First-time house renovation

helping_hubby

Hello everyone,
We had a weekend off which was much needed. Went shopping for a TV as ours blew up last week (It's a Christmas present from both our parents and OH and I to eachother, or we couldn't afford it as our house budget is gone now).

The only thing we've done is move our bed and bits into bedroom 2, making bedroom 1 a shell for redecorating.

latecomer

Social life? whats one of them?

The OH and me have never been huge socialisers, and these days its even rare to go to the pub unless its with others. Neither of us a big drinkers (althuogh I do like the odd real ale) so we dont tend to spend much on alcohol. We tend to cook large meals at the weekend and freeze it into portions for easy meals during the week. As well as being a lot more healthy than a lot of quick alternatives, its also a remarkably cost-effective way of eating well.

When we bought our house we knew it would take a lot of effort and some money to get it looking like it should. We also always planned to do a loft conversion and we deliberately kept money back for that. The idea of a side extension does change things a lot but I'm still confident we can do the majority of the work for the money we have allocated provided we do a lot of the work ourselves.

Thinking about extensions I haven't heard from the architect for some time so I'm going to give him a call and see whats going on. I suspect he might be sulking after our last meeting as he had ignored what we discussed and just done his own thing. So I told him it wasn't what we discussed and re-explained what we were after and the threw in the little detail of wanting a side extension too :rotfl:

Joking aside we want to start this in the spring so we do need to get things started as planning permission takes long enough even if there are no problems.

BB1984

Oh don't get me started on the VAT thing - the government is driving me mad! How is it possibly going to make the slightest bit of difference?! It's the equivalent of me saying I can't afford xmas because I've got too much debt.....but sod it, I'll buy everything I want as normal - I'll just get another credit card.....! I think the only reason they're doing it is because they know full well that they won't survive the next election, therefore they won't have to pick up the pieces from the mess of our economy caused by their short-term crowd-pleasing tactics. (and breathe!)

Sorry, rant over, back on topic now!

To answer your question, Andrew, yes, OH and I have made some sacrifices for our house. Firstly, to buy in the first place meant saving hard for a deposit. And now, our social lives are non-existant - can't remember the last time I went out with friends! We used to go to the pub several times a week, but now we've both given up drinking altogether. Having said that, we're not living like paupers, and if it wasn't for the fact that we're also saving for our wedding next year, we'd be fine!

Would we'd have bought if we knew that recession was around the corner? Not sure. But at this point in time I think we made the right decision. We got our house for £35K less than the asking price, and we bought it in the full knowledge that we'd have to spend a fair bit to get it ship-shape. But we also worked on the basis that we could counter-act future drop in equity by adding value through the refurb works. We also bought somewhere that we could stay in for a good few years, if needs be - we are getting married next year and will start thinking about kids etc in the next few years.

So as long as we can pay the mortgage, we won't find ourselves "stuck" in a tiny house with not enough space to bring kids up in.

Oh - the other reason I'm glad we bought when we did is the fact that we prob only just got a mortgage by the skin of our teeth! We only had 11% deposit, so we'd have real trouble getting one now, or for the foreseeable future.

All in all, I'm happy with my lot!

latecomer

Just out of interest BB, what mortgage term did you go for? We went for 5 year fixed as we wanted the safety of knowing that the payments wouldn't go up. We are also planning on staying here for a good few years but as with everything who knows what life has in store for you.

TomsMom

We had no choice really. We had a restaurant, OH developed an incurable condition requiring chemo so we had to sell the business. As we lived above that was our home gone too. However, we bought a house for considerably less than we sold the business so we had the money for the renovation. Mind you, as time goes on and more work is being done, more problems have been found so the renovation costs are going up. And, because of the circumstances we've paid off the mortgage :j with help from the critical illness insurance we had. Mind you, we're close to retirement age so the mortgage wasn't huge, we'd accrued some equity over the last forty years of property owning.

Because of owning a restaurant we didn't have a social life - we were always working when other people were socialising :rolleyes: including Christmas. Mind you were were never pub people so no problem.

Our biggest problem is that because it's so long since we did anything to a house (i.e. replacing kitchen/bathroom) we are out of touch with prices and it's come as a bit of a shock how much some things cost :eek:

As far as the VAT is concerned - I'm wondering how we are going to benefit from the reduction. I can't imagine that every VAT-able item in every shop is going to be reduced in price either on the price ticket or at the till. Can you just imagine the conversation with the customer assistant at Woolworths when buying a CD? Customer.... "Err, excuse me, this should have gone down in price because the VAT has been reduced". Assistant... " " :rotfl: :rotfl:

I've just had a kitchen quote for approx £3,500 inc VAT. Bear with me, OH has done the calculations.

That kitchen costs £2,978.73 + 17.5% VAT = £3,500.

So the basic cost of the kitchen is still £2,978.73, add VAT of 15% and it comes to £3,425.54.

So, I should be saving £74.46. So I now have to persuade the guy to reduce the price. That might be do-able with a local company where you know the people, but are big companies (likes of B&Q, etc.) going to do it? Well, of course they should but if I was buying a dress, say, is the dress shop going to reduce the price? It will be interesting to see what happens. I think Mr Darling should have made it clear how this reduction in VAT is going to be enforceable and how the consumer is going to get the benefit.

