Anyone else fed up of renovating?

[Maneandfeathers]

I’m thinking of putting ours back on the market. We’ve ran out of money and there’s no end in sight! It’s livable but not anywhere near the way we want it to be. It’s a large 1930s sem, rural with large gardens but it’s dropping to bits. Everything we wanted to do we can’t now because the cost of living and mortgage increase has meant we have nothing spare left after bills.

Antone else in this position, how did you fund it? Remortgaging isn’t an option as we were down valued due to condition (yep- that’s why I wanted the money!!!)
A loan is an option but an expensive one and not one we could consider for 3 more years as we already have a loan from when the boiler blew up on us and the ceiling leaked and fell in!

A new build seems to tempting right now.

Solidarity. Been going 5 years now. Doing mostly everything ourselves. Add in babies pets jobs health issues. It's a long slog.

I see friends buy newer houses that just need decorating and it looks so nice to be done within a year 😔

Everything is soooo expensive now. So we do everything ourselves get things second hand or in the sale. Just have to accept its a slow progress. What I find the most frustrating is family members that have never renovated being like "oh haven't you finished yet?" They genuinely thought all the plumbing took one day to do 🙈

That porch looks fine to me, not sure if it’s in better condition than yours? As it looks totally fine.tne roof shouldn’t be too expensive as it’s a small porch,

I’d you’ve no money you both need to learn diy and start planning jobs and just doing them

where does the porch leak? Can you seal it? Just paint it white, with an exterior paint outside and inside?

Same position as you and fed up! Planning to remortgage but if we're denied like you, will take out as much loan as we can afford repayment on to bring the condition up to a remortgage able level.

What can you buy elsewhere for your property's value? Even with the huge increased cost to planned works, we still couldn't buy anything remotely similar for the same cost.

If this is your situation, stay out, borrow what you can, improve what you can and sit tight until the market is different/better.

That porch looks so much better than I expected!

Google Frenchic paint window porch/ renovation. Doesn’t need priming and they have some lovely cottagey colours. You can paint that UPVC and it will look so much better. You can also get some stick down tiles from dunelm- super cheap- I think they are called lollipops, if the inside floor is dodgy. Is the porch roof leaking? If not I would be tempted to leave it alone (or maybe paint it if the colour is really offensive) if it is leaking you should be able to get replacement glass or plastic and get a local handyman to come and fit it.

@eaearlycats same. Ridiculous turn out rates for trades. We are not in the position to do 3 quite comparisons these days, if they come, quote and show intention and the price seems reasonable (materials cost are quite easy to check out) then they normally get the work 🤔

That porch is in better condition but it’s pretty much the same style. It leaks really badly and floods the floor every time it rains, I wondered about just getting the roof replaced and see if that would help? Maybe plant some planters around it that type of thing? I have no idea how much it will cost to fix the leak, hundreds or thousands.

The conservatory is a half brick one with a lean to roof. It leaks all the way along the join from conservatory to house. The glass itself isn’t that terrible, blown in some panels. Ideally I wanted to remove the horrible sliding doors to the house and open it up to have one larger dining space with a proper roof on the conservatory for warmth, but DH said that sounds like a crazy expensive job!

This sort of thing. If the roof is definitely leaking then get it replaced- ideally with something nice like slate- but that really shouldn’t be a huge job.

I agree with your DH, get the conservatory water tight- keep the doors or maybe replace them- until you’ve got funds to do a proper extension. If you open it up even if you’ve replaced the roof the windows will absolutely leak heat, and you’ll have extortionate heating bills to pay too!

This is also not my conservatory but very similar.
This is the roof style, and the join to the wall is where it leaks really badly. Any ideas on pricing to change the roof? Glass or to a real roof? Can glass ever be usable or will it be frozen all winter still

@Heucherarowan Oh yes I have long given up on the three quotes. I've got some dangerous brickwork on one wall where two lintels have failed. Structural engineer has advised what to do. Have I been able to get a builder to sort it? Have I fck. It's been like that for several months now. They tell me they'll "pop round Tuesday" and I sit home all day like an idiot only for them not to show. I call and get the "oh I was so busy, how about tomorrow" spiel. Again and again. If I dare ask for a rough time, they just ghost me completely and don't answer the phone anymore. As if it's the most unreasonable thing to ask? I happen to be home most days/times due to work but most people obviously wouldn't be. I'd be out of annual leave by this point if I took a day off every time someone promises they'll come to quote/do the work. These are builders recommended to me by friends and neighbours! Not checkatrade et al btw. We used to live in a different area of the country and never had any issues at all. I am beyond fed up.

@MManeandfeathers yellow plastic I believe is a tint. We had the same on our conservatory and a side building (that also leaked). We couldn't afford to replace it with a proper building or roof. We went for a warm roof on the conservatory and insulated (boarded) the side building roof, had lead flashing put in as it just had flash banding and no proper guttering, which we fixed also to stop the leak.

