Would you buy an older property if you and your DH were clueless at DIY/plumbing/all things practical?

[notamumyetbutoneday]

Just that really. We have seen The House That Dreams Are Made Of. It is a beautiful, old, Grade II listed farmhouse. We havent actually been to view it as yet as I am sure we will instantly fall in love with it and ours has only gone on the market this week.

I am wondering though, should a couple how are totally clueless at DIY etc, even consider looking at an older property such as this which will inevitably need upkeep over the years? We can decorate and do the cosmetic stuff but neither of us has any idea when it comes to heating, plumbing, anyhting like that really.

Any thoughts welcome as we are in serous danger of falling in love with this house!

how big is your cheque book?

personally I'd be put off by the listing not the age

If you can afford to pay other people to do what needs to be done, then yes, definitely.

YES YES YES!

Yes, so long as your mortgage costs etc will allow you enough to be able to get people in to do the work as and when needed. Not if you'll be struggling to make ends meet, as then you will not be able to look after it properly, and that will be a shame for the house and frustrating for you.

I would if

a) I had someone that I trusted who would be able to advise me.

b) I had the money to spend on professionals to do the work

c) I had the time to supervise the work being carried

d) I was willing to live in a bit of chaos while work was being done - and would be realistic about how long it would take.

Not very big at all Eldon! Especially as this house would be the top of our budget.

I dont know a lot about Grade II listings and what they mean from a day to day practicality point of view- I thought it just meant you couldnt rip out the windows and replace them with UPVC, etc?

Any more info on what listings mean would be much appreciated.

Sorry X-posts, I was googling at the same time. Thanks all. I guess it would depend whjat a survey would bring back in terms of how much work needs to be done. it seems in good condition but obviously not being a DIY expert I might be missing something.

Yes a combination of good builders and a will to learn is all you need and of course cash!I was clueless when I first did this and 10 houses later I have made a reasonable career out of it and LOVE it!

Sorry I should have clarified that when I say older property it is in fact in lovely condition- there is no immediate work that needs doing- it has been refurbished by the current owners. I was more thinking that in years to come there would be things doing and of course anyhting thrown up as a result of the survey.

Ooh im talking myself into it!

i had a listed building and had no trouble at all with the listing and planners. in fact they were wonderfully helpful on the day I notied that the main beam holding up the bedroom ceiling had a crack in it - not a split along the lenght, but a crack across the middle. I was lying on my back in bed at the time. They came round immediately; found a builder and props, and let us put a steel rsj in instead on the grounds that it was an honest repair.

I've had old and I've had new. Old in good nick is my favourite. You need money more than DIY skills - roofs, electrics, plumbing etc aren't necessarily DIY jobs. and you will learn fast!

We have a listed building now, and I'd agree with MissingTheAction that the listings people can be very helpful indeed. Our house was superficially in good nick, but in practical terms actually needs a lot of work doing on it. We have just kept on and on finding problems that need to be fixed, many of which were not the type of thing to be picked up on by a survey.

We very much like our house, and I don't regret buying it, although it takes much, much more time than I anticipated (I run the building renovations and do the DIY), but DH, who was the one who fell in love with it and insisted we bought it, occasionally does. He finds living in a house with rooms out of action quite stressful.

The biggest thing I've found is that you have to be very careful about the tradespeople you use - picking someone who is good but has no experience of old buildings can lead to mini disasters. You have to have specialists for the most surprising things, and this may cost extra money.

You also need to budget for specialist materials - for example, you might be needing to replace guttering with iron guttering, done by a specialist iron guttering company, who will then need scaffolding, which is not cheap. etc etc. There are also rather odd things like needing to buy wall lights that are designed for actually lighting rooms rather than supplying additional light - which to my surprise reduces your choice and potentially costs extra money.

I think you do also need a sizable amount of money saved to spend on any unexpected repairs that come up. e.g. for the moment that you open a window and it falls apart in your hands, or when the dining room ceiling collapses.

DH and I agreed that we would buy our house and accept that it meant that we would probably go on holiday less, buy fewer clothes, etc etc. And I certainly do now look at things and think 'I could buy those shoes, or I could have a day's plastering work done.'

As I say, I don't regret it at all, but I think we were slightly naive about what we took on, and I think I could have ended up in a position where I resented DH for having to give up other ambitions to look after a house.

Of course. That's what tradesmen were invented for.

Wow thats a sobering thought GM. I would imagine like you we would be going into this very naively. I certainly wouldnt have thought about having to get iron guttering rather than plastic, etc.

What kind of things came up that needed doing that didn't come up on the survey, if you don't mind me asking? I know every house is different ts just that this sounds similar in that it seems fine to look at superficially like yours but obviously there could be hidden problems.

Oh, I love going on about my house!

So, on the survey was the apparently major problem, which was damp. This was what had stopped anyone else buying the house. (One sale had falled through after the survey, and as a result of that, the owner gave anyone who requested a second view a copy of not one but two surveys, as she'd had a second survey done...) Ironically, I have appear to have fixed quite a lot of the damp problem myself, with the aid of my lovely builder, the SPAB, and their two day homeowners course (which I keep banging on about on here, but it must be the best 100 quid I've ever spent).

Problems that weren't mentioned included the poor state of a lot of the windows (which need to be repaired by a specialist joiner costing many many pounds), the amusing places where missing plaster had been replaced with plaster board (sounds minor but looks dreadful), the lack of insulation in one room, the incredible lack of soundproofing / insulation in the ceilings / floors of a couple of rooms, the irritating electrics (we had them checked out for safety, but not for practicality, iyswim), etc etc. Also not mentioned are the cellars that the builders have just found

We're currently doing our dining room, which has involved the joiner, the plumber, the electrician, and the lime plasterers. All of whom I co-ordinate, and have to be around to meet with. And technically this is just a "repair". God knows what will happen when we actually start making changes.

