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Original poster

How to afford to do work

47 replies

rattlinbog · 17/02/2023 21:59

We live in an old house that needs work doing to it. It's perfectly liveable as is but needs some serious TLC and restructuring. This would probably cost £50k or so.

Those of you who have done work, how have you funded it? Has it been a loan, inheritance? This all seems a bit impossible atm!

Thanks 😊

OP posts:
Avacadoandtoast · 17/02/2023 22:00

We have taken our time and done a lot of it ourselves, don’t feel you need to do it all at once. I say this sitting in a half finished house though (3years on!)

Original poster
rattlinbog · 17/02/2023 22:10

Good to know and well done! We are embarrassingly hopeless at anything DIY and need a load bearing wall and extension taken down so would definitely need some help I fear.

OP posts:
alwaysmovingforwards · 17/02/2023 22:12

Additional mortgage.

SilentHedges · 17/02/2023 22:27

Earned and saved wages. No help, no loans.

Original poster
rattlinbog · 17/02/2023 22:44

@SilentHedges impressive! we are saving £1000 a month but would still take us over 4 years before we could start which seems such a long time!

OP posts:
SilentHedges · 17/02/2023 23:04

rattlinbog · 17/02/2023 22:44

@SilentHedges impressive! we are saving £1000 a month but would still take us over 4 years before we could start which seems such a long time!

You'll get there 🙂 Personally I hate debt and prefer to pay with what I have. I'm in an old house, (1903) too. Nothing structural like you, but new bathrooms, kitchen, complete redecoration, possibly a part rewire down the line 🙈

TiredandLate · 17/02/2023 23:24

1st phase - £11k ish of savings and 9 months of hard, hard DIY.

2nd phase - £20k loan, over 3 years, just about to start work.

In one year's time - house valuation will hopefully have increased enough to remortgage and take out a further £25k ish to finish off. I say hopefully but bar an absolute disaster with house prices we should have added around 75k so far.

It's scary but we need to hold our nerve through the scary bit and we have the dream house for the rest of our lives.

TeenLifeMum · 17/02/2023 23:31

We added 10k to mortgage when renewing and have an interest free credit card with £6400 on it currently that’s the last bit of the new kitchen. The rest was savings. £6400 is in our savings account but earning interest so I’m just paying off credit card a bit at a time. I’m planning to pay it all off before interest free element stops. in 5 years weve done:
decorating in every room - professional £4k (painted study l, dining room and one bedroom ourselves)
painted outside of house (fully rendered) £2k
new flooring/carpets throughout £4,500
new en-suite £6k
kitchen and utility room with all new appliances - £25k
new boiler £4500

Paturday · 17/02/2023 23:32

Not something you can really engineer, but sold some shares. Would have got a loan/remortgage if necessary.

Ineedwinenow · 17/02/2023 23:33

Ours is costing around 150k (maybe more to be honest, that was the last projected cost before everything went up ) as it’s a complete renovation, moving and replacing the staircase and all internal walls, rewire, new bathrooms to create, new plumbing and roof basically we are removing and re-doing everything except removing the four outside walls!

We are saving and doing it in phases, we are 4 years in and about a third done! It’s now liveable (but only just) It’s definitely a Labour of love! I refuse to ever leave this house except in a box so we have no rush!

Good luck I know the feeling of wanting it done! I now do the lottery 🤦‍♀️

Margo34 · 18/02/2023 00:01

Same as SilentHedges except 1880s house (with damp issues and work to undo left by the lacking-common-sense-or-skills-DIY-happy-bodge-it previous owners). Definitely not adding to our mortgage and taking our merry time instead.

Margo34 · 18/02/2023 00:05

@Ineedwinenow were you living onsite whilst all the work was/has been going on? And all your furniture and stuff - in storage for all those years? We contemplated doing a complete Reno all at once but couldn't quite compute how to do it in our heads.

Ineedwinenow · 18/02/2023 00:13

Yep! The worse part of first phase was when we had no heating! It took 5 months and was winter! I cried a lot 😆🤦‍♀️! And we basically lived upstairs for those 5 months

We are actually doing a floor at a time so phase 1 was all of the downstairs, phase 2 will be upstairs, phase 3 the attic and phase 4 the roof, garage and driveway ( when renovating you are apparently supposed to start top to bottom but downstairs was unliveable and we needed a kitchen , lounge, new front door etc more than we needed a new roof)

Ineedwinenow · 18/02/2023 00:17

Lots of friends and Family had the downstairs furniture stored in various parts of their houses and garages/sheds for us and we have a huge empty garage and we kept all the upstairs furniture in the house and they will probably have the upstairs furniture ( we’ve not asked yet 😆) when we do the upstairs renovation 👍

Original poster
rattlinbog · 18/02/2023 08:57

Thanks so much, all. In order to do our kitchen we need to knock down the manky extension where our current kitchen is, knock down a wall between our current dining room and study and put an RSJ up, then put in new kitchen and external walls/doors. It's hard to know where to start if not doing it all in one bit.

