Rebuilding a house - absolute beginer so all and any advice gratefully received!

Tetsugaku-San

Hello everyone, hope you're having a great day!

My Landlord recently served us notice and the wife & I started the usual search for properties. Living in Brighton, the 3 bed house we're looking for looked like it was going to cost us £1,600 a month, too much for me to be happy with.

At the same time - my grandfather has been permanently taken into a home leaving his 2 bed terraced house empty. All things being good (he thinks it's a good idea) we intend to move in there (my mother was born there) extensively renovate it (back to brick, remove chimney stack, bedroom in roof, knock down and rebuild extension etc.) and happily live there with our new born daughter and more kids as they come

So - that's the very broad strokes dream:T. Thing is, I've never even owned a house before, let alone done any building work. I really have no idea where to start, or how to act to ensure I don't get ripped off.

If you have any advice or pitfalls to tell me about, resources, websites or books I'd really, really appreciate the help.

Thanks!

wallbash

Check out this thread , but its huge , so my biased advice start with page 98 and posting #1959


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1186031

Every thing is possible , you just have to get on with it.

iamana1ias

Tetsugaku-San wrote: »

At the same time - my grandfather has been permanently taken into a home leaving his 2 bed terraced house empty. All things being good (he thinks it's a good idea) we intend to move in there (my mother was born there) extensively renovate it (back to brick, remove chimney stack, bedroom in roof, knock down and rebuild extension etc.) and happily live there with our new born daughter and more kids as they come

So - that's the very broad strokes dream:T. Thing is, I've never even owned a house before, let alone done any building work. I really have no idea where to start, or how to act to ensure I don't get ripped off.

If you have any advice or pitfalls to tell me about, resources, websites or books I'd really, really appreciate the help.

Thanks!

Friends of mine are in the middle of doing the exact same to a Victorian end of terrace. They have done/are doing much of the work themselves after work and at weekends to save on labour costs.




It's taken 3 years so far, and about £50k. :eek:

The mess/lack of heating/kitchen/bathroom during different parts of work has been unbelievable. No way would I go near that with kids!

phill99

Always make sure that the building is wind and water tight first ie the roof doesn't leak, windows are in good condition. Then think about the internal services ie elctricity, central heating etc. then choose a room at a time as budget / time allows and go for it, until its done.

Will take a time, but you will get there in the end.

27col

A lot depends on whether you intend to do all or most of the work yourselves. Weatherproofing has to be a high priority as already stated. phill99 has summed it up quite succinctly.

Mojisola

Has your grandfather enough capital to pay for his care without selling the house? You don't want to invest lots of your time and money into a house that is then sold.

It's your choice but I wouldn't do that scale of renovation while living in the house with babies/young children.

ukmaggie45

Mojisola wrote: »

Has your grandfather enough capital to pay for his care without selling the house? You don't want to invest lots of your time and money into a house that is then sold.

Mojisola is right to raise this. If your Grandfather has gone into a care home he will have to pay for his care himself until his capital (including the value of his house) has reduced to something like £16,000 at which time his local authority will begin to pay on a sliding scale...

Take a look at some of the posts on this stuff over on the Over 50s Forum, particularly this thread on Continuing NHS Care.

Also check out "deprivation of assets" on the forums here.

Tetsugaku-San

Thanks everyone for the advice - I've had a look over that thread and it really is a large one! I'll finish it eventually I suppose, all looks relevant as well!

Maybe I should stick to the bits that are unique to me in this thread?

Mojisola wrote: »

Has your grandfather enough capital to pay for his care without selling the house? You don't want to invest lots of your time and money into a house that is then sold.

It's your choice but I wouldn't do that scale of renovation while living in the house with babies/young children.

You're right to ask, it's a point we've been talking about a lot recently. In short - no he hasn't, enough to last a while but not that long. Good news is that he does have an income from pension and DLA which is enough to pay for half the care, the other half we'll gladly pay for as long as he lives. The current plan is to have the house signed over to me (under the inheritance threshold), borrow money against the house to pay to convert it and then live in it. Even paying for a mortgage and half the care, the house still costs us the same as renting, but with the bonus of a) keeping the house and, harsh as it sounds, not having to pay for half of the care home for ever. In fact, once the cost of the care has exceeded the value of the house when it was assessed (£250K) the council take on the cost. It would be nice if he did, but I don't think, at 86, he'll live another 15 years.

Living in the house whilst doing it up - not a hope Small baby and running two businesses, both partially from home means we couldn't do it, I'm negotiating with my landlord to stay on at the current house whilst he looks for a buyer, would mean a short term, no notice agreement, but if push comes to shove at that point we could spend a few weeks at my mums whilst getting a proper, short term let somewhere.

Anyway - I suppose all this is the sort of thing I need help with! Taking the dangerous route for sure but I suppose nothing in life comes without some risks

Thanks everyone

1220charlee

Bumping this in the hopes of some more general tips. I'm The Wife.

abdulh

I did something similar about 18 months ago (as in do up a house from bare brick).

I bought a 3 bed house after the elderly owner who had lived in it for 71 years (since it was new) had died.

We applied for planning permission to extend, this in itself was a bit of a mission. We wanted to do a wrap around extension to the side and back to give us 5 bedrooms and three decent reception rooms.

We had a lot of tooing and froing with the council and it took about 6 months for the planning permission to be approved.

We found a builder who was going to erect the shell of the extension and then we were going to get the rest of the work done from other contractors or ourselves, things like the plumbing, windows, plastering, electrics, etc.

There was quite a bit of excavation required as we wanted to build a double garage under the side extension (the house is on a slope). We under-estimated the amount of earth that needed to be removed. It cost me about £10,000 just to have the earth taken away (54 lorry loads).

On the first day of digging we discovered the sewer pipes were not where we had thought so these would have to be relayed adding to the cost.

Then the builder went through the main water pipe which not only fed our house but the neighbours (who has been a saint throughout the build).

The house took over a year to complete with delays because of bad weather, etc. Before we had finished the builders had cut through the gas pipe and twice the electric cable in the drive, the second time the electric company came out to fix the cable and they went through the gas pipe.

It was not the builders fault as the pipes and cables were not dug in very deep and we had to remove a lot of earth.

I work in IT and dont have a great amount of DIY experience but it was an extremely stressful couple of years, dealing with the tradesmen was one of the biggest headaches.

we did a lot of work ourselves, things like tiling, decorating, the wood work.

Overall we spent a lot more money then we had originally thought.

Now living in it, was it worth it? YES as there is no way I could have afforded to go out and buy a house this size that was already done up. Would I do it again? Probably not.

They say moving house is the most stressful thing you do. Well let me tell you doing a big extension is ten times worse.

I am not trying to scare you but if you take these points on board from the start you will be better prepared and will be able to cope better when things dont go according to plan.

It is quite amazing to see the transformation of the property from how it was to how it is now.

Some bits of advice:
1) Try to plan things in advance, even small things as these can add to delays later.
2) Bare in mind delivery times for things like bathrooms suites and they can take several weeks
3) When you get items delivered, check them for faults as if you dont get round to fitting them for a few months the delivery company will not take any responsibility for any damage they have caused.
4)If you are taking the house back to brick, think carefully about where you want electric sockets, tv points and perhaps even ethernet cable.
5) Use the internet to find things cheaper, 5% difference in price soon makes a lot of difference when you are dealing in thousands rather tens of pounds.
6) Insulate well. Both heat and sound insulation


As I said our extension was quite large so I am probably making this seem a lot worse then what you can expect, but it is best to be prepared for the worst.

Send me your email in a PM and I will send you some before and after pictures of our project.

Good luck!!!