One issue is that you can't buy much off the shelf - e.g. we needed a new door, but we can't buy a door to fit the space, so we have to have a door made. We removed some cupboards from the kitchen, which meant we needed some new architraving and skirting, but it had to match the existing architraving and skirting, so we had to have architraving and skirting made to match. (having taken bits of architraving and skirting into Travis Perkins and B&Q and held them up against everything in stock).

But having said all this, we did knowingly buy a house which needed work doing and paid less money because of that - it's just that the work that needed doing isn't the work that we expected!

p.s. I've just gone back and re-read your post, and to be honest, and very reluctantly, I'd say that if the house is at the top of your budget, I wouldn't do it. We have a sizeable pot of money put aside specifically for the house, and when things go wrong, it makes a massive difference to the way i feel about it.

notamumyetbutoneday - do not touch it with a bargepole unless you are prepared to use prfessional workmen and have a large pot of money.

Grade II Listed buildings are notoriously difficult to renovate, require secialist skills and materials and everyting you do to the listed parts has to be passed by the local authority Heritage department. I do not agree they are nice and helpful - they can be very very strict.

I have seen far to many Listed houses badly done up that the buyer paid far too much for and then tried to do up on their own and run out of time, skills and money.

It is really really hard work and not something that is possible to do on a basic DIY basis. Also Listed prperty often has hidden problems you cannot see and may well turn into a money pit.

If you are determined to buy then do be realstic and make sure you factor in the cost of professional workmen. Also check that the previous owners have not done unauthorised repairs such as PVC windows and plastic drain pipes and gutters. I live in a Grade ii listed house (rented) that the owner (our Landlord) did up but did it badly and as we have lived here 3 months we can now see all the parts that will need to redone and ripped out. Including leaking roof and plastic gutters and drain pipes. All the rendering will have to be ripped off and replaced, the sash windows need refurbishing and the chimney stacks rebuilding, complete rewiring, and the lead on the roof all over needs replacing. There is no way we would have known that if buying it even with a survey. It looks superficially in good condition and well decorated.

We live in a period property and although I do love it and can't imagine living in a modern house, it does have its challenges.

DH is very capable at DIY but has a job that is stressful and works long hours. So although he is willing and has the ability to do the work he doesn't have the time.

We can afford to pay for tradesmen but sometimes it is difficult to find people avaliable. You may have to wait months which is frustrating when you want to get on with it. Same with sourcing materials. I have spent more weekends than I care to remember traipsing round reclamation yards in the rain looking for door knobs, brackets and the like. Many things have to be made rather than bought off the shelf which is expensive and time consuming.

What appears to be a simple redocorating job can often lead to expensive work that has to then take priority. For example stripping wallpaper means you will have to replaster the whole room before you get to hang that new wallpaper.

I sometimes get resentful about the amount of time and money (mainly time) we spend on the house. Sometimes it just gets too much and I call a halt so we can have what I consider to be a normal life for a while.

We have now completed most of the major work but it really is like the Forth Bridge in terms of keeping up with maintainence and repairs. I do worry that the boys will look back on their childhood and think that they had a lovely house but Dad wasn't always avaliable to play with them as much as they would like. And I do sometimes fantasise about what my wardrobe and shoe collection could be like if I had a 'normal' house.

Having said all of that I do love my home and feel really privileged to be its custodian for a while.

Thank you so much everyone- I showed DH this thread and you have really given us food for thought. Grendels Mum- what you say about the damp in your house being the reason no-one else had bought it previously- I do wonder if there is something similar in this case, as the house is sooo gorgeous I am sure it would have been snapped up straight away if there wasn't anything 'wrong' with it but globrix shows it has been on the market over 2 months.

Could you link to it, so we can check it out for you? (or tell us where it is so we can find it via Globrix) There may be some issues we nosy people old house experts can spot.

I'd be surprised if people are being put off by damp issues at this point unless they are incredibly obvious - i.e. wallpaper falling off, efflourescence, smell of damp as you walk in, etc.

It's not unlikely that the layout is awkward / impractical - e.g. bedrooms accessed through other bedrooms, bathrooms badly located, bedroom accessed via bathroom, two different staircases to reach two halves of the house, etc.

Apart from that, Jacaqueen has hit the nail on the head. Everything she says is true. Esp about having to wait for the specialist tradespeople!

Ok, as long as you all promise not to buy it... [selfish]

Do you all love it as much as I do?!

here it is

I would love to know what you all think!

I love it more every time I look at it

Our house was virtually derelict when we bought it.

But my father is a builder and DH's good friend is a plumber. He also knows a tiler and carpet fitter and some one with a huge van and some one who owns a skip company and... Well you get the picture

It's still hard work and bloody expensive. There are always unexpected things popping up taht require yet more money/time.

My house wasn't a listed building and is very small, but it still cost us a small fortune and drove us to dispair most days.

I'd only go through it again for a very, very. very special house that I knew I would NEVER NEVER move from.

God it's bloody gorgeous. Buy it.

It looks in good nick.

Lunar 66- I know, I know! I honestly beleive if we didn't, we would live to regret it.

But of course, if we did buy it and it turnes into a money pit, then of course we would regret not buying some sparkly newbuild. ARGH!