My Son is upstairs crying, I am crying downstairs

[DarkDaysHopefullyOver]

I know there have been several threads on buyers remorse and hating your house, so apologies for taking up another thread, I just really need my hand held.

I am on my own with 2 sons, one has additional need. After a huge upheaval and huge stress, including my brother telling me I was commiting fraud, my Grandmother has allowed me to get on the property ladder, along with a shared equity scheme. The stress getting into the house has been unbearable, i started losing my hair and my face is constantly red. We are low income due to it being only me obviously and I work PT around my sons care. I am very grateful and don't want to sound anything other, so I cannot mention this to anyone...but I am racked with guilt, remorse and stress. All the houses within my budget needed work, quite a lot of work, every room type work. The best I could get is a house on a busy road 10 mins from our beautiful former village where we rented for 9 years, which we loved. We have no ties at all to this new small town.

My 13 year old who doesn't always share his feelings, is upstairs crying in his horrible room which needs fully decorated and new flooring. In the 10 mins I was given to view the house, I didn't spot the endless repairs needed, the cracking outside, the fact a rotten wooded panel is the only thing between a cupboard and the outside, I can see light from outside in the cupboard. How can I even afford the renovations needed.

Please tell me I'm not alone. Please tell me it gets better, and that even if it doesn't its okay because we can sell, we could just sell. I feel so incredibly alone. I thought everything would be better, but it feels worse. I've been telling the boys things would be better, but they are worse and the guilt makes me feel like I don't deserve to be here.

NC for this because I’ve groused about it to half the world.

Hard relate. Got divorced and had to downsize urgently in a falling market before I lost my buyers.

As my username suggests, I didn’t get a survey because the ones I’ve had previously have been a load of arse covering and I ~thought I was~ was skint.

I can’t even describe the things that went wrong since (delayed due to awful circumstances and still fighting a legal battle for costs) completion.

Literally everything in the house was broken, damp, missing or just filthy. Not one element of the house that hasn’t needed urgent repair or replacement, and I’m relatively sure it’s s*abiding but that’s so scary I can’t even begin to deal with it right now.

The only saving grace is my small child is young enough to not know it’s a disaster and thinks it’s all an adventure. Your son is older and harder to hoodwink, but I think you need to brace face it massively in his presence and do your panicking in private.

Sending solidarity.

We moved somewhere like this, it was overwhelming, I left on the first night to go stay at my mums because I couldn’t bare to be there.
if this isn’t the advice you’re looking for then ignore me, but what I needed was a step by step. So what I would say is take a deep breath, go to b&m and go buy a ton of cleaning products, everything you can think of, every chemical!! and nice smelling thing you can find. It’s worth the £10-15 you’ll spend.
then set aside an entire day just to scrub the place clean, shake and vac the carpets etc. By the end of the day it’ll smell less like someone else and you can make it feel more like home. Put a candle on, even if the living room is still awful decor and you hate it, sit down and have a cup of tea and try to relax.
day two, write a list of anything urgent that needs repairing, things that are a safety issue, or a big problem, like the wood panel, and work on those one by one if you know how to. you could ask here for help and advice too
in the meantime pick one room (I suggest ds bedroom or livingroom). take a few days to get prepped, and then go in there with everything you need to strip the walls. Buy some easy (ready made) filler, and fill any big holes in the walls, and give it a quick sand. It sets really quick and then repaint the walls white. White trade paint is your cheapest option if you’ve got loads of rooms to do. You can always buy some paint that’s on sale in the future to add a splash of colour, or look out for cheap accessories, but for now it’ll feel better once it’s white. If you can’t replace the carpets yet, make sure they feel and smell clean, and you can look out for cheap huge rugs to cover the floor with if you need it. IKEA often do some for about £10.

in a week or two after some rest, tackle the next room, doing the same thing. You’ll get there in no time and you’ll at least feel better that you can see improvement.
A good thing to remember too is that lots of people that live in their houses for years and years have issues they need to sort, and know they should’ve fixed, so don’t feel like you’re the only one with a less than perfect house.

as pp say the diy store 'oops' section can be good for off cut flooring, sometimes even tiles, paint.

doing up dc room first will shift the mood in the house.
involve dc, painting a wall will feel like a great achievement (it is!)