Waterproofing/sealing/lead flashing could be relatively cheap. Especially if you can DIY.

The side building cost around £1k to install lead flashing, insulate and add guttering, and is easily three times the size of your porch. We paid a trade also. It's not perfect but is a much more usable room and gives us functional space we wouldn't have otherwise.

Might be worth looking to see if the porch has proper flashing and drainage and if not, a guttering/window fitting trade can help.

It might be better to keep it if you can if this is useful space?

I bought a 1930 terrace last year and there was and is still so much to be done...

I am lucky to live in a lovely, peaceful seaside town in the SE but that means house prices are quite high and anything I could afford needed updating and a fair amount of work.

Renovations are really expensive and it is a pain to deal with trades, but at least it is now looking a thousand times better than when I bought it.

I am saving every month to deal with the old roof when needed and all my money goes on the house!

I think many people are in the same situation and also new builts can come with their own issues. I had a new-built flat before my house and it turned out to be poorly and cheaply put together.

At least when you renovate you can make sure you get things properly done.

I did as much as I could myself (paint the whole house, remove all the carpets and restore the original floorboards and stairs, paint tiles, paint kitchen units, remove old shelves and curtain rails, clear the garden and shed).

Hi OP - if it’s the join to the wall that’s leaking it sounds like your flashing needs sorting out. I paid a roofer £300 recently (South East) to redo the flashing around a single story extension. If you could stop it flooding and then paint a green colour similar to PP suggestions, I think that would look good.

You sound like you have total fatigue with it all and I’ve been there - the difficulty with tradespeople makes it all feel utterly grinding and depressing. Leaks also are utterly depressing. A roofer might be able to sort both and this would make you feel a lot better.

My DH wanted to buy a fixer upper. I was on the fence with it so we decided to do it. It has been a constant source of stress for years and everything ground to a halt when DD was born. Luckily most of it is livable but a lot of it is old and broken and it drives me insane. Highly NOT recommended.

We bought it cheaply but won't make money. It needed a lot more doing than we originally thought, despite extensive surveys! It has an amazing back garden and it's in a decent village in Cornwall near family, so once it's up to a nice condition I'll be happy here despite it's small size. But it has taken far FAR longer and much more money than expected. (See every episode of grand designs/renovation programmes ever for proof of this!)

We're in a similar ish position. Bought somewhere about 3 years ago. We've done a lot of work, but we still have things to do, and outside needs a lot of work. I love living here, though, so we will do bit by bit as we can afford it.

Serial doer up here ( in more than one country).

You have to learn to manage your expectations ( Instagram has a lot to answer for) and prioritise what’s to be done.

Do you need the conservatory as an essential part of your daily life? If not just ignore it being ugly, concentrate on making it weatherproof if it is affecting the rest of the house, otherwise pretend it isn’t there. Same with the porch, try to get the roof sorted ( tarpaulin would keep some of the rain off until you can get a roofer) then just close your eyes when you walk up to it, it being ugly is not going to ruin your life unless you let it .Artex walls may not be attractive, but they are not going to kill you. If you really hate them, buy a staple gun and staple some cheap sheets over them . If wall hangings were good enough for Henry viii , they will do you for a bit. Buy a strimmer, a powerful one, for the garden so you have paths and clearings.

Start from the middle and work out, it sounds like you have hot water and heating, now make a list of what really needs doing and what is just Insta trend. Ticking things off the list is the best feeling in the world!

by the time you have finished, you will be in the fashion, and your friends houses will need redoing ….xxxxx

See my previous post about flashing and the side building but it sounds like you have a flashing issue. We couldn't afford a proper roof and opted for a warm roof. Conservatory was a bit bigger than the picture and the roof is much larger and has a different pitch (more roof space). Warm roof and internal plastering was about £8k. There are cheaper options you can explore though, like apply insulation and board to the underside, for a cheaper, shorter term fix. But you'd need to address the flashing asap.

Agree the conservatory could be flashing on the join. We had a leak on a small back extension recently which was £24 for the flashing and then a couple of hours from a day’s work of £130, he did other things so had a day rate. Also agree not to open it up for now due to heating costs.

For the porch get a local window company to come and quote for the roof. Also ask on local FB page and see if anyone can recommend a good handyman and get them to quote for replacing it with a proper roof having first had a look in FB marketplace to see if there are any roof tiles for sale, ideally slate. Extension on our old house had second hand tiles for covering which matched really well with other roof tiles and whole lot cost £150, though it took 5 trips to move them all.

