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Property/DIY

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House needs money spending on it again

62 replies

hillsandtrees · 16/11/2024 00:12

Feeling overwhelmed as house needs money spending on it again
New kitchen
Redecorating (everything grubby)
New carpets
Some new floors
Garden work

Etc etc etc

What things do others have to do in their homes?
Is it worth it?
Haven’t decorated for ages as careless teens but now looking around chipped yellow skirtings, grubby looking even when cleaned.
Just wandering if others feel same and what you all need to do in your homes?

OP posts:
Twiglets1 · 16/11/2024 08:36

Doris86 · 16/11/2024 08:00

A lot of people these days seem to automatically call a tradesman out for anything you need doing. However DIY can save you a lot of money, is very satisfying once done, and often much easier than you think. YouTube is full of videos if you’re not sure how to do something.

My neighbour is having her house redecorated and the cost has made my eye water, running into a few thousand pounds. When I did my house it cost a few hundred for the paint.

My other neighbour got her fence done and it cost her £3000. I did mine myself and it cost me £700 in materials (and that’s better quality posts and panels than my neighbour got)

Not everyone likes DIY though or has the confidence to try it? Plus some people have the money to pay for the experts to do it so why not?

People spend their money on different things which is up to them.

NerdyBird · 16/11/2024 08:49

Ours needs: decorating throughout ground floor, new stair carpet, new flooring in hall, downstairs loo completely redoing, driveway and side path relaid, some plumbing work in main bathroom, our bedroom decorated and ideally all windows replaced. Would be nice to redo both bathrooms but they are not awful. Garden is another matter!

NewFriendlyLadybird · 16/11/2024 08:51

Twiglets1 · 16/11/2024 08:36

Not everyone likes DIY though or has the confidence to try it? Plus some people have the money to pay for the experts to do it so why not?

People spend their money on different things which is up to them.

Yes but the thread is complaining about the amount of money that house maintenance costs. DIY is a way of reducing those costs.

Doris86 · 16/11/2024 08:52

Twiglets1 · 16/11/2024 08:36

Not everyone likes DIY though or has the confidence to try it? Plus some people have the money to pay for the experts to do it so why not?

People spend their money on different things which is up to them.

Yes that’s exactly my point. Everyone has a choice, but perhaps don’t instantly rule out DIY because it’s often easier than you think.

Changing the lock barrel on a UPVC door for example. A lost of people will automatically call a locksmith, but look it up on YouTube and you’ll be shocked how quick and easy it is to do.

hillsandtreess · 16/11/2024 09:01

Sorry I'm op had to log in again as wouldn't work so password same with extra letter!

I'm just trying to think is all this money we may spend this year worth it but not into diy and house needs some work defo kitchen.
Thinking for kitchen leave layout same but replace cupboards and surfaces with hard wearing material re teens!
What does everyone recommend?
Was going to change kitchen layout previously but cost alot more in quotes.

Also need floors changing in some rooms to very hard wearing waterproof something that looks nice but not office like.
Got wood downstairs now. Something that looks like wood but very resistant to pets.

Ideas would be good to make garden more private and take harshness of large wall that very near our garden.

Thinking of adding some wall paper to some rooms to give colour but need hard wear paper and same with paint.
Last time we got hall painted years ago it was damaged by teens in two weeks!

Ideas and advice would be gratefully received.🙏

PissedOffNeighbour22 · 16/11/2024 09:03

We have so much that needs to be done. Been here almost 4yrs but thought it would be finished by now. We moved in the day before my DD first birthday and thought it would be easy - she'd been walking a few months and was more like a 2yr old as so independent. Then I found out I was pregnant again a couple of months after moving in and the whole renovation plan went to pot!