I’d be really annoyed that the survey didn’t highlight these things. Can you go back to them & raise a complaint? It sounds like an expensive mistake, but you can always sell & move on.

Oh OP, I'm so sorry you are feeling so a
Awful. I'm sending you warm hugs.

It is really really obvious to me that you are a good mum. You are doing everything you can to give your sons a good life. Even while this house move feels a mistake, I bet it was motivated for them.

Try to take a big breath and forgive yourself. You are in tough circumstances and you are doing your best.

It is totally natural to be stressed- house moving I think comes straight after a death and divorce in the stress list. And you are doing it all on your own, while caring for your sons. Of course you are stressed.

Getting as far as you have is an amazing achievement. Well done! It's cruel that the repairs needed are taking away from that feeling of achievement. The achievement of owning your own place is still there!

I agree it would be great if your sons would be able to enjoy helping with DIY? I know that won't fix everything, but I can imagine this becoming a bit of a family story....'do you remember when we fixed everything up?'

I really really hope that within a few weeks of rest and sprucing up, you will have found your feet and be feeling differently.

Write down a list of everything that needs doing. Then rewrite it in priority order.

Anything that you can't do yourself but could be done by a handyman, photograph and request quotes from checkatrader. Again prioritise the most urgent jobs first.

Get a bucket of hot soapy water, fairy liquid works best, a sponge and a scraper, give them to your son and tell him to start soaking and stripping the wallpaper in his room and cleaning the skirting boards ready to be painted. Tell him to pick what colour he wants. It may help him to feel like he is doing something by getting it ready to be decorated even though it isn't being done right now.

Get on Facebook and look at your local selling groups, free cycle etc and start looking for cheap or free bits of furniture and stuff for his room.

Hop on Amazon or Ebay. You can get rolls of nice thick underlay for as cheap as £3 a metre. Whenever you have the money buy some and put it down in your sons room with a staple gun or spray glue. The carpets can wait but underlay is cheap and warm. Do what you can with what you have and work through the list in priority order.

Also just keep in mind, you'll be building equity for yourself and your sons every month you pay the mortgage. It's secure, unlike renting. And if you still hate the house in a couple of years, you can sell it. Each thing you do now is helping to build your future.

I've been there with the paralysis with what to tackle first. A good clean, treat any mould (wear a good mask and bag any materials in the room and tie so you don't spread it through the house) coats of paint wherever possible to clean and brighten, some cheap rugs (or a large carpet off cut as a rug) to cover grim floorings etc and it will look and feel miles better.

And what someone else said about white or pale paint is perfect - you just need one long handled roller to slap it on the ceiling and the walls, no time consuming cutting in along the ceiling, and its very quick. You can get a few rooms done in a weekend. And then come back to them later when more urgent stuff has been done. Also there are paints that go on both walls and skirting, might be quite a bit more expensive, but will save cutting in at the bottom also.

OP, how are you doing?

I think all this practical advice is awesome but may feel a bit overwhelming if you are feeling so down.

Hoping you are feeling a little steadier?

Xx

Well my little house had no central heating, a cadaver stain on the boards of the second bedroom after we lifted 4 layers of rancid carpet. Body fluids spattered around the walls here and there, kitchen floor bare concrete, the kitchen cuboards were thick with grease and shite so that you needed a scraper rather than a sponge to begin with, insects, dog hair, skirting chewed off wall ( hopefully be dog?) we couldn’t even move in. Had to stay at a low budget hotel for a week just to have it clean enough to be in! You get yourself a cleaning kit and some gallons of white emulsion and rollers and you Jack up the radio and you crack on. Even in disrepair the rooms will be bright and this will help no end. Get some nice curtains up and start flirting with the local handyman. I promise you it comes together. My little place is like a palace now and I did it all on my own with an autistic toddler and while completing a degree. I’m fat, have a bad back and fibromyalgia so I know if I can do it, pretty much anyone can. The kids feed off your energy so be cheerful, bribe them with biscuits and find them little jobs to do and get them to pick out stuff . It’ll work out if you keep yourself going.

