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.

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@Shamesame some of these people are comedians aren’t they! I’d forgotten how rubbish it is finding new people. We hadn’t done anything structural since we moved here but have everyone else so I got myself lulled into a false sense of security and didn’t do my whole I’m not sure we can afford to do this routine.

It’s expensive and does still chip but ScuffX for woodwork is worth it in my opinion as goes a really long way and is very easy to apply. I converted 2 of the guys working on my house.

I'm still waiting for the purchase of my doer upper to go through, so I'm reading with interest! They've started talking completion dates and so I've started to make a list of things that need doing, in stages. I know that when we actually walk in there for the first time, I will be overwhelmed!

Overwhelm is definitely something I've identified with throughout this process! And even when you think you've ticked something off the list, there are often times you need tradespeople back out to fix things or repair issues. We got karndean put down and it ended up lifting in several spots. It then took about 6 weeks to get the guy back out to fix!

Nice to see a new post (hello @Yemelade how is your stuff going?). Good news is that our wall (quoted £25,000!) wasn't as expensive as we thought it might be and we have finally found a roofer. In the meantime we have bought a scaf tower so we can sort the gutters out ourselves as they need some bodging because they are wooden and have bowed so the water just runs over the side in the middle of the gutter. We are going to just stick an extra bit of wood on and hope that fixes it...

I am thinking about finally doing some tiling in the kitchen to get it finished before christmas but I still can't decide on tiles.

Glad to hear it's ended up more affordable than initially thought! And good news on roofer too.

We equally had a tile dilemma. Not made easier by a severe lack of tile shops. 5 years ago we had so much variety to choose from to visit and see samples. This time around we've just relied on online retailers! Funnily enough, hubby tried his hand at tiling thr kitchen today. He managed to get half way through! We have purple flecks in our granite and these are lavendar tiles but more subtle grey with purple undertones.

It looks great!

I've all but finished the dining and shower rooms! Just a door to go on but this will be after Christmas.

I'm waiting for the council to take some big items and then I can paint the base boards in the lounge. And sort out the garage.

It's taken me a year to not quite finish 3 rooms! To be fair it was from scratch.

Next year is the kitchen, hall and main bathroom. Then the outside at some point.

It's such a slog. I can never fully relax because I just want a finished home! Never again!

Very nice. Love the tiles. I think I want something a bit dramatic but I am terrible at choosing. I was looking at mermaid tiles but I think I have gone off them. They were a bit too much. I will have another look and see what would work.