalued? If so I’d be looking for the vendors to take the pain on that tbh.

I would aim to plumb and rewire but do so with the future in mind.

We did a total renovation but knew we could only do what we needed, just to get in the door. So when doing the plumbing for what we had, we asked the plumber to put pipes in the master bedroom, under the floor, so that when we come to put in an en suite, it’s less of a pain in the arse. He also plumbed for radiators in rooms that we weren’t able to use and we added those ourselves as we worked through the house. We saved money by only getting basic plumbing and then doing the rest ourselves.

Similarly, our electrician was amazing and worked to a plan for what we would eventually want but came out and added bits systematically over 10 months.

If the trades are willing to work you, it may free up enough cash to do up one or two rooms….

Really good advice above, I would do that to start with.

I honestly don’t think you should do this. We did a full refurb two years ago and I think in total we spent £115k. We were quite sensible about everything, didn’t make any really outlandish purchases. We did have the heating done straight away (moved in in October), and we had the rewiring done in stages, but both of those jobs are very messy and left the house in an awful state.

It took us a year to refurb the inside, and I don’t think I could have lived like that much longer. We still have windows to refurb and paint which will be another £10k

Is it currently habitable? How much can you do yourselves?

Personally, I would wait until I could do it all properly. We renovated a house 3 years ago but as the budget spiralled we started cutting back on things - we have a bit of roof we didn't replace with the rest. It wasn't in such a bad state so we did a few repairs to save money - every time it rains hard (like yesterday!) I worry. It will need doing in the next couple of years and will cost more than if we had done it at the same time as the rest as we will need scaffolding (which is ridiculously expensive) and it is a smaller job.

As a PP said - if it was downvalued it shouldn't just be you taking the hit. The vendor should too - meet halfway.

I’d either do it will all the cash or not do it at all.

Yeah, it does entirely depend on the current condition of the house. Some people class decoration as renovation. Ours was unliveable and even getting to the ‘just in the door phase’ cost us well over 100k.

However, in our last house, the structure was sound so 15k to rewire/plumb would have been ok as the rest wasn’t to our style but was fine to live with.

We recently had a new roof fitted, walls and ceilings replastered throughout and decorated , and a new bathroom put in. Cost us around 60k in total.
Can you ask your sellers to reduce the price to reflect the lower valuation? It would then give you a bit more cash for repairs?

Is it habitable op? Why do you think it needs a rewire for example? Or a replumb? Are these things working? Are the lights shorting etc?leaks?

I think that sounds really tricky because you won’t be able to redecorate until you have the basic rewiring/plumbing done. You will likely find it’s more expensive in stages too. I think the only thing would be to speak to the tradespeople but I wouldn’t have thought £15K would get you rewiring and replumbing.

If it’s habitable then I’d just move in and live in it as it is until you’ve saved enough to do a decent amount of work. Living in a building site is worse than living in a house that needs updating, I think. Although obviously that depends on how bad it is to begin with.

We bought our house in a habitable but in need of renovation state. We had a starting renovation budget of £50K which quickly disappeared into new windows and repointing one wall. Then Dh took a 50% pay cut, so all renovation work simply stopped for a few years till we’d got back to being in a position to afford to carry on.

Six years after moving in, we were finally able to get on with it. Still couldn’t afford to do the whole project all at once so our builders suggested going top down, a floor at a time (we have three storeys) even though the kitchen was the most desperate.

I’m so glad we did that! The first year we did the top floor, so after that we had a lovely master bedroom suite and office to retreat to. Having the roof sorted gave peace of mind and the new skylights over the stairwell flooded the whole house with light which gave everything a lift.

We then had a welcome few months break from builders and dust until the new financial year, when we did the second floor. Kids and guest accommodation sorted.

Another break, and now the third year of renovation sees us finally, FINALLY, tackling the desperate kitchen and the main living areas. All the dust and mess is confined to the ground floor; we can escape upstairs to the rest of the house to get away.

Doing it this way has meant that accidental pipe leaks, builders foot through floor incident etc have not damaged work already done, and having fully completed areas has made a three year renovation less painful that it would have been doing it piecemeal. Saving up and then spreading the cost over three years made it financially manageable too.

That’s lovely Venus — it kind of sounds like the background narrative of a novel, actually. With other plot-driven elements woven in, i.e. relationship stuff or a mystery to solve as your renovation progresses …

(Sorry OP, not much help to you, but good luck)

A full refurb of even a small terraced house will cost 50k+ from experience

How big is your house? We need to move out of our big Victorian house for the rewire and replumb (both absolutely needed), and our quote for that is just under 70 k euro — much of the variable was down to how ‘finished’ we wanted the rooms to be when we came back. For instance we’re going to do a kitchen extension in a few years, so have told them they need only leave the kitchen ‘habitable’, so there will be a cement channel in the floor, walls left etc.