Back to the house........... are we bothered about the reduction in prices because of the recession? Well, no not really. I don't mean that to sound selfish as all our circumstances are different. We wont be moving again and with no mortgage we'll only have to pay the bills to feed, clothe and keep us warm.

Anyone in the older age bracket who has reached the stage where the mortgage is paid off is in a much better position than younger people. If the older, mortgage-less person wants to move the reduction in the sale price of their house is matched by a similar reduction in the purchase price of the new house. With a person with a mortgage, that mortgage was taken out on a property that was probably worth more when originally purchased than now so there's a real danger of equity being lost when that house is sold. Obviously in that case it's better to stay put for now and wait for house prices to rise again, if that's possible. It's a terrible situation for those forced to move for whatever reason (job change, etc).

Right, enough said. I'm off now.

helping_hubby

Andy, we were going to wait to see if the VAT went down, every penny counts and all that, but after nearly 3 weeks of me investigating TVs, we finally agreed on one and when we checked with the shop (House of fraser - 5 year warranty included) they didn't have any in stock or at the warehouse and the TV was 'released' in March, so I figured if I waited another week I might not be able to even buy it (or have to pay more for one online for the same 5 yr deal), so there and then we reserved the TV at another store and drove to buy it!

Do I regret buying a house? Nope. Our mortgage is the same as what were paying rent before. And the house is ours and I love it. We were very very lucky and had £50k from my parents. £40k went on the deposit and £10k held back for renovations (all gone now). We're also staying put for probably forever. Unless we win the lottery or something.

As for a social life, I do Mystery shopping which means I get paid to eat out and see films. Also do seefilmsfirst which gets us a few freebie trips to the cinema. Pigsback and nectar points get redeemed on cinema tickets. Tesco points get redeemed on meal vouchers. All these things help a bit. Other than that our friends don't have lots of spare cash either so we usually meet up at each others houses.

Shimmyhill

I have been following this thread and the various blogs for a while now, been very interesting reading and good fun watching the projects coming along.

Tomorrow we get the Keys to our 1950s Bungalow that needs some work doing to it so you can guess why this thread has been good reading !! We are in for a long term improvement but when we move in we have certain things that have to be done first.

Kitchen gutted ! (we are fitting a temp kitchen, already bought as we got a great deal on a wickes one just before it went up to full price !)
Electrics updated
Gas boiler checked out (was only installed 4 years ago so hopefully ok)
Insulation sorting

What i was wondering is what would you say is the things you didn't account for but needed to be done - any tips and things to look for would be of great help !

TomsMom

Welcome to the club Shimmyhill Bet you'll be all excited in the morning!

I'm not the best person to give tips or things to look out for because builders are doing the big stuff in our renovation. They have come across numerous "surprises" along the way, all down to the previous owner who had some very strange ideas regarding DIY.

Of course, you realise that now you've come out of the closet you absolutely must start a blog. The google one is very easy (has to be or I couldn't do it) so no excuses please

Have a great day tomorrow and keep us updated.

BB1984

Shimmyhill wrote: »

What i was wondering is what would you say is the things you didn't account for but needed to be done - any tips and things to look for would be of great help !

Hey shimmy - welcome, glad you finally introduced yourself! :hello:

Hmmmm things we didn't account for...well, for a start, add 10% to your predicted cost, for unforseeables! I think the main thing that surprised me, was how little bits and bobs added up. We hadn't priced for things like filler, wood glue, sandwiches(!), buckets (got through 5 so far), sponges, turps, replacement saw blades, sandpaper, pva, sand, levelling compound, silicon sealant, etc etc etc. All those little expendable things, plus tools that you don't have but need, and so on. We also added a lot to our costs by deciding to jig the layout so needing structural work. In addition, we decided to upgrade the old water main (not 100% essential right now, but decided to bite the bullet whilst we had the upheaval anyway). Sorry if i've put you off - it is good fun though, i promise!

helping_hubby - RE my mortgage. We have a 2-year discounted variable rate. We didn't have that many great options due to our high LTV, and the fixed rates all had enormous arrangement fees. We worked on the basis that we would change to a different deal after the 2 years are up - I just hope that we can get another mortgage then! Or otherwise that the rates are still low, so staying on the SVR won't be too bad. It's a bit of a minefield, this mortgage malarkey, but we decided in the end that the banks are all out to make money, they're not gonna do us any favours, so most of the mortgages work out as much of a muchness!

bb

helping_hubby

Hi Shimmy and welcome!

My advice would be to expect the worst in everything you do that way you can't be disappointed. But I'm a pessimistic.

As for money and funds, if possible I would stick to doing one room at a time, so if you do run out of funds then at least you won't have lots of half finished rooms. Also before buying something think about if you really need it now. We were so close to spending £400 on a sofa bed for bedroom 3, but now I'm so glad we didn't or we wouldn't have had enough money for the bathroom.

And keep all your receipts. B&Q accept refunds for up to 90 days. I'm already surprised at what we've taken back because we were certain we needed it at the time, but never actually opened/used.

Keep a list of things you will definitely need at somepoint (eg paint brushes, pots of paint) and buy them in bulk when there are vouchers (sometimes £5 off a £50 spend vouchers in newspapers) and B&Q have the 15% off weekends.