Have a house you can't afford to renovate?

[Fishtankerous]

Anyone else?

My house needs so much doing to it that I am feeling completely overwhelmed.

We bought it as a fixer upper a few years ago, but you know how it goes - savings got decimated by issues that were worse than originally thought. Yeah yeah, naive first time buyers we were.

Currently the pressing issue is a rotten leaking old conservatory that likely won't survive another winter, annoyingly a toilet is attached to it which is actually part of the house so just demolishing it isn't straightforward and we've already got a quote for 9k to get rid of it, that's not even replacing it.

We don't even have 9k so fuck knows what we'll do. We could borrow against mortgage or get a loan but we're scraping by as it is, especially with the recent rise in energy costs etc and the general cost of living going up but our wages remaining stagnant.

(Ironically the state of the conservatory isn't helping us to save on energy bills because its causing the rest of the house to lose a LOT of heat - because it doesn't have external entry doors as the damn thing predates building regs!)

That's not to mention all the other issues in the house that we're ignoring because we're having to work on order of importance (i.e. If somethings gonna collapse soon that's gonna have to come first!)

Sorry to have a moan, I know things could be a lot worse especially with what's going on in the world. It's important to have some perspective I realise.

But after another quote for works for 10-15k today I'm just more and more annoyed, and needing some stories from others in a similar position!

What needs doing in your home that you can't do yet?

Ours is a mess too! 1930s semi.

The previous owner literally wallpapered over every single problem. Damp, wallpaper over it. Cracks, wallpaper over it. Floor not level, stick newspaper under it. In some places there was about 10 layers of paper and he put Lino over Lino over more Lino so the floors were about 3 inches higher than they should be

We have used every penny of savings and got a 10k loan to do a basic kitchen, some plastering and one bathroom. Still have 2 awful navy bathrooms, a falling down conservatory, ‘patio’ that’s basically slabs thrown on mud and lots of artex to sort.

Wish we had bought the new build!

Oh and our heating system is from 1970!!! Can’t afford to replace it but luckily it still works…

The 1930's semi seems to be a recurrent culprit on here. I was so excited to buy one too, because of the large (draughty) windows, sigh.

Ah yes the windows @GlumyGloomer
We are replacing ours one at a time because they are so expensive!
We also have the original door which although beautiful is the most cold draughty thing known to man. The hallway is ice cold!

I’ve found my people. Victorian terrace here… so far but not exhaustive list over the last few years

New Roof
Complete Rewire
New Windows
All walls skimmed
New Garage Roof
Kitchen revamp
New Bathroom
Underfloor heating (bathroom/Kitchen)
Outside painted
Wood burner fitted

From the list you would think we have finished but unfortunately are still a way off,
the kitchen now needs doing properly and could do with an extension over the side return but economy of scale means it’s unlikely to be worth it (it’s only possible to extend a small amount think 3x3 metres) I have distinctly fallen out of love with my house. Oh and the roof/chimney still leaks after £££ spent on it and we have woodworm in the loft. Anyone else just given in and moved?

We'll we've just moved in so still uncovering the many issues, it looks fine on the surface. We had a fund of £20k for new furniture and redecorating when we moved in. The new boiler and all new radiators have wiped out half of the budget. We have to completely renovate every inch of the property which will take years.

@3ormoredogs our ground floor is a nightmare to heat. We have 2 rads and when we moved in the back doors had a visible gap at the top. In autumn we got the doors done but it's still chilly compared to the top of the house. Would love to get a radiator in the kitchen/dinner, but that's a way down the list.

@GlumyGloomer we literally just got radiators in our kitchen and utility last september!! It cost £600 but it was so worth it!

I too am in this club. Although not as extreme a situation as some people from the sounds of it.

@Elsiebear90 I would love to hear more about chasing your sockets in, as we have sticking-out sockets and light switches.

@3ormoredogs that's cheaper than I expected, I might look into it next autumn. There did use to be a radiator in the kitchen (pipes and valves are still there) but it's in a terrible location. I want yo completely rearrange the kitchen, but that probably won't be for another ten years at this rate...

