New Bathroom onto Mortgage or Credit Card?

Gordie_2

Hi

I got married 6 months ago and have a mortgage for £195 on our house which is worth £210. The kitchen & bathroom hadn't been touched for 30 years so we spent £8k on a new kitchen. I now need to do the bathroom (estimated at about £7k).

What should I consider to help me decide if I should put the bathroom onto a new credit card or onto the mortgage? The mortgage company (Intelligent Finance) have said that they'd come round afterwards for £50 to revalue the house and increase the mortgage inline with the new value of the property.

I have £12k on my Egg card @ 5.9% for lifetime of balance (mostly made up of the new kitchen cost!) Given that I already have £12k on a card, might I be best to stick it on the mortgage?

In case you're wondering, we DO need to do the bathroom. It is simply horrible and we are hating using it every day.

TIA
Gordie

maryjane01

I think it sounds like you rae hoping somebody will turn around and say it's ok, put it on your mortgage! It may be a low rate of interest, but you pay interest over the term of the mortgage (25 years?) so it works out a lot more expensive. How long do you think it would take to pay off the bathroom? If less than 12 months, apply for a new 0% interest on purchases crdit card. Some cards do 0% interest on purchases for 12 months. Also, try and cut the costs of the bathroom. Does it really need to cost you £7,000? Buy all bits your self. Ebay is great and so cheap for things like bathroom suits. We just got a bathroom suit for less than a 1/3rd of the retail price from a proper bathroom shop that gets rid of excess stock on ebay (check sellers feed back!). Get different people in to do the different bits and pieces and do what you can yourself. My partner and I are getting a really posh bathroom in London where labour charges are expensive, hopefully all in for under £5,000

sarkin

I'd go for the consolidation on the mortgage. As your credit card is on 5.9% if you shop around you should get rates lower on the mortgage. If you go this route make sure you can make over payments on the mortgage to reduce the balance you just added. The problem with 0% cards are that if you forget when the deal ends you get a whopping big apr hit and will be very costly. That is how the card companies make there money. If you have a good credit score you could be looking at sub 5%
Best thing to do contact whole of market broker for a quote.

uglybug

8K on a kitchen and 7K on a bathroom is perhaps a little excessive, especially if you have 12K on a card already. If you can afford it, fine.

However, I am moving in to a new house in a couple of days and have budgetted 6K for new kitchen, bathroom, carpets throughout (3 bed semi) and painting. The difference in a £200 suite and a £2k suite really are not worth the extra, and if you choose carefully and buy from the right place then it won't look cheap.

However, I am doing all the work myself in 9 16-hour days, which obviously means that I only have to pay for materials (and the gas man to connect the kitchen hob). You could probably nearly double my budget if you were getting someone else to do it.

lightspeed

This probably isnt what you want to hear, but, if you already have a 195K mortgage why would you want to add more to this already huge sum of money?

Does a new bathroom need to cost 7K? You can can bathrooms fitted for less than half that amount and if fitted professionally you willnot tell the difference.

IMHO, put up with it a little longer and SAVE up (an option you failed to mention for a new bathroom.

If you cant afford to buy it outright, you cant afford it. Only my opinion of course.

Crazy_Saver

The kitchen & bathroom hadn't been touched for 30 years so we spent £8k on a new kitchen. I now need to do the bathroom (estimated at about £7k).

I'm afraid I'm with everyone else so far on this one Gordie.

You don't say why the new bathroom is costing so much.

We have just had a bedroom with en-suite built and we saved hundreds by buying the bathroom furniture from e-bay.
Shower rrr £499 we paid £29.
Sink taps rrr £299 we paid £19
Stone double size shower tray rrr £200 we paid £75
Toilet basin,cistern, seat & fixings rrr £200 we paid £65
Heated towel rail rrr £75 we paid £26
etc., etc.,

All the items were genuine products, boxed and brand new. Most of them were bought from a very posh bathroom shop that also had an E-bay shop selling at incredibly discounted prices. We only realised this when we went to collect the goods and thought we were in the wrong shop!

We did the floor and wall tiling ourselves - bought at a discount trade centre of course.


We did a similar thing with our kitchen a few years ago. We ended up with a kitchen worth over £10k for £2500. Not from E-bay but by shopping around and fitting it ourselves.

I really do feel that if you can save money by shopping around as well as doing a bit of DIY, then it's all money that you can spend on other things instead of paying unecessary interest to the banks.

Good luck-what ever you decide:money:

Gordie_2

Thanks for the replies folks. A healthy dose of reality is kicking in. I guess we are going to have to suffer that flipping bathroom for a while longer!

Gordie

AMILLIONDOLLARS

I moved into my home in 1999, it had a 1970 bathroom, it's 2006 and it still has a grotting 1970 bathroom!! paying off my debts first is more important than a new bath, but it's a very close call at the moment - Ebay here I come!!!!:eek:

MortgageMamma

Why don't you just save up and do the bathroom bit by bit? you can get a nice bathroom suite from B & Q for about £500 and unless you wanted a bathroom fit for the queen I can't see how anyone could spend £7k on bathroom alone!

When I bought my first house I scratched around doing whatever I could with whatever spare cash I had, ate cheap, stopped going out, bought clothes from cheaper shops, walked instead of using my car. You'd be surpised just how much cash you can save!

Good luck whatever you choose.