We still need to finish the kitchen that we started fitting in year 1.
The dining room is horrific.
Don't even get me started on the garden and boundary.
There's barely any drainage so the house is damp (house is 300yrs old so doesn't have proper foundations).
We started renovating the stairs/landing/hall in January and it's nowhere near finished as there's so much to do.
None of the rooms we've made progress on are actually finished, my DP appears to be allergic to finishing anything properly.
The windows are in much worse state than we realised.
Ugly LPG tank needs burying as it's above ground and in a terrible place which just highlights its ugliness. This is neither cheap nor easy to remedy.
Need a new drive. Also required to pay a third for the shared access driveway to our home and it's knackered.
Need a porch adding to the house as we're fed up of next door's log burner smoke stinking out our house.
Need to have sliding doors put into the living room as the house is really badly designed and we need easier access to the garden for the kids.
There will be loads more, but that's off the top of my head.

It's just never ending. Luckily DP can do most of the work himself, but he has 5 jobs to work around. I work full time and we have no help with childcare so everything is painfully slow.

Instahome2 · 16/11/2024 09:04

We're halfway through a top to bottom renovation of the house we bought.
So far we've done:

  • stripped wallpaper, plasterboard-ed artex ceilings, plastered and painted Lounge, Dining room, Den, Landing, hallway and 2x DDs rooms.
  • rewired whole house, new heating system.
  • new flooring and lights.
  • new internal oak doors, new frames, architraves and skirting boards.
  • new glass and oak bannister.
  • new front door and back door.

The finished rooms are great but highlight how bad the ones yet to do are. We've still to do the expensive ones, kitchen and bathrooms as well as our bedroom and home office.

We've taken a pause to build up our savings but thinking about slowly working on the office and bedroom over the next few months. We are lucky to have a good collection of tradespeople and because I work in property, I can order things privately through my work trade accounts.

Fireworknight · 16/11/2024 09:05

Been in our house 16 years. It was all recently done when we moved in. Now the wooden floor is getting chipped and getting a dog has meant that cupboard doors have got scratched etc. Actually, the dog has done more damage in two years than the previous fifteen years of living here.

hillsandtreess · 16/11/2024 09:19

Yeah pets and teens aren't careful.
A lot of slam wham wollop!
This is another reason reluctant to spent crazy money but keep saying this and needs some work now as looks tired/worn.
Embarrassing opening front door as all houses near always look so lovely when I go to their doors.

hillsandtreess · 16/11/2024 09:23

I'm glad I started this thread though as it makes me feel not alone in this.
As was feeling that I live in a rundown house and everyone else got it together.
Sorry everyone I'm sure you are all like me in just wanting everything done and looking nice.

MarigoldSpider · 16/11/2024 09:23

Doris86 · 16/11/2024 08:00

A lot of people these days seem to automatically call a tradesman out for anything you need doing. However DIY can save you a lot of money, is very satisfying once done, and often much easier than you think. YouTube is full of videos if you’re not sure how to do something.

My neighbour is having her house redecorated and the cost has made my eye water, running into a few thousand pounds. When I did my house it cost a few hundred for the paint.

My other neighbour got her fence done and it cost her £3000. I did mine myself and it cost me £700 in materials (and that’s better quality posts and panels than my neighbour got)

What’s hard is finding the time.

We have a fixer upper house, two full time jobs, and 2 kids under the age of 4.

We do a lot of diy out necessity. We can’t afford to get someone else in. Especially after spending lots of savings on taking maternity leaving and now the costs of 2 in nursery.

But I do wish we could get someone else to do it and then a job that takes us 2 months would likely be done in a day or 2.

To the OP -

The kitchen in our house is older me. The worktop is starting to disintegrate by the sink. The previous owners tried to jazz it up by putting a resin colour thing on it that is slowly coming off.

The flooring in lots of rooms is diy laminate terribly fitted (previous owners) with gaps between board and large sections of brown silicone sealant at the edges to account for more gaps.

3 of the rooms upstairs were a mismatch of carpets. Different carpets duct taped together on the underside.

90% of the house is covered in badly applied textured wallpaper.

There’s a random sink in one of the bedrooms and no sink in the toilet.

