Big house renovation experiences

[sdra]

Hello
Thinking of buying a house which needs a lot of work. It's structurally sound and has electrics, water etc but needs a lot of tlc as well as some internal configuration including knocking some walls down, converting garage and moving staircase. No extension build needed. Also needs new kitchen, bathrooms and windows. It's got planning and in dream location. Could be completely beautiful and I have visions of adding solar panels and water filtration system and making it well insulated etc etc so it's greener too.
Never done anything like this before. Not even put in a new bathroom. Is this crazy?! I think we could just about not live there while it's done depending on how long it would take (6 months??) Does this seem realistic? Or should we try and get a caravan and live there while done. Or would you advise to steer well clear?!

We've been doing ours (mostly my partner rather than me) over the 10 years we have lived here.

No real advice other than everything will take longer than you think even if (especially if?) you're paying someone else to do it all. Agree with PPs about the dust going everywhere. We're nearly finished and I don't think I want to do one again unless/until we are both retired and have time to do it rather than fitting it in during evenings and weekends. But I really don't have any qualms about living in it whilst doing the work - we couldn't have afforded to rent something else.

We are in the middle of a total renovation of a bungalow where we are are going up a floor, we got a caravan on site which we stayed in for about a month while the old roof came of last summer and then had to use it for showers whilst we had no hot water, other than that we have lived on the ground floor although it looks like a building site, no carpets, no ceilings, no proper lighting , most walls just block work where windows have been changed/replaced. The upstairs is being plastered now and once bathrooms fitted we will put a temporary kitchen upstairs and then live up there whilst the ground floor is reconfigured and new kitchen put it. My husband is a builder and doing most of the work himself so it’s taking a long time but will be worth it in the end. I would not have done it if we had children and being in a small caravan for more than a few weeks was hard work with just two of us.

Thanks for all your messages. Our offer has now been accepted!! So bar survey being ok and completing we're going for it. Gah!! Currently looking at our budget. Will need to cut back on spending a lot but think we can manage for a little while in rented while the big work is done. And maybe we'll have to move in at some point. I'm presuming it will all take at least 6 months, maybe more depending on what is found. I'm now going down rabbit warrens online about house renovations and what to do when. Slightly concerned as it takes me about a year to decide on a sofa colour so might need to get better at decision making now.

And yes we have two young kids and pets so if we can get away with not living there for a few months at least I think that's key.

@RidingMyBike what did you have done to yours?

@BarrelOfOtters yours sounds about the same level of spend and work as we're expecting. How long did yours take?

@PragmaticWench (great name) i think i'll budget for whole place needed new plumbing and electrics as we're moving stuff around so presume electric and water points may also need to move.

@TeaAndStrumpets ah not sure what i mean yet! Basically I'd love the place to be more environmentally friendly so will look into what can be done and if we can (afford to) do it

Only consider it if your relationship is rock solid

Do not live in a caravan with two kids and pets. Rental!

We did it. Took about 12 months total. That was living in it still with 7month old ( start age)
Included full rewire, walls down, replaster, bathrooms, kitchen, new heating etc.

Luckily our house is long rather than tall, so we could do most things in piecemeal ie all one side was rewired and re plastered, bathroom in and decorated before we moved over to there with temp kitchen and did the other larger half. Things like heating are based in our cellar so didn’t impact us that we couldn’t live there.
Involved a lot of naps daytime outside in winter due to noise.
Ours also took longer as we did a lot of the decor, flooring etc ourselves on weekends. The bulk of the renovations was done in 3 months

Oh windows also. Including 5m sliders etc

I've done this and lived in it for 10 months but I'm super chilled and organised. Life carried on. We had no rear wall to the entire property and it was snowing outside.. I learnt to cook very well on a baby belling. I had my washing machine and tumble dryer plumbed in & moved around as needed so I could easily keep on top of clean clothes. Also having an excellent building team helps.

Only if you don't have to live in it till it's finished.

Only if you already have the money ready plus more for inevitable over spend.

Only if you are prepared for time scale to go way over.

Only if your relationship is really robust and can take loads of stress.

We did:
Relocated one bathroom and a separate loo. Installed new family bathroom and downstairs loo.
Moved a wall (this turned out to need a steel beam in)
Replaced a staircase
Removed non-load bearing wall to make kitchen bigger. New kitchen.
House already extended but turned out no damp proof course under the two ground floor extensions so that had to go in. Turned what had been two ground floor bedroom extensions into WFH space and a utility room.
Roof repairs
Chimney needed quite extensive repairs which hadn't shown up on the survey.
Full rewire
Ancient radiators, pipes and boiler taken out and replaced with under-floor heating and an air source heat pump.
Solar panels.
Replastering, decorating, new skirting boards, doors, architraves.
Replaced most of the double glazing as it was old and blown.