To save money we are going to lay all of the ground floor flooring ourselves. We want cork flooring, ideally Amizade from the colour flooring company , although this is very very pricey so not sure if we Weill need to go with a cheaper brand.
Has anyone laid cork themselves ? We will be doing it as a floating floor mainly on top of floorboards. There is some concrete in the kitchen so we know we will need a sheet of plastic under that.
Have a conservatory with concrete floor but thinking due to heat instability we might just stick down sheet vinyl in there.
Last time we installed some cork it was around the current kitchen and we made a total pigs ear of it due to not moving or adjusting skirtings or architraves and leaving big expansion gaps around the room.
I’d prefer to lay the corn ourselves when the current kitchen has been removed alternatively we will get the kitchen fitter to fit around the new kitchen.
Tips, YouTube recommendations etc very welcome!!

Lay the cork, not corn ! Ha

We have a wreck too. We did budget for not only what we and the surveyor could see, but having had family experience of this sort of thing and work experience of budgeting, we pretty much estimated it would cost double. And so far, that's pretty much what it is doing, thanks to covid, brexit, and most work that had been done over the years on the place in the past having being done on the cheap and needing 'bottoming out' to get things done properly. Thanks to the same issues, everything is taking about twice as long as well.

e.g.- had to replace some joists because the ends were rotten. Several had already been replaced or 'sistered' because of rot in the last 100 years, but, stupidly, the root cause of the rot was not addressed, so the new beams and 'sisters' had just rotted again. So we replaced those beams and dealt with the problem properly. A straight replacement would have taken a day or two. Solving the problem they should have solved before took a week- and would have cost a lot had we got a tradesperson to do it- it involved brickwork etc.. Luckily, I could do it. But we had to pick our way over joists for two weeks overall, rather than a couple of days.
It is depressing at times, and I especially feel for you in that you haven't got the cash planned for it. I have family in the same position- a lovely old house but not the funds to do the needful to finish it. All of us in this boat have to hang on in there and do what we can when we can- it's grim, but we will get there in the end.

@Howdidthathappen1

I found my people in renovation nightmares. We moved a year ago into a lovely bungalow with existing loft conversion and as we downsized we had the cash to do it up....... Then the 40sqm mancave in the garden collapsed leaving wiring exposed to the rain. On taking on corner of wall paper off it appears the house is drylined with chip board then papered over - underneath which is bare brick. It rains inside the house through every flat bit of roof. And the plans we had to make the bathroom suitable for anyone over 4ft 5 as it's in the eaves are in ruins due to some technical something that I zoned out whilst it was explained. There's so much more that I couldn't begin to list The house is in a far worse state then when we bought - far from saleable. Money we moved in with has pretty much disappeared in endless small fixes whilst making no progress on the big ones - let alone making it vaguely presentable. #sigh.

We found chipboard when we started to take our kitchen cupboards down for a rewire (which we were hoping to have all done before we moved in). We had to delay that part of the rewire for 2 years, whilst we stripped the lot out, coped with covid, repaired the brickwork which was a mess when uncovered, etc. And have it all battened out, plasterboard, the plastered. And plastering is one thing I refuse to do, that's an expert's job. All of that was unplanned for. We knew the dining room plasterboarding had to come off as both us and our surveyor twigged they had plasterboarded the outer walls with dot and dab directly onto brick and not even pladtered pver it, just wallpapered, but we hadn't realised or budgeted for the kitchen being even worse. With older houses, you're always uncovering stuff that makes you want to [have a word with] the cheeseparing incompetents who did previous work.

[quote BasiliskStare]@TiddleTaddleTat - I agree - in that there is not the margin in a doer upper to pay for what needs doing - many years ago that was not the case. Our first house was right on the margin of this - even 27 years ago it was touch and go whether we could renovate for the cost af a fully refurbished house.

That said there are some houses which on the face of it are fine but are not to people's taste and you can find nasty surprises.

I have done doer uppers because I don't want to pay for someone else's taste & am happy to live with old things if they work for a while whilst we get things done.

That said I have never bought a house intending to make money - just some where nice to live & I am ( somewhat) patient[/quote]
I think this is very much the case at the moment- if you can't do a lot of the work yourself, a doer-upper won't sell for what you paid plus the money you had to spend on it- materials cost a bomb at present, and it's also very difficult to get people in to do anything and you have to wait ages for anyone good. So you either have to be willing and able to do a lot of the work yourself, or accept that you'll pay more than for a 'made' house, but at have it to your own taste. That's only worth it if your tastes, like ours, aren't the current fashion, and you plan to stay there. For us, buying a 'perfect' house would be a waste of money because I'd still have to budget for at least a complete redecoration after having paid top dollar for the 'made' house.

