How to afford to do work

[rattlinbog]

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 😊

Sadly we have just remortgaged and are at our maximum borrowing capacity! £2.5k per month...

A mixture of savings and taking in a lodger - which is tax free income up to £7500, so the equivalent of a £10k gross pay rise.

Did all the decorating ourselves, but had to go back to brick in the kitchen with a full rewire in there.

Now just saving up again for phase 2, which is more the 'nice to haves' like replacing a carpet that's well past its use by date.

@CupidCantAimStraight we actually have a lodger but that's all going on childcare. Thanks so much everyone, sounds like we may just need to wait a while! Never mind!

@Doyouthinktheyknow so glad you recovered ❤️

I had to work every Saturday for a year - so 6 days a week at work to fund my home renovations. I'm too near retirement to get a loan out.

Added it on to Mortgage....wanted to enjoy it done. This was 3 years ago though so mortgage rate was cheap.

We did it as we could afford it mainly with savings. Cost in total just over 100k. Kitchen and bathroom we did interest free credit, which cost about 30 grand. The rest we did one big thing a year from our own money .

@Rodneyisaplonker was the £100k savings just from income? Impressive!

Good decision. Probably would have cost you a lot more for the work as well as the mortgage if you'd waited until now!

If I was able to save £1000 a month, I'd borrow the largest amount I could (on low interest) and then chuck that £1000 at the monthly payments.

Savings and loan ( low interest). But ours were much less than 50k!

@magnifying problem is I've got another mat leave coming up so will probably need it 😞

When I bought any house or property needing renovations I factored that in. So looking last year I could see how most of the houses would need about £80-100k to get up to scratch (all terraced houses on a grid in the same area), so I knew to adjust my budget before I even made any offers.
Previously I have: borrowed off my parents (to extend first house I ever bought); credit cards (not advisable); small loans/adding to mortgage. But now I'd only do it if I had the money, which would mean saving until I could afford it.

Honestly we've had to massively downgrade what we planned to do and are currently saving. We are in a similar boat to you.
I haven't ruled out adding to the mortgage in a couple of years to speed things up, but honestly with mortgage rates and work costs as they are, I don't think we will ever get to do everything.
Actually may be cheaper to move and then spend time saving up to make cosmetic changes (paint, flooring etc) only at a new place.

Bit by bit with income here. We're 14 years in and still have lots to do though! We also do 99% of it ourselves.

Everyone I know remortgaged & borrowed and then increased the value but times are different now.

We saved up and did one thing at a time. Currently saving for £25k just for windows (gulp)

Savings
Equity from previous house (relocated to a cheaper area) meant lower mortgage to actually buy house, but we borrowed more to cover some renovations.
Home improvement loan (more expensive than mortgage borrowing but costs rose so we needed it)
Credit card (but only used short term to help spread cost out).
Grants eg for energy saving

We also stripped some things out of the project to do in the future once we've saved up again.

With our previous house we saved up for each additional project probably £5-15k each time, then did it. Before children that was 1-2 years of saving but took longer once we had to pay for childcare!!

We've saved for the cheaper bits but did the bathroom on a 0% credit card (£6000) which we'll have paid off by next year.

The next big job will be the kitchen I expect, but i'd like to save up about half if we can, then try and get the rest 0% finance.

We're two years into our reno. (Pretty much everything has needed doing and we've almost completely stripped the house out in the process). We've chosen to do it mostly ourselves, no DIY experience at all really but we're learning! Trades are still so expensive there's no way we could afford for others to do it all. Just last month we were quoted £600 to tile half way up the wall in a 2x1.5m w/c. So I'm currently tiling for the first time in my life 😂

We will also need an extension to make it our long term home, so we're planning to wait until our youngest child becomes eligible for the government-funded childcare hours and will then remortgage to fund the build and new kitchen. Won't be for another few years, but it's the only chance we've got at affording it. Good luck, you can do it!

Equity from prior house sales (myself and partner sold our respective houses to come together on this one), cash savings and when that runs out some sort of borrowing, either home improvement loan or stretching mortgage. We are likely to get a windfall in the next 2 years from selling a business which will hopefully repay loan.