How stressful is building works?

[Ella19902]

I’ve recently come into some money & so seriously considering improving our home, loft conversion, single story extension, porch. However I have no experience of buildings works & wonder if I would be mad! Can I get some advice of how to even start going about this? And when meeting builders, what questions to ask etc. I don’t want to sound like a complete idiot or get taken advantage of. And how stressful would it be living with it while it was going on?
I also wonder if I would be better off just to move? I currently live in a 2 bed end of terrace with 2 children under age 6 so if I don’t do the works, we will need to move as we have outgrown the house.
TIA for any advice!

Move.

Its fine if:

You can move put and put everything in storage
Or
You can camp out in one or two small rooms that you can close off, and have no kids.

The dust and mess is bloody awful and the garden gets trashed.

*move out

whatever building works you may decide to undertake double the quoted time the builder gives you as they never finish on time or early… also do one project at a time …. it’s very stressful so be aware your space will be turnt upside down … unless u love where u live / good neighbours etc, i would move for defo

We've done 2 lots of major building works in the last 10 years.
One was an extension - we moved out as we had a puppy (idiots!) 😂2 small children and it was January. We stayed with my in laws and it was stressful but it genuinely was all worth it when we moved back in.
When we had the loft done (and first floor reconfigured) we all camped downstairs and showered at friends houses down the road. Again it was a ballache but we managed and it was worth it. If you are realistic about the upheaval and don't go into it naively it will be OK.
Things that helped us was lots of big plastic stacking storage boxes from IKEA and those portable clothes rails so we could have all the clothes we needed hung up and at hand.

As for builders we were lucky to have a local guy lots of people recommended, he did both our builds. We still sought 2 or 3 quotes but he surpassed them all. Go and look at other work and ask for recs. I don't think any question is silly, it's not something you can undo after so be sure about what you want and be mindful of hidden costs! It's always more than you anticipate.

Loft aint too bad, all sealed up until the stairs and even thats not long to out up with. Porch, simple, just the front

single storey, again can be sealed off.

its move ( hugely stressful with young kids) or make your home your dream home.

if you however spend more on the build than the street value, you may want to move.

We’ve had a loft extension in our current house and a rear extension in a previous home.

I would move. Why polish and extend a 2 bed terrance when you can buy a 3/4 bed semi or detached for the same money?

What you’re talking about would cost £100k-£200k depending on where you live. Plus a whole load of aggro. It’s hard enough getting quotes let alone a decent builder.

Thanks for replies so far! I should have mentioned that if we move, there are some maintenance bits we would have to get done anyway before we could put our house on the market - our roof needs replacing, our side wall needs re-rendering and our porch probably needs replacing or at the very least we’d need to put a new front door in. But I guess these are relatively minor compared to full building projects?!

Get an estate agent to give you an idea of the benefit of doing each of those jobs as you may find you are better not getting work done

Getting building done i think the most important thing is finding a good builder - through word of mouth - do you have friends who have had work done ? It's better waiting years for the right builder and a good one will be able to give good advise on all aspects

We did a loft conversion and it turned into a nightmare. We didn't have the head height so needed the ceilings lowered and every single room in the house needed redecorating afterwards. Because of removing the first floor ceilings, there was no way of just sealing it up and doing it mostly from the outside. So you need to check carefully whether you have the head height.

We wish we had either moved to airbnb for 3months whilst it was done or just moved house completely. We need a new kitchen next and are planning to do it over the summer school holidays so I can take the DC to my parents and avoid the disruption.

In the current building costs period, I think the cost of the work plus disruption probably makes it easier to move, unless you absolutely cannot afford to anything in the area you are eg. due to DC schools etc. We are in London and by the time we had finished, it was £80-90k and that was around 3yrs ago. I imagine it would be more now.

I prefer renovation if the location is perfect, because while it is very stressful, you save moving costs (up to 10k with storage, removals, Airbnb etc) and stamp duty and can put that money into renovation. If the location is not perfect, I'd buy the worst house in the best street and do renovation again even though now it's much more expensive than 3-5 years ago, I don't think I can now buy something that's done because it's not quite to my taste and I still have to do some works and pay premium of done at the same time.

Well, do you need to do them? According to other posters (myself included) the cost/price difference between a pristine house and a shoddier one is not that great, and investing in the renovations yourself will not necessarily mean you will recoup your expenditure.
Location, location, location trumps condition.

First post nails it.

Any work is stressful. And usually takes longer than you think. I used to cry over the brick dust. But once it was done I loved it!

If you can think about moving.

It probably depends how stressful you find normal life, and also how much you value your own space. The thing I find hardest is not having a home of my own for the duration; there are always men in the house making noise and dust. Also my life is quite stressful already and adding renovations has almost tipped me over the edge in the past. I wouldn't do it again unless I absolutely had to. Stamp duty spiel be the price I pay for staying mentally above the water.

I have a detached rendered house and had the same question a year or two ago. After searching Mumsnet & the web I estimated it would be in the region of 10k. A decent chunk of this would be the scaffolding.
Disclaimer - I'm don't get any actual quotes as I was pretty certain it was going to be well out of budget!