Agree about potentially painting porch but I have read poor reviews of Frenchic, the FB group removes anything negative. Look at using Zinsser all coat which can be mixed to any colour over the top of one of their primers though you aren’t supposed to need the primer. Definitely some pots and planters outside. Look on Marketplace to see if any decent ones going cheap then see if you have a plant swap group locally, people really generous with ours.

I’d definitely work on getting rid of that table and the rats first. Good idea to try using mint if that helps. If that area is generally a bit soggy think about making a sunken bog garden or maybe a fernery /stumpery - if you have any bigger trees that need pruning you could use some of the wood for that.

Also worth a mention, you can't just plonk a normal roof on a conservatory/temporary type building without checking out the foundations. Hence why it was the cheaper option for us to warm roof Vs real roof and tiles as I wasn't prepared to risk the foundation wouldn't take the weight and the costs for underpinning.

It sounds like it would be a shame to sell it and let someone else benefit from all the money and work you've already put into it but then there's also the sunk costs fallacy.

How much of the work can you do yourself? It's amazing what you can learn off YouTube. My first priority would be to make everything weatherproof. Ugly is fine, as long as it's functional. Growing a plant up the porch sounds nice as long as it's structurally sounds to support the weight. Or get a climber on a trellis to go next to it.

I moved into my Victorian do-er upper almost 10 years ago and I've still got 2 areas that are completely untouched, we still have artex ceilings but at £300-500 a room to replaster, I've had the main rooms done and the ones that i don't notice can stay as artex forever. A lot of the house we slapped a coat of paint on, put cheap new floors down ourselves and we are slowly working through as money becomes available to get each room up to the standard we want. When we moved in we got a bathroom suite for £100 from b&q, taught myself to do tiling and the bathroom is still going strong 10 years on.

Don't underestimate how lovely it is not to be on top of your neighbours as you would be in a new build. For the garden i would just clear an area that you can use for now and gradually expand that, rather than trying to do it all at once.

Can I just say how heating everyone else’s stories have made me feel a bit more sane. It seems like everyone else has normal houses and I just feel completely out of my depth.

That is a very good point about the weight of a roof.

I think it feels as if everyone has a perfect house looking at social media but the reality is there are loads of us living with all sorts of things that are less than perfect.

I haven't read all the comments yet but seems I have found my people!

We are coming up to 5 years in our project house. It was semi-derelict when we moved in.

We have done 80% of the work ourselves as we have no money to pay anyone to do anything. Luckily my OH grew up with a dad who practically re-built their family home, so has picked up skills along the way and is very handy himself now.

I'd say we are 75% if the way there now, the final ( and biggest single job) left is the kitchen/dining room/ old lean to , which needs a thorough renovation to create a kitchen/diner. We simply have no money, so sadly unless one of us comes into some inheritance (awful to say), it's not happening! It depresses me hugely as this is the place we spend most of our time/guests sit, and it looks awful, but we've got used to it now, and I just try not to look at it too much, if that makes sense!

I am so proud of us though. Our kids were 5 and 7 when we moved here, and it was hellish. Looking back I believe I had a breakdown as it was do awful. We have slowly worked our way through the things that need doing, in a logical order.

Thankfully my OH is incredibly practical, so wheras I want to make things look nice as quickly as possible, he has held me back and made the right decisions on what we do, and in what order.

The house is looking so different now. There are still quite a few things that need doing but it is unrecognisable from 5 years ago.

I have attached a few pics of the extent of what we lived with. Just trying to say you are doing a great job.. Living in a renovation project is not for the faint hearted!

Ah we have just viewed a new build 15mins away from our current house. It was amazing!!! Well the show home was.

Dh is mentally packing us up 😄

@Maneandfeathers You are inspiring me to look for new builds now haha. I think I'm also mentally done with this house but not many new houses around here unfortunately due to the green belt (or fortunately? difficult topic, I know). How do you feel about the prospects of the selling and moving stress? I'm pretty sure we wouldn't even get anyone to buy our house in its current state and given the market.

@Maneandfeathers feeling a little tempted too 😂 but like you, are semi rural and not overlooked with reasonable neighbours, proper parking and a good amount of space (half acre plot).

Our house before here was a 10yr old new build, so we inherited a lot of the issues that come with poorly built, aging new builds. Which we thought we were escaping after fully renovating our first house 🤣. I caution that depending on the estate layout, parking on new estates is ridiculous. Even if each house has allocated space for 2 cars. Add in a few work vans, motorhomes, adult kids at home still, visitors, you get the idea.

We also got to experience a lot of our neighbours living noises and were very overlooked.

There's not enough I could be paid to have to tolerate what we used to on a new build estate. People can be very inconsiderate and I find at least having space and a reduced amount of people limits this exponentially. Parking wars can be very contentious.

I'm super invested in how your situation works out now! Home can really change how you enjoy life! So totally get it needing to be right.