Bought a huge mistake of a house: what to do?

northwest1965

Don;t forget for some work, external double glazed doors, heating, gas work, will all need certificates if you are selling in 4 years.

seven-day-weekend

To me it does not sound as though it needs much doing at all, all that is general maintenance.

We've had our house nearly forty years, it's now on the third lot of windows and doors and about fifteen decorations! Add in re-wiring and replastering to the mix too. And several kitchens and bathrooms. And my husband (approaching 65) has just been on the roof to repair a leak. :eek:

That's just part of being a homeowner.

fart

diretimes wrote: »

It needs a new interior and exterior doors, ceilings plastered, new carpets, outside fences and gate, woodchip wallpaper etc, replacing an old lean-to. The bathroom and kitchen are about 5 years old, but cheap and already showing their age.

Is there any way you can do some of this yourself? This would reduce the costs dramatically as you'd only pay for tools/materials to do the work with instead of labour.

2 chisels and a screwdriver are all that's needed to hang internal doors, maybe an electric drill. Could you perhaps pull up carpets and work with bare floorboards? Nice 'retro' look to them and miles cheaper to sand/varnish than laying down new carpet.

Fences are the easiest thing to fit - dig holes, stand posts up in hole, pour concrete in, pack down keeping posts level. Attach fences.

Bathroom should probably be tackled by someone who knows what they're doing but you could save on the kitchen by just replacing fronts if the carcasses are ok.

This seems far-fetched but with a bit of online reading it's easy to figure out how to do some of that stuff yourself which will dramatically save on the cost - ie, you're looking at probably 4 figures to put fencing in when in reality it's an easy job which requires a shovel and a spirit level.

2) Spend a bit to do the worst areas of the house and sell in 4 years time , but make do with the kitchen and bathroom and sell as requiring modernisation?

Try and save money by 'tarting up' in places i've mentioned such as the kitchen. If external doors are sound but look bad you could paint them if they're wood? You need to think of solutions which are going to improve the appearance of stuff without costing you a bomb! There are ways round stuff. For example there might be certain rooms which don't require a door between them like kitchen to dining room. Hard to know without seeing the layout.

duchy

I think you need to grow up and take responsibility for your own lack of attention to detail.

No one forced you to buy the house unseen. That was your choice. Saving for ten years and selling straight away at a loss because you don't like it is over reaction and sounds like a temper tantrum.

Once you start work on the house you'll become emotionally as well as financially invested in it and feel differently about it .....so long as you don't put up a big brick wall mentally and refuse to feel anything but hate for this less than perfect purchase.

Treat it as your learning how to be a homeowner project. It has already taught you to not rush a house purchase....now let it teach you more. If you have emigration plans it was never going to be a forever home but just a learning project so treat it as such and work as a team to make the project a success (assuming your partner hasn't already dumped you for been such a drama queen)

fart

Also preloved and freecycle are good for getting free furniture if you're going to need to spend on kitting the place out.

vivatifosi

Go to your local library. Borrow a copy of the Collins DIY manual. Read it from cover to cover. It will show you that there are DIY jobs that are far bigger than the ones you have described that can be tackled easily. It will also give you an idea how to do the ones that you already have.

Your house is no different from anyone elses. If you buy something that hasn't recently been refurbished then it will have features that are starting to age. What you have bought sounds like a decent, average, house that if you can get over this will be serviceable for many years to come. Most people have bathrooms and kitchens that are older than five, and if you wanted brand new you should have bought a new house.

To me, it sounds as though your partner has done a good job in finding this home and you are giving him a hard time over nothing. If it was that important you got something different, you should have gone with him, period. Stop blaming others.

Notjustamum_2

When we bought our first house 25 years ago it was still more or less in the same condition as when the owner had bought it brand new n 1934. There was no heating, the only way of getting hot water was to light a coal fire (we bought in the summer), the wiring was shot, the windows were rotten, there was one (hideous) carpet in the whole house and the rest of the rooms had hardboard pinned down over the floorboards. The "kitchen" was a butler sink and one cupboard with a pice of wood for a work surface and the original "larder" under the stairs. The bathroom did not have running hot water. All the walls were covered in woodchip and everything was stained yellow by the owners heavy smoking habit. BUT the survey said it was sound - apart from the electrics which were disconnected immediately as unsafe but we'd taken the cost of fixing that off of our offer.

Admittedly it took a while and hard work (but not a huge amount of money) but we scrubbed, rubbed and painted in the first instance and made it comfortable. We put in an immersion heater for hot water Nd saved up for central heating. We were given a second hand kitchen, not great but better than the original. We got it looking nice and feeling like ours within a couple of years.

25 years on and we are still here. We now have a beautiful comfortable home. We will shortly be finishing off our mortgage and could probably sell for around 5 times what we paid.

