Crazy quotes? Regretting buying your fixer upper? Join me in home renovation rants!

[Yemelade]

Some of you might remember me from my house sprucing (low level, manageable DIY) thread where I was preparing to sell up my old house.

That purchase is now complete, and we are now semi-regretful owners of a run down fixer upper.

I dillegently made a spreadsheet and researched possible prices of work needed. New roof, kitchen, bathrooms, windows. Its essentially a money pit. IIinitially, prior to purchase, thought we had a healthy budget at 62k, but have quickly realised this is nowhere near enough.

Please join me in rants, woes, discoveries and doom. It would be good to hear from anyone in a similar boat so that my colleagues are no longer plagued by this regularly! I am in North East UK.

X

Where are you? London?

Small wins! 😂

Yes! Well, splitting the old kitchen into a utility and shower room. We actually ended up finding an even cheaper way of doing things. I.e. me filling in all the building control forms myself (and becoming best friends with the local council admin team in the process, I'm sure!) And a builder who we pay on day rate to do all the ground works and internal works. We acquired all our bathroom stuff for approximately £1000 buying ex display, which has saved us a small fortune. In total for building a whole new bathroom that didnt exist before, stud walls, plumbing, new soil stack, building control and tiles, it's coming in about £2400. Seems a lot, but I have a colleague who just paid 10k for a bathroom with everything staying in the same place!

Hopefully you can do something similar so your dream doesn't need to stay on hold for too long!

I absolutely agree. Or you have the luxury of friends in trades, or decent capacity for storage so you can buy things at budget prices in advance. We have done a fair portion of work ourselves, but have paid the professionals for jobs like electrics and plumbing. We also did extensive research before buying into green energy schemes via our local council. Because of our EPC and postcode, we managed to get free solar panels and insulation which would have otherwise cost us over 10k together! The scheme we used unfortunately is now closed, but was called the HUG2 scheme.

Reading this made me frustrated on your behalf. Thats such a lot of money to ultimately feel like part of your household hates it anyway. I am hoping/would hazard a guess that your home has at least some redeeming features, or is in a great location? Will you be staying for the foreseeable?

How do you feel/what's your capacity for DIY? It took us 2 summers but we managed to knock down a garage that we took to the tip in about 1000 journeys and bags, levelled ground, planted grass seed and built planters that we filled with flowers. We used reclaimed decking, which we also then used to make a seating area. I hadn't heard of wood reclamation yards and wood recycling, but we got 10m2 of decking for £100. All in all, the garden work plus a garden set in great condition from facebook market place cost us less than £500 and we loved it! I'm not going to include the £500 it cost us to sort the suspension on the car after taking 2 tonnes of bricks to the tip.

It is so hard not to feel bogged down when the to do list keeps growing.

We found out from neighbours that the previous owner kept getting raw sewage up through the kitchen sink. We discovered this after ripping out the kitchen, discovering an uneven floor, caused by what we thought was a water leak. Once we peeled back the flooring, it was clear from the stench that bodily excretions had leached into the floor causing it to warp. Underground pipes and manholes had to be rectified. Luckily that's all sorted now but of course was an unanticipated challenge and cost! It was an actual shit show for several weeks.

Will this be your forever home?

Gosh, everything is so expensive these days. Even paints and brushes etc havd at least doubled compared to 5 years back.

The question of "is it worth it" I'm afraid can only be answered by you!

Do you feel the extra space and possible potential in this new property justifies the substantial additional cost (and I'm assuming your mortgage payments)? What will you gain by moving there if it is already very local to you? Do those things make it feel worth it?

I think it's not just a £ investment, it's about your time too. My husband spends a lot more time physically doing things, but I spend a lot of time searching for budget items online, keeping a check on spreadsheets. And, time is money!

I think if its your perfect or forever home, you can't really put a price on that and therefore the time, money and energy you invest won't matter. But if it's not, I would think carefully about buying. Its a lot to give up or sacrifice for something that you aren't 💯 about.

Definitely forever home for me. Which kind of makes it harder to manage in some ways because I feel like I want to make the investment in the good quality long-term choices rather than doing cheaper short term quick fixes

I’ve found my people. 3 years in. Been an absolute roller coaster but feel like I’m turning a corner. Awful builder (who had done our last house, so we trusted) made the first year living here so bad. We lost loads of money as had to redo work. It was awful. We’ve live here the whole time and have small children so it’s been tough. However just before Xmas we moved into our new kitchen extension and it feels like a game changer. We’ve now done kitchen /diner, 4 bedrooms, are currently doing thr snug. We’ll just have the landing/hallway to do and then a spruce up of existing bathrooms. It’s been harder than I thought; especially in the dark days of dodgy builders but is worth it now. We have a house we could t have afforded. I’m ready to finish for a while this summer and concentrate on something other then that house for a while

Ooh do you mind if I ask about your leak, @Geneticsbunny? In fact you may have helped me on another thread when I had a different name, but I’ll ask again in case! The house we’re buying may have a leak underground, which has made a wall damp and rotted the floor joists. Did you have something similar?