We’ve already spent not far short of 50k on roof repairs, chimney stabilisation, rendering and doing anything else to the outside that needed scaffolding, as it’s a tall house, and to scaffold it was both technically tricky and expensive.

We stopped paying ourselves during COVID because we didn't want to take any loans/ support for the business and were being cautious. We are the only employees so it wasn't an issue for us as we wanted to protect the company, or at DIP, but its caused an issue with the underwriters. We are 45k under DIP.

Going to a broker now but we were existing customers for the first application and they are usually very good.

So I feel I need to start planning for worst case scenario. Apparently we could borrow the additional funds 6 months after we move in, but again they say that but what if they don't say that then.

The size of the house is a blessing and a curse combined in thats its big enough to live in different sides while parts a building site. The original fund was never going to be big enough to do it all immediately but we though we could get the basics done, perhaps a new bathroom and bedroom at best; and then do a few rooms a year.

Ideally the plan was the 45k topped up by a bit of monthly to maybe 50k over the year; with the retained business earnings as a real emergency fund (say roof) taking it to 75-80k for first year total fund.

Now its 15k - 20k over the year with absolute emergency fund of 45-50k; but I really did not want to touch the business unless we had to.

The main house is structurally sound, roof has question marks, all windows need refurbishing, no central heating. Lights work but we wanted to do it properly as its a 10 year home for us.

We are young, no kids, one cat and someone previously lived there, so it probably is liveable by our standards but not others (we previously showered in a freezing conservatory for a year in our last home!).

Thing is you NEED to do the heating and electrics fully before anything else because they involve taking the house to pieces. That will more than exceed your budget.

Reading all these fabulous replies and putting them into bullet points

• don't touch the windows yet or try to repoint walls (too expensive)
• It is possible to rewire/plumb in stages (but more expensive and more/less disruptive depending on house layout).
• But some say potentially wait until we have funds to start.
• Work from top down.
• Plan for the future so we don't have to redo things (if we can afford it).
• Thisusedtobeaniceneighbourhood thinks we shouldn't do it. Any other house and I would agree! But we love it.
• Kitchens last

I am also going to say that I don’t necessarily agree with going top down. I think that works sometimes when you don’t have structural work to do; but if you are making layout changes downstairs I think these should be done first. Any settlement movement from putting steels in could damage the tiling in the bathrooms…

Yes my thoughts exactly Angelica.

Maybe we should just try to do upstairs. Theres 3 double bedrooms and a bathroom. Just focus on rewiring, and replumbing those with central heating, plumb the bathroom but don't install yet (maybe see if we can fit just the toilet in the budget), and use monthly top up to replaster/skim, and decorate room by room. But leave the window restorations for later.

Thisusedtobeaniceneighbourhood
Ahh cross post!

Luckily we dont have any structural changes to the main house. But we did want to make some changes to the corner of the house adjoining the outhouses and these are under the bathroom.

God dammit!

Was the house being lived in when you bought it, or unoccupied? If unlived in more than 2yrs, you might qualify to only pay 5% on building materials to get it back to a livable state. If not lived in over 10yrs, you pay 0% VAT. The council come around, inspect, write up a report which you then give to suppliers and contractors who charge the reduced VAT rate.

I only found this out on MN, because we bought a large, derelict house last year. Just the 2 of us also. Ours was empty 7yrs, and needed new roof, lead pipes replacing, whole rewiring, new plastering plus so much more!

I would do absolutely nothing until you have the money to rewire and fit CH fully. It’s going to be far more expensive to attempt to do only the upstairs then the downstairs separately. The boiler and fuse box will probably be downstairs anyway. Then decorate your bedroom so you have somewhere decent and clean to escape to. Then do the rest of the house as and when. You’ll be living in a shit hole for ages but if you are determined to buy this house then this is the most sensible way forward.

This is the layout here..
Bedroom sits over dining room.

On the ground floor we wanted to open plan all the utilities/shower room etc into the studio/garage outhouse and potentially put in steels to have a bifold or big window along utility/shower room wall to make a big l-shape everyday living area (kitchen, breakfast, living).

But that is now a pipe dream beyond pipe dreams. That was originally Year 3-4 project when we had done the main house and recovered financially and emotionally from the first build stage.

Heres the whole floor plans if it helps anyone with advice...

Sorry I posted part before just needed to check they werent reverse searchable.

If anyone does know the house from Rightmove sleuthing, please do not post obviously.

I’ve done a similar project on a tight budget and we followed the schedule as I described above. We had enough to also refit the bathroom and kitchen though. Then we had run out of money and the redecoration of the rest of the house was done gradually over the next 6 years. We replaced each room’s windows and skimmed the walls as we went. So even a basic do over of a room cost about £600- £800 for the window, similar for plastering then carpet then paint. So over £2000 per room before you get into anything like wallpaper, furniture, curtains etc.