I'd start talking to builders now and also see if you can have a viewing with a builder in tow (vendor may not allow this) to get the ball rolling. We had a builder lined up to quote as soon as we completed but still had a 3 month delay before work could start as builders had long waiting lists then. Not sure if the situation is still the same now but definitely ask around!

I've not read the full thread yet but wanted to give you our experience.

We bought a beautiful house. Old farmhouse that was rented by the estate for workers. Technically we could have moved in but it needed work so we decided to stay put while we did it. With both of us being from the trades and good at DIY we had no concerns... 12months max!!

It took 4 years (and 2 days) 3 years in a caravan as we sold the other house to release funds. Working on it every weekend and holiday 12 hour days, we had Christmas day and Boxing day off. Everything we did took twice as long as it unearthed something else that needed doing. The days were long, hard, cold and often damp. The caravan was miserable, freezing in the winter, damp, noisy in the wind. The summers were equally bad... too hot to cook or sit in the caravan so much of the summer was spent cobbling food together in the garden on a pop up table.

It cost us double what we budgeted for and drove us to breaking point emotionally. We are in now but it still isn't done... there is so much more to do (the garden is a mess!!) And while we love it, we would never do it again, even if someone paid us. It was hard enough with no children, a very amenable Jack Russell who's super laid back and one of us WFH full time.

We've done it/still doing it.

Run down Edwardian house, neglected and botched for 50+.

One time HMO and badly converted into 2 flats.

When we moved in amongst other delights that the spiv seller had tried to conceal was a dangerous gas leak and wiring that could have fried us at 20 paces.

We've had the roof fixed, the gas leak fixed, re-wired, extensive woodworm treated.

Luckily my partner is very handy and has done lots of the work himself, and I am handy with design and putting in a shift with fireplace stripping/wallpaper stripping/decorating etc.

We've been in 4 years this summer, and we've done about 2/3 of the work needed. It's relentless but we love the house and want to make it great again.

Big ticket items like a new kitchen/extension will have to be saved up for.

We are lucky in that one of our mates is a carpenter/window fitter who replaced all our sashes/ built alcove units at cost price and my brother in law is also a builder and helped OH fit our new bathroom.

We've lived in it throughout with 2 young kids, it's messy, dirty and chaotic but unless you have lots of money it's just the way it is, and luckily we're quite hardy!

@RidingMyBike approx cost ?

@C4tastrophe about £180k.

Which horrified us initially as thought it would have been cheaper to buy a different house and extend rather than buy this house and renovate it. But having seen the costs on the extension threads I'm on here I think extending would have been even more expensive.

Also, it's a fantastic location and nothing else comparable has come on the market in over a year. So it feels like we have done the right thing (there have been wobbly moments!).

we had a kitchen side return extention done and downstairs loo (London) which included the bedroom above having floor raised to add additional height. It took 6 months, we lived in it upstairs - it was horrible and with all additional costs of party wall contracts/ buiding controller bills, structural engineers costs we came in about £50k over budget - thought £125k came in at £175 k all in - (£30k on kitchen and appliances) it was worth it but still paying off the interest free credit card and would not do big building works again without moving out. This was a couple of years ago now before prices went too crazy ! Good luck

I’ve always done renovations the one thing I’d say is live in it for a while ( or while renovating). You will get a better idea of what will work and what won’t and where to make changes as you go along . I’m 4 years into what will probably be about 10 and we have changed lots of things for the better as we go along. If it have been blitzed in 6 months then there would have been regrets. Good luck it’s better than coming home from work and sitting in front of the tv every night🙂

Take your estimates, make sure they are realistic, and double it. If you can afford that, then you should be okay. I'm not being funny, that's what we do, and we haven't caught a cold so far, even with this house when we did our estimates pre-covid, and covid struck within months of when we moved in. Doubling allows a reasonable margin for nasties that you turn up as you go (they always do) and increases in costs dues to whatevers.
And above all, get straight in your head the difference between what you need and what you want. Need, you have to get it done to make it safe/livable. Want, you can do without, wait for, and save up for, if money is tight. Too many would-be renovators on here 'need' everything that merely tickles their fancy. And it helps a lot if you can do some of it yourself. Also-watch out for mission creep- getting talked into expanding a project- especially while it's running and someone may be trying to 'bounce' you. Only do it if you are sure it is a sensible change, and you can afford it, and be sure you fully understand all the costs of any changes.

Seconded. If we'd done our kitchen when we moved in, as we planned, we would not have got such a good layout. Other jobs, likewise.

We've got a mostly 1920s house. We've had it about the same length of time as you- wasn't it a great time to start- just before covid made it so you couldn't allow workmen in the house and the price of timber doubled?
I thought- 3 years for the big stuff like roof and so on, 2 more to finsh the cosmetics like floors and bathroom and complete the decorating. We've nearly finished the big stuff after 4 years. I suppose we might have been on track had it not been for covid, but the flipside of that was that we had more time to do some of the things we always intended to do ourselves.
How you're doing it with kids in the house I don't know, you must be superhuman!