@NonParloItaliano Had or has a leak? That needs fixing first.
Floor joists are not a difficult thing to replace, though pulling up the floor boards can often ruin them. It’s a good opportunity to insulate under the floor, reinforce or alter the dwarf wall, or even install deeper joists. New joists usually need their ends covered in a suitable plastic to prevent damp penetration again.
You could even change from traditional wood to an I-joist.

I live in Spain and recently had to have an entire rewire of my not very big single storey 3 bed house which cost about €16k. It was going to burn down if I didn’t do it so not much choice!

we’ve renovated the entire house over two years and it’s cost about €170k with no extensions (pretty much impossible to extend in Spain as your land has a maximum build space you can have)

if you think the UK is expensive, try doing it over here!

@NonParloItaliano I think I remember your other thread. We don't have joists in the room which was affected. We have a stone floor with a vaulted brick cellar underneath, so everything was wet but nothing had rotted through. Once the mains water was stopped, the wall dried out, we replastered in lime plaster and haven't had any problems since.

We still have an ongoing damp issue in another bit of the house by that's a whole other story. (Leaky gutter but it's wood and so difficult to repair and might actually be the downpipe which is causing the problem).

I did not do very well with keeping this thread active! How are we all doing?

So far, we've had the below completed:

• Full house rewire
• Under floor heating to most of downstairs, new radiators throughout upstairs (very lucky to have met neighbours who are heating engineers which helped cut costs massively!)
• New screed floor downstairs
• Structural works: knocking down structural walls, creating door ways out of windows, and splitting the main bathroom into an ensuite and main bathroom
• ripped out a spiral staircase and replaced/moved direction for straight staircase
• creating a utility room and adding downstairs bathroom out of the old kitchen
• changing soil stacks and moving drainage
• some plastering
• solar and insulation (via government scheme).
• brand new kitchen, appliances and worktops (not yet fitted)
• 1 full bathroom suite and tiling (still have 2 empty and stripped out bathrooms to do though...)

We have a small amount of budget left, which we've ring fenced for bifold doors for the kitchen to make it water tight before winter, a couple windows, and the the supply and fit of flooring. After that, we have nothing left in the purse. We still need approx 7k to do the rest of the windows, about 2k to get a nice balustrade and bannister added to stairs, about 3-4k for carpets, about 8k for bathrooms, and about 4k for a fireplace. We've done a lot of work ourselves. All of this other stuff we'll just have to save and buy as we go. I'd also love new furniture. However, I am elated with how much we managed to achieve on about 60k! We aren't in a hurry to finish as it's our forever home, so we'll just save and do at our leisure.

I got very stressed with finances throughout. But i think that forced us to be frugal and creative. We did things like save the copper pipe that was stripped out of the house, to take to a scrap yard which gave us a few hundred ££ and paid for the staircase. We also repurposed an old kitchen carcass and just replaced the door for our utility room, rather than spending thousands extra for it to match our new kitchen. We also sold the very antiquated (but out of place) fireplace which bought flooring for the utility and worktop, door, sink and tap for utility. We also bought our whole downstairs bathroom suite for under 1k by buying ex display. Hoping we can do that again for our ensuite and main bathroom!

Costs are crazy though. And some quotes we received were down right bizarre throughout. But there is light at the end of the tunnel now! I'll see if I can attach some pictures just as a general update!

After I spent £30k in a bathroom last year (rotten joists, uneven walls, etc etc), I realise anything house wise goes in multiples of £15k.kkkrying

I'm not sure this is going to work because it seems I am limited to one photo (even though it says up to 5!) But I can share the insta I have been using to share images with family, if anyone is interested.

@Yemelade I'm looking at nothing near as ambitious but I am very worried about what I am getting into - not had survey done yet but so far I know house needs a new bathroom suite, new carpets upstairs, 3 rear windows done (units are blown) a new boiler and ideally a kitchen re-fit so new doors on the units, new oven and white goods. I also posted here a while back as its got 1970s "floating" stairs that need to be stripped painted and re-carpeted. No idea about wiring.