I would absolutely have loved a 'finished' house, but we just couldn't quite stretch to one. This house will likely cost us more ìn the long run, but being able to spread the cost by living with the crappy finish for a while makes it doable. We're not planning to move again.

If you can't do most of the work yourself I wouldn't buy a fixer upper, you'll be at the mercy of tradesmen who will charge the earth for small jobs they don't want yo do.
If you're smart and competent with hand tools, YouTube is great to see how to approach jobs.
Screwfix, Toolstation, and the Internet can save you £££'s over high street prices. Alot of clever do evening courses in the basic skills for the building trade.
Generally you'll always need more £ than you think as there is often another job lurking behind the one you can see.
Plan for to get the structure safe and watertight and then move on from there.

We've bought a whole house renovation project.
We've just assigned 5-10 yrs to do it.
So far we've insulated and plastered the loft, full CH and part renovated the bathroom and new windows.
We're just chilling now for a bit.

We have been renovating our house since the first lockdown. Built an extension, incorporated a standalone garage, knocked down some walls and put others up.... three times the fucking shower in the en-suite has leaked through the ceiling below, and that's three different tradesmen! There's so much we need to correct and sort out and I'm so pissed off with it all

@saleorbouy

If you can't do most of the work yourself I wouldn't buy a fixer upper, you'll be at the mercy of tradesmen who will charge the earth for small jobs they don't want yo do. If you're smart and competent with hand tools, YouTube is great to see how to approach jobs. Screwfix, Toolstation, and the Internet can save you £££'s over high street prices. Alot of clever do evening courses in the basic skills for the building trade. Generally you'll always need more £ than you think as there is often another job lurking behind the one you can see. Plan for to get the structure safe and watertight and then move on from there.

Also, look at local independent builders' merchants and suppliers generally. Round here in the North West of England they are often both cheaper and better than the chain places, some deliver for free- our favourite one will deliver anything at all for free locally, which is great if you have no car. I've seen them at the counter arranging with a little old lady to deliver some really quite small and cheap things for her, after very patiently helping her choose what she needed. And they often give good advice, as they know the sorts of problems houses have round here, and understand the local building materials.

I'll join too - bought a 70's flat which has had little done to it over the years. Think dark brown doors & woodwork, old electric boiler & amateur wiring, filthy carpets, kitchen literally falling apart.

Thankfully my mum paid for the new boiler as the old one broke shortly after moving in.

But have needed a new fuse box & electrical work costing 1K for safety reasons, and now it's getting to the point where I won't be able to take DC on holiday if I keep spending on it.

So I've made do with what I can - painting concrete walls after stripping off crappy wall paper, buying a 2nd hand carpet cleaner for the grotty carpets etc

My plan is now to be selling stuff on eBay to raise funds for curtains.

Hi everyone, I managed to finally read all the comments with a new born is difficult to find the time to get 5 mins😁
I done as much work as I possibly could with a lot of help from YouTube. If you know what the issues are you can gain a lot of information from YouTube videos and also by biting the bullet and going to your local builders merchant and asking them for advice…it isn’t as scary as I thought😁
I kept my old kitchen but replaced the doors and handles. Once I was able to remove the old doors all I had to do was remove the old hinges and fit to the new doors as I had them drilled out. There are a few business doing this and ask I had to do was follow their guide in measuring my existing doors and ordering online. They were delivered to my door so I hadn’t the worry of sorting a man with a van. I used a company called onlinekitchendoors.com. I picked a style & colour and had a sample door sent out to check it was what I wanted as I have a dark kitchen with not great light coming in so went for a nice bright door that was easy to clean (flat surface).
I hope this helps. 🥰

I'm glad this thread is still going! I've just caught up on all the replies. I've said it before but it's really reassuring to know that people are in the same boat.

Booked in to get the conservatory ripped down in May. Have had to get a loan out for that. Not ideal, especially with the rising cost of living, but what can you do? Looks like I'll have to do extra shifts at work to pay for it.

Weather has been so nice I decided to sit in the garden yesterday. Wish I hadn't bothered, I looked up and saw this..... You couldn't make it up could you!

@Fishtankerous that needs seeing too!it’s what stops rain getting in.

We didn’t intend on buying a doer upper but thanks to the surveyor and vendor we have,we can’t afford to do everything it will take years!
The house is so cold even though it’s warm outside!