Anyone done a house renovation from afar?

[BudaisintheZONE]

Bought a house in Somerset and we live in Hungary. Needs new kitchen and some jigging around of walls and space downstairs, possible extending out a bit. Also needs new bathroom upstairs which will involve a wall knocking down and also converting a dressing room to an ensuite.

I want to get all the building work done while we are still overseas. I do know that it will be much harder than if we are there but I think it will be better than living there while it is done.

DH suggests getting the basic building work done but having the actual fittings etc installed when we are there.

Has anyone done anything similar? How bad is it either way? Any tips?

Wouldn't do it unless you have dear friend/family member/designer/etc to oversee on your behalf.

You will be spending far too much money to leave things entirely in the hands of your builder.

Unless you have someone that you trust implicitly (v. close friend or relative), I would wait to have it done.

Having said that, I am an architect and am currently in the usa, but used to work with a very capable architect in London who now has offices in Plymouth and Southernhay. I would highly recommend her to run a renovation project and I am sure you could trust her to do it responsibly while you were abroad. If you think it might be something you are interested in, let me know and I will pass on her information to you.

Not even if we hire a project manager?

i am at the site of our re-development every day and there are always small queries/changes to plans that need decisions made on asap.
i would wait until you are in the country and in the house, it will be more pain but defo more gain too.

I really wouldn't do it. There are unexpected small questions that come up every day, and in my experience, builders will ask you about them if you are there in the next room working from home, but will never phone an office, no matter how much you explain it's fine. (I think none of our builders believe in 'working from home.) So they'll just make their own decision, which may or may not be what you wanted, and you're then stuck with it.

But, to be perfectly honest, I shouldn't even have allowed DH to look after it for a day - the result is a phone in the most inaccessible part of the house meaning we can never reach it before the answerphone kicks in

Aargh. So not what I wanted to hear!! But thanks for your honesty.

It really depends on how much you care about the little things. Do you care if your hot water comes out of your cold tap and vice versa (there really are people who don't)? Do you care if your new wall is not perfectly flat? Do you care if the new door is actually on the opposite end of the room from where you wanted it? Do you care if the new light switch is behind the new door, so you can't turn it on when you enter the room without first shutting the door? As I mentioned in my earlier post, a good architect could oversee the project and prevent such things from happening, but a good architect will cost money.

Sorry Sofia - I missed your earlier post! Was looking last night on my iPhone.

I would love your friend's details please. Our house is in Taunton. Would that work or be too far?

I had to laugh about the hot water coming out of cold tap thing - that is exactly what happens in the kitchen in this house! Rented house. Built by landlord to live in but then he decided to rent it out instead.

I am an avid reader of interiors magazines and have seen lots of articles where people have managed renovations from overseas.

And Sofia - yes I really care about the little things. I care enough to make any builder redo anything that is not what we agreed! And that will be very clearly written into any contract that we sign. May even put in a financial penalty clause if things are not exactly as we agreed.

Recipe for disaster, imo, sorry!
Do you remember that tv programme about the journalist who bought a house in france with a friend, and they did the renovation while they lived in the uk? IIRC, the builders put a drain on the neighbours property, because nobody told them not to, and it wasnt their house, so they didnt care about disputes.

Sofia - sorry - meant to give my email! Budamn at gmail dot com.

Does it make any difference if I say that the previous owners of the house we bought are still actually living in it and just finishing all the small details on the new house they have built in the garden, we are possibly going to use their builders and the guy has offered to keep an eye and supervise?

I don't want to live in a building site. I really don't. I want it all done before I move back! I had it all planned in my head.

i'm with grendel's mum on this one. the builders may do what they think best, in good faith, it just may not be what you would have done and the little things will bug you!

Well have just sat and talked it all out with DH and think we have a plan.

We are going to stay in the house in July for 2 weeks and in that time will meet with a couple of architects and builders and come up with beginning of plan. Will start process of deciding exactly what we want and what we can do.

Next Easter we will come over and finalise everything, agree contract with builder etc.

The heavy building work will be done while we are not there. We will not plan to move in at this stage but will have plans in place and everything ordered to have everything ready to go and we will come over and rent cottage or something nearby for 2 weeks or so while the other stuff is being done. That will give us basic building work done and kitchen installed. Everything else will be done while we are there. So we will move in while builders/decorators etc still there. But I won't have to live in a complete building site.

I know there are some risks involved but hope that we have enough time to get things done as we want. Anything done that we have not agreed will just be redone. But it should be ok in that we will never have gotten so far down the line without our input that anything major should go wrong.

That is the plan. At the moment. May all change of course.

I think that sounds sensible Buda.
We are also overseas and had some minor work (ie new en-suite and new windows) done when we were not there. En-suite done by a friend so had no issues there and neighbour let the window people in the 3 days they were there.

2 summers ago we had a loft conversion done and decided to get it done whilst we were home. Of course DH only there for a week but I was there the rest of the time and it was a nightmare living in a building site. To make it worse I found out I was expecting DC4 the day before it all started and could have done without the constant hammering over my head everymorning (they started around 7am)

I want to get my kitchen done this summer and am tempted to try to get it done whilst we are not there but its just finding someone reliable/trustworthy. Our neighbour is fantastic but there is only so much we can ask him to do.

Hope it goes ok

Well, that sounds like a sensible setup. Having said that, the issue that we found was that the builders would ask us at the beginning of the day / week / project about the things that they and we knew needed deciding, but that there were always something that we didn't think to specify, simply because we've never done a house renovation before. It isn't anything major, but it's a lot of niggly little things, that if you get them right make the house easier to live in, and if you get them wrong are a perpetual nuisance, and sometimes once they're done, they can't be fixed without major delay and expense.

However, living in a house having renovations is certainly a little tedious and definitely dusty, so I think you always have to trade one set of disadvantages off against the other.