Fixer upper one year later how do/did you feel?

[Crochetpartyanimal]

FTB a year ago, im feeling shattered and at times more overwhelmed than I did bringing my first baby home!! Its been a roller-coaster of a year all the essentials now completed; windows, doors, new heating system, bedrooms and ceilings bare brick and replasteted etc and today we have completed upstairs. Amazing to be able to do things how we want for the first time and makes it all worth it. Downstairs will be hell but we have upstairs as our haven now😊

Well done you! We've had an offer accepted on a massive project so just waiting to sell ours and wondering if we've done the right thing with 2 small kids!

Well done that's amazing for a year.

I'm 10 months in and we've done:
Garden landscaping
Doors
Windows
Guttering
Kids bedrooms
Downstairs loo
Insulated manky pantry
Removed old asbestos garage

There's so much left to do. But listing out what's been done has given a sense of achievement

I'm 2 weeks away from completing on a fixer upper. Can I just a bit of a personal question? Did you have a big budget for all of the work that needed doing? We won't have a lot left over once the rewiring is done and that is just the first job on a long list that needs doing.

We are also in the middle of buying a bit of a fixer upper. We know we can't tackle everything at once, but feel we could get some of the bigger jobs done in the first year (hopefully!)

Getting survey back this week so we'll have a better sense of what's the most important to start with.

What was your most pressing/biggest job and how long did it take?

Good luck we have 4DC 3 in primary school nerves of steel required lol , our fixer upper wasn't intentional the market really got a hold of us last year and we were small fish in a big pond. Now our essential bits are done it feels amazing

Thank you and well done! I absolutely made a list and ticked everything off as we went along it really does help doesn't it

Tiny budget for a fixer upper 10k after completion and then savings from salary monthly, no family holiday this year was the way we did it and got lucky with local trades. I have learnt so much it's been very difficult but worth it.

Windows and doors as the weather was against us so 3 weeks no scaffold required and then the upstairs plastering including new ceilings was very hard 3 weeks 2 person job. Very stressful haha

Gotta say, your replies are inspiring me! Usually on Mumsnet it's very "couldn't possibly do a Reno for less them 100k", which is not our budget haha!
Well done on doing so much, making want to get going on ours!

Thanks for sharing your budget op, that's made me feel a lot better. Everyone here seems to say tiny budget and turns out they've got 50k.

I've also go 4dc. (2 are toddlers) I think we are mad

I will cheat a little as I am about two years since we started. We bought our fixer upper 2 bed bungalow with a view to convert the loft into a 4 bed. We bought the house off someone going to an old people's home. It needed everything doing.

We first tidied up the very old kitchen. Previous owners left the fridge and cooker for us but we quickly realised these weren't great. The fridge froze the vegetables and the cooker grill was bent so it burnt everything in it. We repainted the kitchen walls and cabinets. We hope to rip it all out when get to do the downstairs extension.

We then refurbished our bedroom. Rewired it, replastered and new carpet. That then gave us a nice haven we could escape to from the chaos of the rest of the house.

We then did the big job of the loft conversion after a year.

Like many bungalows, the hallway is one of those dark middle of the house spaces that was rather depressing so it came next. At this point we were just doing things month to month after pay day. I did the flooring, panelled the walls and created a much nicer space to arrive into.

In the summer we had the side access leaky lean-to knocked down and replaced it with a garage/storage room as our shed was falling apart. We had hoped to wait a bit longer for this but our bikes, prams were all going rusty or mouldy because it wasn't serving its purpose anymore.

I am content with this for now. We have enough bedrooms for our family and can comfortably work from home in my little office in the loft.

I would really like an extension but that is big bucks so it will have to wait a few years. The kitchen is falling apart but with my newly acquired diy skills, I am able to glue it, put new hinges when the doors falling off in the night (we thought the whole place was falling) and a lick of paint should hopefully eek out last few lives the kitchen has got.