OP posts:
TiredandLate · 18/02/2023 09:36

Does the whole extension need to go? Is it one of those old style lean to kitchens?

It will be tricky to stage something like that. Sounds like a loan or remortgage would be the only way.

WeCome1 · 18/02/2023 09:38

We got a loan for half and also saved up. It seemed like a reasonable compromise. It was ‘only’ £20k though.

Original poster
rattlinbog · 18/02/2023 09:41

TiredandLate · 18/02/2023 09:36

Does the whole extension need to go? Is it one of those old style lean to kitchens?

It will be tricky to stage something like that. Sounds like a loan or remortgage would be the only way.

Yes. It's a lean to so just a question of knocking it down. Nightmare!

OP posts:
Myotherusernameisshy · 18/02/2023 09:43

We remortgaged to do the work all at once. We wanted to be able to do the work and enjoy living here rather than our dc spend their childhood in a building site.

ohlalalalalalalalala · 18/02/2023 09:52

Can’t you remortgage or have you only just moved in?

We’re planning to from having the LTV at 25% back to 90% (it wasn’t even at 90% when we bought it!!!!) in order to hopefully extend. Scary stuff but the mortgage will still be very small in comparison to a lot of others, half of the amount we’d need to move to a bigger house and probably a third of what the bank says we could afford to borrow so hopefully it’ll be ok!!!

Hall84 · 18/02/2023 09:54

Combination of savings, adding to the mortgage and an additional loan as the prices went up so much. But I wanted to start at the top (we've added 2 bedrooms and a bathroom). New render/new roof so from the outside it will look done. We can do a lot of the rest ourselves (just decorating) as the bathroom/downstairs loo were done with a new boiler last year. Final stage is knocking through for a kitchen diner, which I expect will be when we next remortgage. The house will have been revalued then so hopefully can combine another increase to the mortgage/loan and some savings as our childcare bill reduces soon.

Doyouthinktheyknow · 18/02/2023 09:54

Savings and DH retiring which released a lump sum of his pension.

We did have the money in savings but would have spent most of our savings so good to have the pension sum as back up. We paid of our mortgage too so could save more.

Everything seems to be costing a fortune so be prepared. We waited 20 years for our new bathroom, it was usable but gradually got worse and by the time it was done the bathroom fitter said it was the worst he had ever seen🤣 Waiting did enable us to pay cash and we had a complete refit and switched from bath to walk in shower all of which added to the cost.

We funded an extension many years ago with a payout from a critical illness policy after I had cancer. That was a bit of luck I guess but at the time I didn’t know what my prognosis would be. I’m still here many years later thankfully.

Ours is just cosmetic work really except for a new roof and some rewiring which is apparently needed.

if you can save £1000 a month can you start and do it bit by bit rather than waiting until you have the total saved?

iwantabreakfastpantry · 18/02/2023 10:50

We will start soon and it will be a combination of savings and a home improvement loan as part of our mortgage - this will be at a different interest rate to our mortgage as the latter was fixed for 5y last May (thankfully!). It can run for the same or shorter term as our mortgage - rates are approx 4% for the additional loan but hoping it will come down by the time we have to take it.

iwantabreakfastpantry · 18/02/2023 10:54

Just to add, our current LTV is approx 33% so have the scope for additional borrowing

WalkAwaySugarbear · 18/02/2023 11:06

Since we moved into this house last year, we've used all our savings for the first stage of our refurb, currently £29k. This has covered:

  • full new heating system
  • partial rewire (downstairs)
  • new internal doors (10), skirting and architraves
  • plastering and paint for downstairs and landing
  • glass and oak staircase We still have to do the flooring.

The next stage will be bedrooms and bathrooms that will be later this year once we've built up our funds.
Finally will be kitchen and garden probably next year when we can afford it.

We don't like debt and have an amazing mortgage rate of 0.99% that I do not plan to mess with to speed up the renovation.