Plan my renovation!

[Horriblewoman]

Without wanting to jinx our sale and as something to entertain myself with on a Sunday evening help me plan how we'll tackle our (hopefully) future house.

Some context

• 4 bed with a loft conversion, two bathrooms
• conservatory
• currently liveable but awful so we'll be doing things over time
• everything aesthetic needs to be done (repainting, replacing carpets upstairs, hopefully taking carpet up downstairs and finding beautiful floorboards to sand, both bathrooms replaced)
• they've taken out a wall between the lounge and living room, I want to put it back, husband doesn't
• long term plan is to convert the conservatory floor print into a kitchen extension

What would your priority be? We're currently thinking focus on our bedroom and the lounge so that they're our 'nice' rooms and do the rest over time but would value lots of ideas!

Generally it’s best to work from the top down. So if you want to make areas nicer don’t spend too much especially if you need to donplumb8ngvand wiring
I would do plumbing and wiring and loft first.

@Orangesare I've heard before it's best to work from the top down but why is this?

Dust goes down and if you do work downstairs first, you will have to trek through it to then do upstairs projects.
It's very disheartening to disturb work you have already paid for and it wastes money and time.

If it's any help we did in order, garden wall to secure perimeter, bath rooms, bedrooms, kitchen, rear windows, extension, patio, redecorating throughout. Front drive is next year.

If I could start over I would recommend living in the house for a year to get to know the light and the things you like and don't like, then get an architect to do plans for all the changes you want. And then work out how you can break it up into chunks that are affordable and practical for you. That way, when you carry out each phase of work you will be setting things up for the next phase and will minimise wasted money etc.

That's interesting and slightly worrying as the bathroom in the loft is the lowest of the low in terms of priorities, as is decorating the loft bedroom! We're definitely going to live in it for a while and see how it feels before making any rash decisions.

I would do anything which needs doing to protect the fabric of the building first, i.e. fixing the roof, structural repairs, replacing windows if they are leaking, check guttering is all working properly. Next stage is any messy reconfiguration of spaces like moving walls/ taking down ceilings then whole house plumbing and electrics if needed. Once all the destructive messy stuff is done you can get a plasterer in and start putting stuff back together. At this point the really messy stuff is finished and you can reasonably safely decorate a room and as long as you don't need to go through it to get to a room which is still being done then you should be able to keep it relatively clean and undamaged.

Yes outside in, followed by top down, floors and hallways last. I would personally decide and do the wall in the lounge and the kitchen extension first, then both bathrooms, then decorating, then floors. If you can stomach getting the kitchen and bathrooms done at the same time...I'd do that