Sweetheart, you have your kids and they have you. Everything else will be fine with the passage of time.

First off, pop to the Drs and tell them how you are feeling. Maybe write it down like you have here. They can help you with your stress. You don’t have to deal with it alone. Then do the same for your son.

Ask a good friend to sit down with you and make a list of what needs done in the house and in what order. Get them to help you look into whether there is any comeback on the seller for the mould and the cupboard.

Take a look on freecycle or similar to see if anyone is offering free paint. There is nearly always some. See if your son wants to get his friends around for a painting party in his room. It’s not like they can make it worse, and it might help it feel like home quicker if he is making new memories with friends.

Most of all, please be as kind to yourself as you would be to a friend in the same situation. You are amazing and you are doing great. You’ve made a huge leap forwards towards an amazing future. Now you just need a bit of time and headspace to settle into it and make slow steady progress forward.

It will all be alright in the end. If it’s not alright, it’s not the end.

I’ve been in this house 40 years. We bought hastily during a housing shortage and because DH had to live 10 minutes from work. Over the years I’ve done things to it against all the odds( DH does not believe in spending money on anything to do with house and since his retirement he has refused attempts to improve the quality of things which need doing) you have only you to please so make lists,not depressing ones,but short medium and long term ones and ring the ones that you can do . Treat yourself to a highlighter and mark urgent like the wooden cupboard back. Even a piece of hardboard over it as a temporary fix will help. Out of sight and out of mind goes for paint sloshed on wallpaper. My other favourite saying is It’s dogged as does it. I started with a folding card table to eat off and to sit in we had the previous owners garden chairs. I took up a carpet and found rubble where the previous owners had put a central heating pipe in . DH will never move but I know that if we were to sell up it would be pulled down. Nevertheless I have brought children and grandchildren up here and they have thrived here and have good fond memories.

Moving house is one of the most stressful things and you have not done it for a long time before this move. It can and will get better. It just needs some work and some time. Home ownership comes with responsibilty and it feels overwhelming because this is the first time you had done this. You were homeless, this is a better situation.

Have you any network of friends at all? I have helped a couple of people decorate their houses because they were overwhelmed with it all and I have lots of tools and knowlege because I have fully renovated 2 houses including extensions. Also what do people's husbands do? Can they advise on things if the wives can't?

As PP says there are churches that have outreach programs to help out people in the community. Reach out on your local facebook group. After watching Sarah Beeny's help my house is falling down you realise that things can be fixed.

For black mould I second HG Mould Spray, smells very strongly of bleach but is the absolute best thing for removing mould. There are lots of YouTube videos showing you how to use this. In fact Youtube will show you how to do a million things, and there are some really grotty houses that have been transformed. That might make you feel a bit better that it is possible to turn this into a brilliant house.

Solidarity, OP.
Even my pair of standard healthy moaning minnies kids were unsettled when we moved. It must feel overwhelming for your boy at the moment.

The good news is that he will never have to move again unless he wants to! You are no longer at the mercy of landlords or market rates. You've got the time and agency to make the changes you need at your pace.

I agree with the above posters about focusing on the urgent problems, like the bathroom and painting his room. It's also October, and everything feels a bit dismal in October. Give yourself a year and make gradual changes. I'm typing this after being in my house for two years, staring at a crappy wall I have yet to paint.

You are in a horrible situation and I feel for you.

Although it sounds as if there’s a lot to worry about, I suspect your sons’s feelings are upsetting you the most.

I think the 13 year old is old enough to help strip and paint walls with you.

I would let him have any colour paint he wants even if you hate it. Let him do his own thing entirely, and let him know he wouldn’t have had the chance to do this in his old home.