I've probably got £5k in cash to spend on all that after which I can only draw on my pension fund. I'm thinking this isn't going to work - I'm on my own, early 60s, got a nervous dog and even basic painting is a challenge (because I am incapable not because of any age related medical condition!) (unless you count delusions of available finances).

I did get a 3 bed semi refurbished about 8 years ago, spent maybe £30k but it was much more work than what I've listed above so I am thinking that's lulled me into a false sense of security ...

That's a very ambitious budget! Are you able to prioritise and take it in stages? Perhaps live with the bathroom suite just for now? I don't think anything is impossible, but my gosh the price of everything these days (not including the price of labourer and tradie time) is astronomical.

Sorry, have I misread... are you trying to do all that on £5k?

I'm in the north east so cheaper area of UK and you would be looking at around:

£4,000+ for a new basic bathroom
£300+ cheap carpets & underlay (more for fitting or if its big rooms)
£1,800+ for windows
£3,000-ish for a new boiler

Kitchen harder to budget as jobs are unique but our refit is costing £6,000 not including the £2,470 for the kitchen rewire and fuse board and another £1,000 for white goods.

We have spent over £1,000 on the products need just to DIY strip walls, fix cracks and damage, prime and paint.

I usually think amounts mumsnet post can be a bit insane (especially london prices) but honestly you will be lucky to do 1 or 2 things on your long list for £5k. If you had £30k thats more do-able, work done years ago was MUCH cheaper with brexit and COL materials have gone up greatly in price.

@housethatbuiltme - I need to do as much as I can initially with the £5k - bathroom and carpets would be a priority. It's a very solid house - if I had to I could live with all of it as it is, but I wouldn't like to. Bathroom has no shower so really I'd be kidding myself that I can cope with that, and I'd prefer new bedroom carpets. Just don't know if it's sensible at all to spend that then have to live with the rest for another 5 years.

You’ve made a lot of progress but genuinely ….you seem to be jumping about rooms / projects ….why didn’t you prioritise getting all the windows and bifold in so the place was watertight and then can take your time inside?

These prices are horrendous! Really hoping some savvy politicians will do something to help young people into trades. Everyone seems to be a uni graduate looking for a well paid hybrid desk job but there must be some great careers in trades if only there were good apprenticeships available.

I have a family member who is an excellent builder/joiner and he could be booked out for decades. Instead he got together with another family member and they have spent the last few years renovating houses in tourist areas and Airbnb ing them. They have three now and are doing very well.

I bought a modern house because of costs. Even so there’s always something to do. Just had some joinery work done for £4k. It took one man one week of 5 hr days. The materials were well under £1k. I feel lucky to have found that tradesmen as well! Why is labour so so expensive?

Thanks, we're really happy with the progress.

We are jumping from room to room because we are working in priority order, or we need to work with the availability of other trades and services. Some windows in the house are fine and we are upgrading for aesthetic reasons only, so the "aesthetic" window replacements can wait, we are in no hurry. Our windows and bifolds were the cheapest but best quality we could find. But that's because the company don't keep a stock of windows and make all windows to order, so there was a substantial wait. We also could not get the exact measurement for the bifolds, until we completed the structural work, e.g. cutting the hole for the doorway where the bifolds will sit. But because we had a builder over the course of a specific amount of time, we booked him in to do multiple structural jobs together to save money. Asking him to come back to complete this work separately would have costed several thousands more. It may not make sense to you, but from a project and budget management point of view it's worked for us. I'm not interested in trying to tick off a full "job" in totality from my list if it means sacrificing budget, or not getting other work done that is cheaper when done in combination with other jobs.

All of the trades we've been working with, so this is builders, electricians, roofing companies, heating/gas engineers etc have similar stories of apprentices starting work, but quickly leaving because they didn't realise how "hard" or long the days would be. All left with either no further job option lined up, or in pursuit of desk jobs. I don't really blame young people for seeking an arguably more sedentary and predictable desk job because that's exactly the type of job I myself have. But because of that, good tradespeople are harder and harder to find and the ones that remain are able to charge a fortune because they are in demand. The ones that dont charge a fortune are booked for years. Materials are only going up too, but I doubt anything will make that change, everything from groceries to fuel is also up too!

Everything is so expensive now I was surprised to see on this thread that a new boiler and radiators for a four bedroomed house had cost £3500.

Assuming that includes installation is that not an exceptionally low price?

I live in an area where housing is cheap (although trades not so cheap) but am pretty sure I'd have to pay quite a bit more than that.