The boiler doesn’t heat the hot water anymore, we use the back up immersion heater. It’s more expensive to run but still cheaper than getting someone in. The boiler is ancient, though I think younger than me.

The tumble dryer broke a year ago. It has a parts warranty but we’d have to pay for the labour. It wasn’t a problem in the summer but noticing it more now.

We've 2 rooms upstairs that we’ve made nice and are 80% through another one. I did one wall of paint over the terrible wall paper when we first moved in and we’ve replaced some external doors. That’s taken about a year of evenings and weekends 😂 I think we’re still a few years off doing the kitchen.

When we bought the house we thought it was just ‘decoration’ I’m now learning that decoration is expensive and time consuming and often grows legs.

The location however is perfect and the house is just the right size for our growing family.

GrannyAchingsShepherdsHut · 16/11/2024 09:24

We slapped white paint on everything when we moved in 5 years ago, intending to get everything sorted later. We didn't. We need:

New kitchen, new bathroom, wall taking down between loo and bathroom, insulate the floors, new flooring, new external doors, new internal doors, everywhere redecorating, external walls insulating, rewiring, ceilings taken down and replaced (asbestos artex and rewiring don't mix), new heating system as currently don't have a functional one. New windows ideally. New hot water system, new woodburner / fire / stove of some sort. All sorts outside.

No we cannot afford it all, and no I don't know where to start...

Pigeonqueen · 16/11/2024 09:33

We’ve been in our house 15 years now and when we first moved here we did a lot of decorating etc. Now it’s all old and falling down in places and I feel like setting fire to the whole thing most of the time. 😣😂🙈

WishingForTheImpossible · 16/11/2024 09:41

We've spent the last 7 years renovating our very dated 1970s bungalow, it all needed doing but as with most people funds are limited so we did a coat of paint throughout and then focused on a room at a time to make it nice.
Which one to focus on really depends on what's important - do you need an escape room that's relaxing, do your bedroom or bathroom. Do you want a nice social area, focus on kitchen or lounge.
We focussed on the hallway first, I wanted to walk into our home and not feel depressed by it.

Things I've learnt:

  • Use good quality paint - cheap paint doesn't wipe down well and chips easily.
  • Sometimes painting tiles/recovering doors or work surfaces gives you an immediate lift for not much, we did it in the kids bathroom but don't expect it to last. 3 years on it looks just as bad as it did originally - but now we're in a position to change it next year so it doesn't matter
  • Ignore Instagram influencers!!! They only show befores and afters, not all the crappy bits still outstanding
  • Don't do it all at once, a perfect new build may look attractive until you realise in 10 years everything will need doing at once, treat it like the forth bridge
dudsville · 16/11/2024 09:50

I don't know if this is the case for any of you, but I recall learning in my late 20s that home ownership comes with home maintenance. We should expect to have to do regular, annual maintenance, in the same way that we don't get a hair cut and expect it to remain that way without upkeep. Low level maintenance is the regular cleaning weekly/monthly and keeps things like mould in check. Mid level is things like pointing, painting, flooring - updates, like repainting a high traffic area, can be annual, but carpet replacement of a high traffic area might be a 10 yearly thing. The big things that hopefully we shouldn't have to do more than once are windows and rooves. One your signed up to this way of thinking is no longer depressing or a surprise. We often have a notion of the next home maintenance task, and we do diy where our skills allow.

Twiglets1 · 16/11/2024 10:07

Isn’t wall paper a bit old fashioned these days @hillsandtrees ?

No offence intended to anyone that likes wallpaper but would be easier & cheaper to use paint plus more modern in my opinion.

hillsandtreess · 16/11/2024 10:08

I don't know if everyone finds same as me but we find it very hard to get decent trades people last few years.
The ones that have good reputation booked up for months to year in advance and others we have contacted don't even bother replying!
I don't get it. Never used to be like that?
What are other people's experiences?

hillsandtreess · 16/11/2024 10:17

Twiglets1 · 16/11/2024 10:07

Isn’t wall paper a bit old fashioned these days @hillsandtrees ?