The rest that need doing;
new water main
water softener (very hard water area)
demolish the old shed
connect the garage gutters to the rain water drains
refurbish the play room when the kiddos are a few years older and turn it into a grown up living room
the drive is potholed and a weed haven
fix the cracks in the render and when we win the lottery, render the whole house
mortar the loose patio slabs.

It's nearly 4 years since we finished (or at least finished 90%, there's still been dribs and drabs of other work over those years), and it was hell at the time but 💯 worth it to have a house that's exactly how we want.

We spent more on a complete back to brick renovation than we spent on buying the house. It is a very large, very old house, though, but we did a lot of DIY and managed everything ourselves. We still bled money.

Almost finished now inside after more than 2 years. It's fantastic having a house how we want it, but it's a very large, old listed property, so even though the renovation is almost finished, the maintenance and upkeep of it will never stop.

We’re 10 months in and so far have:

• replaced the roof & guttering
• full rewire and new boiler + heating system
• new bathroom
• new kitchen (which is usable but I swear will never be fully finished at this rate)
• fixed all the structural issues which meant 15 sets of helibars and removing a bay window
• replastered throughout
• replaced rotten joists in a reception room then levelled throughout downstairs snd laid new reclaimed boards (the builder destroyed the old ones) and sanded them up
• replaced all lead pipes
• misted the kitchen, bathroom & two bedrooms
• painted the bathroom & kitchen ceiling
• installed sliding doors between the living & dining room and an archway from the kitchen through to the dining room

And I’ve cried at least twice a week every week, often more 😂😂 this list made me feel a bit better though - it can feel so gruelling that we’ve spent all our savings on this half finished house we’re desperately trying to fix around work!

We haven’t got any radiators on the walls downstairs at present to decorate and you can see your own breath so I’m desperately trying to sand, mist, etc so we can paint once my partner puts the coving and picture rails up.

Loving all these replies I'm quite a sensitive person but nothing like a fixer upper to toughen you up lol we are very resourceful and realistic on our goals we will never have a show home mansion and that's OK. Downstairs we will need a good chunk behind us as the layout is very odd and doesn't work for us not looking forward to it but I have my list of smaller jobs to keep my momentum up

Inspiring to see these lists!

Almost one year in and we have:

• redone electrical consumer units and replaced all switches and sockets and lights (and added some extra)
• new pressured water tank in the loft, and new radiators
• new staircase (and changed position of it to make building regs compliant)
• structural work to the upstairs - removing walls and putting in stud walls
• knocking through the wall between hallway and kitchen to see front to back and bring light into hallway. Reclaimed doors and a transom window above to the ceiling
• reinstated picture rails and skirting and doors upstairs
• replastering and painting of upstairs bedrooms and wood floor or carpeting in these
• two completed new bathrooms
• redone the drive, so now parks a few cars

Feels good to see the progress. We still have to put new windows in, rip out leaking conservatory and replace with the extension, do the downstairs lounge, kitchen and dining room. The back garden is awful. So it still feels very overwhelming!

Money wise we've spent about £80k so far

Oh and we had a full asbestos survey and had the asbestos ground out, air purity checks, and an asbestos garage removed.

After our first year we'd reslated one of the roofs, had the paint sandblasted of the bricks, & in the garden- cleared completely of shrubs etc, double dug lot of it and laid out veg beds and paths for same, likewise for fruit, planted fruit (10 tons of new topsoil) and had about 40m of solid wall foundations dug out of the garden. Dug out a large skip's worth of clay, had electricity supply moved, and the whole house bar kitchen rewired, stripped and decorated some rooms. Stripped out kitchen back to brick, junked old units, and fitted units from previous house. Painted the render on the lower storey. New doors, some new windows. Repaired various brick walls due to botched DIY in the past. Plus quite a few other bits. However, we were delayed a lot due to starting it all just before covid started. Though we did a lot ourselves, materials were scarce and jobs that needed trades had to wait for at last six months even for outdoor jobs. 4 years in, now, and we're still getting there.....but closer.

I walked away from the fixer upper about a year ago & Im very relieved! In hindsight it wasn’t worth it considering the initial price & the cost of the work needed.