If its just cosmetic you just need to tie your hair back, put on some rubber gloves and get on with it. Decorating really isn't hard and if you do it together it can be fun and a way of really strengthening your relationship.

fart

Notjustamum wrote: »

When we bought our first house 25 years ago it was still more or less in the same condition as when the owner had bought it brand new n 1934. There was no heating, the only way of getting hot water was to light a coal fire (we bought in the summer), the wiring was shot, the windows were rotten, there was one (hideous) carpet in the whole house and the rest of the rooms had hardboard pinned down over the floorboards. The "kitchen" was a butler sink and one cupboard with a pice of wood for a work surface and the original "larder" under the stairs. The bathroom did not have running hot water. All the walls were covered in woodchip and everything was stained yellow by the owners heavy smoking habit. BUT the survey said it was sound - apart from the electrics which were disconnected immediately as unsafe but we'd taken the cost of fixing that off of our offer.

Admittedly it took a while and hard work (but not a huge amount of money) but we scrubbed, rubbed and painted in the first instance and made it comfortable. We put in an immersion heater for hot water Nd saved up for central heating. We were given a second hand kitchen, not great but better than the original. We got it looking nice and feeling like ours within a couple of years.

25 years on and we are still here. We now have a beautiful comfortable home. We will shortly be finishing off our mortgage and could probably sell for around 5 times what we paid.

If its just cosmetic you just need to tie your hair back, put on some rubber gloves and get on with it. Decorating really isn't hard and if you do it together it can be fun and a way of really strengthening your relationship.

Great advice - nice to see some positivity! (Did laugh at the OP's username - glass half full, eh? )

My Dad's one of the best builders i know - can literally build a house from scratch on his own, adept at plumbing, electrics, gas work, woodwork, roofing, hanging doors, garden work, installing fencing and sheds, flooring, plastering, painting, hanging wall paper.....he learnt this because he bought a tip of a house when i was a kid and had no choice but to do the stuff himself because we were skint. Bit of can-do attitude and elbow grease should be all it needs to do the less technical side of refurbishment, it doesn't even cost a lot of money.

The decorating will be the easiest thing - painting is really easy. I agree with the poster i've quoted here; tie back the hair, get some paint, chuck the radio on and open a few beers and make a weekend of it, the painting will get done in no time.

hollydays

Firstly-congratulations on getting on the property ladder!look at your future-you could end up with a desirable property and make a profit. I have a friend who has a house that's very similar to your and she thinks its the best thing since sliced bread, and she focuses on the good points.its not at all updated, has wood chip everywhere , kitchen is about 20 years old, bathroom still 1970s avocado, but she's had people queing up to buy it, clean and fresh and homely. Not every house HAS to be updated , not everyone is used to everything brand spanking new and streamlined - like a tv house renovation show?!!
there are all sorts of buyers.

I wonder if the stress of looking after your ailing parent is causing you to view things negatively?

Perhaps you need to address your stress levels as a priority . X

Do you know that after you buy a house there will be plenty of people ready to tell you, sucking their teeth, how this and that is going to cost you thousands.

Particularly those men with so-called damp meters that they point at your walls,and builders who tell you that the previous builders work was a disaster ( this is very common with builders to criticise the previous persons work, a happy lot they are)



You've got a whole 4 years to pull down the lean to , tart it up. source things from eBay and freecycle ( all of us money savers do this btw), a new bathroom suit doesn't cost much, but I suspect you don't need to replace it.
It's probable the fixtures and decor you need to do.

Looking at your post again, it seems to me you are interpreting all this by re-reading the mortgage survey-that's purely about the risk to the lender and has to mention all the small faults which maybe you are focusing on? Experienced buyers take all that with a pinch of salt, what your friends told was correct.
.All you lack is experience .

Can you tell me how you decided you had " maybe" overpaid £12000 x

Dukesy

Ok, deep breaths! You've got yourself worked up into a state, and it really doesn't actually sound like too bad a house.

The big thing about property ownership is that there is ALWAYS stuff to do - you have to take that into account when buying. Your place sounds outdated and a bit tatty, but if that's all it is, then I'm sure it will be easy to rectify. Take it one step at a time, do one room at a time.

Plasterers are not expensive, new bathrooms and kitchens don't have to be expensive if you're careful where you buy from (we make great use of trade suppliers) and if you're willing to do a little work yourself, and woodchip stripping and redecoration is perfectly DIY-able. As for the lean to, hire a skip and buy a sledgehammer - a weekend of work (dependant on the size of the lean to), and no more lean to! Plus you'll get a work out

I can speak from the position of someone who buys to renovate, and I really can say that it sounds like you're stressing far too much. When we bought our current house, it was a building site. We had external walls that moved when you pushed them, a bathroom with a mud floor and a leaking sewage pipe, rubble piled all around the downstairs rooms, mould on the walls, dangerous wiring, no kitchen and so on and so forth. The list is prettymuch endless and, worse still, we had to live in it, with our newborn baby, whilst working on it with our own fair hands.

However, nearly two years on, the place is unrecognisable. It's cost money, but not much, as we've done the work (except electrics and some of the fancier plumbing for the CH) ourselves, and the best thing is that we can sit back and feel really proud of ourselves. After months of seemingly endless work, we now have a beautiful character cottage that is worth nearly twice what we paid for it, We've had days when we've felt like you, but I can tell you that it really is worthwhile to bite the bullet and put the effort in.

If you just give up now, you probably will lose money, but if you tackle the jobs that need doing, doing as much as you can by yourselves over a relaxed period of time, you will be in a much stronger position when you do come to sell, and you may well see a profit at the end.