Id even consider taking the worst room for myself if I thought it would help.

Best of very best of luck. If you think your mental health is slipping please see your GP. And surround yourself with positive people if you can.

Moving house can completely bring on the feelings you describe. It's like a bereavement. This too shall pass OP. Focus on one room and turn it around. A couple of weekends work will completely turn around a room. And you will feel an enormous sense of achievement. As others have suggested, trade white paint, big rugs from ikea and finds off Facebook marketplace will fix any room of doom. See if you can get anyone to help you with the decorating. Then a bit of a rest before you move on to the next room.

I also agree with cheap carpet good underlay - i bought my underlay off eBay and it was a lot cheaper to do that than get it from the carpet shop.

Good luck OP, it's harder when you are on your own but so much goodwill on this thread...we are all cheering you on.

I've just read this, so much good advice. Hope you are doing ok OP and are able to see that you are a brilliant mum.
I think the main thing you need to do is take care of yourself, so you can take care of everyone else. Can you give yourself a few hours off from worrying about the house? - maybe watch a good film that will take your mind somewhere else and give you some mental relief for a while?
Have you got anyone in real life that you trust that you could get to come round and see the house? - a problem shared and all that?
Chin up (and hugs).

Deep clean the kitchen and bathroom.
Clean your son's room and the living room
Then your other bedrooms/
Start to fill the house with good smells of home cooking or favourite laundry powder/bubble bath
Make some small focal points that draw the eye in a comforting way - sofa with cushions and throws, flowers on the table etc.
Start a Pinterest page with your DC where you jointly collect ideas for redecoration - paint colour schemes and Ebay or Freecycle bargains.
Each weekend do one room. If you can't afford that, redecorate one room each month. remind them this is your house now, their house. You can decorate it as you please. No landlord rules.
Explore the local area. Find a nice cafe, a good place to walk, any youth clubs or sports clubs etc.
Take your time to settle in.

DS just bought his first home. It was covered in mould and damp (all hidden by furniture whern he looked round) and stank of mould too. I was 😯but we rolled up our sleeves, bleached it, sugar soaped it, painted it, aired it, wiped the dripping windows, made fresh coffee, aired and put bath bombs in the stinking cupboards. We bought dirt cheap furniture from charity shops and ebay. It now looks lovely and he is so proud of it.

Dettol mold spray was recommended to me, and I found it was very good- the mold never came back (but I did sort out the cause).
If you paint over wallpaper, I'd suggest you don't use anything more hardwearing than matt emulsion, not satin, gloss, etc., as they will make it much harder to strip the paper later. If you want to paint the walls in the long term, stripping really serves time in the long run, though- and you get the satisfaction of having 'done' a room for good. A compromise, especially if you have plastic-coated or textured paper is to peel the top layer off and paint the backing paper.

Sorry op sounds awful. A really useful approach to things we can’t change is:-“how can I turn this around?”. There was a guy in the DM this week who insulated his home with products bought on eBay. I would second youtube- it’s super useful. You will get your forever home fixed- one step at a time. Prioritise the things that matter.

OP

I've had black mould in my shower on the seals and grout.

Wear gloves, mix bleach and cornflour to a heavy cream consistency. Dry down area. Paint on mix. When it's dried shower off . Repeat areas as you need till black has gone.

Mix vinegar and baking soda in a plastic bag tie it over the shower head . Leave . It will come off sparkling.

I would get rid of everything old broken and dirty. Old smelly carpets, broken stuff etc Strip everything back.

Clean and clean.

Paint will go a long way. And is a quick and easy ish refresh till you can think straight.

It is overwhelming but you have done so well OP.

Little by little you will get there.

🌻🌻🌻

And bear in mind, you can always imp[rove this home, however you want to, when ever you want to and all the benefits of doing so will be yours, not a landlord's. No one can boot you out of this home. If you don't like it, you can sell it but you now have a place that belongs to you and that is a massive secuirity and achievement.