No offence intended to anyone that likes wallpaper but would be easier & cheaper to use paint plus more modern in my opinion.

Yeah I know what you mean and years ago I had wallpaper in very room of our first house but now only got wall paper on one wall in master bedroom and I really miss colour and patterns more than paint. I am just craving to have wallpaper in a few rooms again as gives colour and a cosy feel. Dont have many visitors so more for our enjoyment.
But I get where you are coming from but just bored of just paint. Maybe a combination of the two but I really want to wallpaper some rooms😂

Nomoretoffee · 16/11/2024 10:29

I love wallpaper so tend not to worry about whether it’s fashionable.

ThatCoralShark · 16/11/2024 10:36

Twiglets1 · 16/11/2024 10:07

Isn’t wall paper a bit old fashioned these days @hillsandtrees ?

No offence intended to anyone that likes wallpaper but would be easier & cheaper to use paint plus more modern in my opinion.

No on the contrary it’s making a huge resurgence, there are some absolutely beautiful wallpapers out there now. But they are hugely pricey. As in 150 plus a roll. It’s the cheapo large print, b&q or Homebase stuff that’s dated.

done right, wallpaper is bang on trend. Done wrong and it will look dated and tacky.

hillsandtreess · 16/11/2024 10:37

Nomoretoffee · 16/11/2024 10:29

I love wallpaper so tend not to worry about whether it’s fashionable.

Me too and I'm going to have lots of wallpaper soon and it will be for my enjoyment as not many visitors anyway and I'm not worried about it been fashionable anymore.
I have done the fit in with what's fashionable or in previously but now feel I should have what I like and enjoy in my home as long as rest of family happy too.

MrsMoastyToasty · 16/11/2024 10:47

Chimney stack needs rebuilding (jointly with next door).
Soffit
Fascias
Guttering
Exterior render needs painting
As does garage door and front door.
Some double glazing is blown.
Some electrics need updating.
Internal plastering in a couple of rooms (some of the old lathe and plaster bits are cracked)
Update kitchen
Redecoration throughout.

Animatron · 16/11/2024 10:52

Wallpaper is massively in right now. As are scalloped edge, deep pinks and greens, bobbin furniture and asymmetric mirrors. Look in the shops. There's basically maximalist High Victorian with a bright color edge, or a sort of Japan-scandi march of rattan. Interestingly the thing that's really on the edge of going out is MCM, which was just everything when I was setting up my first house. Millennials are so over, sob!

Winter0sunshineHopes · 16/11/2024 11:02

Definitely think social media of perfect houses has a lot to answer for. I grew up in a house my dad took ten years to gutt and renovate- I remember mostly not seeing him much as every waking hour was spent doing the work as he couldn’t afford trades. He was very skilled and lots of Haynes manuals as no you tube then. My mum focused on keeping us warm and fed which I remember more fondly now and didn’t give a crap about the colour of the walls & ceiling. Honestly when my time came to buy a family house we’d already had our hands burnt on a house of never ending jobs so we borrowed more on the mortgage to buy a more finished house as kids were little and I really wanted to prioritise spending time with them & memories. If it’s warm dry and safe take your time doing the diy as the kids will remember the time you spent playing with more than the colour of the bathroom. I paint one room a year as a refresh and try to deep clean once a year in stages as that is always just as helpful washing all paintwork and walls to keep on top of it. Now we have teens n dogs it’s not worth doing more.

Feelingstrange2 · 16/11/2024 11:07

We've been here 30 years so everything comes around again!

My "new" kitchen is 28 years old now. We used a good company so the build quality is still great but its dated (not yet old enough to have come around again!), but the old integrated appliances are no more apart from the fridge - the others are standalone now. Tiles and flooring is dated.

It's harder to invest 25k when it is essentially really functional and to our design, just not aesthetically modern.