Need help prioritising home improvements with our income/debt situation

jupiteria

Hi everyone – new to the board, so please let me know if I leave anything out. It's a little long:

I have a savings pot for home improvements. I wanted to have the hardwoods refinished, but our garage roof is now in need of replacing. It's a prefab concrete monstrosity and I hate it. Unfortunately, it costs a lot to reroof the existing building, and while I don't want to spend for a rebuild, it seems like it might be a good investment.

• Cost to reroof with tile to match house: £3,000
• Cost to reroof with unattractive cement fibre to match current garage roof: £2,280
• Cost to tear down prefab and rebuild with brick (excludes planning permission costs and cost of doors and windows): £7,400
• Cost to tear down prefab and replace with new prefab: £6,260

All prices include VAT.

Current savings/debt/income situation:

• Home improvement savings: £7,000
• Other cash savings: £10,000
• Debt: £3,000 on 0% interest until September, at which point we'll have to pay off or pay 2% to renew.
• Disposable income: approx £2,000 per month, depending on my freelance income. Minus too much eating out and random expenses (which we could cut back on if necessary), this amounts to about £1,200-1,500.

A rebuild would more than wipe out my cash savings. We're not willing to dip into our emergency cash, although we can do a 0% transfer if necessary, except my husband isn't crazy about the idea of going into further debt.

It seems a little absurd that I just wanted a new roof and am now looking at planning permission (which would be required to raise the pitch of the roof enough to support tiles due to the current garage being so close to the boundary line). I was hoping the cost of a new roof would be less than a grand, but even then, is it a false economy to spend the money on such a poor garage that ultimately needs to be replaced?

There are a number of other things that I had been saving specifically for, and which I'll no longer be able to afford:

• Refinish/replace hardwoods: £3,000
• Replace kitchen flooring (truly in an awful state with peeling vinyl tiles): £800 if done professionally, willing to DIY
• Install new kitchen lighting (not a luxury – the current lighting system is broken): £400

How can I balance these various projects? DIYing the roof would require building new timber frames to replace the metal ones, which is outside of my comfort zone. Otherwise I'd be put there nailing on the felt myself. I don't have time to refinish the floors myself, although I could probably DIY new tile in the kitchen. I don't DIY electrics.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

keith969

What do you use the garage for? Could you replace it with e.g a shed?

Doozergirl

Ditto above.

I presume the existing garage is too small for a car. Garages are so over rated. Get a decent shed and look at the garage when the things you genuinely use every day are sorted.

Don't spend much money on storing things you don't use everyday.

jupiteria

The existing garage is at the end of our driveway, and is large enough for a car, although we just park in the drive. I assume it would reduce our property value if we simply got rid of it and didn't replace it (and it would also look quite odd, given its position, if we replaced it with a shed).

Doozergirl

Put the shed somewhere else!

When you're nearing sale, or before that point if financially acceptable, put up a decent garage. A concrere prefab monstrosity with an asbestos type corrugated roof is not going to add much in the way of value.

Prioritise proper enjoyment, especially if that helps the value itself.

beaker141

jupiteria wrote: »

The existing garage is at the end of our driveway, and is large enough for a car, although we just park in the drive. I assume it would reduce our property value if we simply got rid of it and didn't replace it (and it would also look quite odd, given its position, if we replaced it with a shed).

I've demolished the garage and replaced with other structures in both houses I have ever owned.

The house I sold, it didnt impact the price at all, might even have been a positive. It was at the end of the drive in the back garden so by removing it the back garden was bigger and more attractive. I replaced it with an 18ft x 4ft shed running at the side of the house.

Similar with the house I'm in now, 3 bed semi and garage was in the back garden - now demolished, garden bigger and more attractive, replaced with a combination summer house / shed at the bottom of the garden out of the way. Again - it doesnt even factor into my thoughts about the value or saleability of the house.

Hope that helps. I'd be interested to know where and the layout when you say at the end of your driveway?

keith969

Nobody I know parks in their garage these days, most seem to use it as a utility room, storage or workshop (mine does all 3). If it's at the end of your drive beside your house, how about a car port, or just hard standing that you could in future extend onto if funds permit? An ugly prefab might actually reduce the value of your property...

jupiteria

Thanks everyone... this has given me something new to think about.

It's difficult to explain our property's layout without a diagram. We have a semi-detached on a crescent, so the property has curved edges, and our detached garage is at an odd angle to the house itself. It forms part of two sides of our garden wall, which would need to be replaced with a new wall if removed (we have dogs). It's not part of the main rear garden, but rather an oddly-shaped side portion of our property that isn't used for anything else. We already have a front and rear garden, neither of which would be enhanced by removing the garage.

I completely agree that prioritising improvements that enhance the enjoyment of our property is more important, and I would love to spend the money on things that give me joy instead, but the roof has to go one way or the other. It will cost £1,850 just to remove the asbestos roof and dispose of the horrible prefab concrete. The cost of a shed is negligible in comparison, but building two brick walls where the garage stood, in keeping with the rest of the property, may be a good-sized chunk of money.

I hate this stupid garage. But for all its ugliness, we use it for a carpentry workshop and as a place to store our massively overflowing possessions (my husband is a collector and I've slowly been filtering items out of our house and into the garage) as well as bikes and garden tools. We would need a very large shed (culling the collections would lead to a swift divorce, which I suppose would be one way of fobbing off the garage problem...).

Forgot to add: the rebuild quote is ridiculously low (I phoned the company twice to check). They're an established firm with a good reputation, not cowboys, but so much cheaper than anyone else around. Part of my worry is that I'm getting a low quote because business is slow at the moment and if I do this later on I'll have to pay at least twice as much, if not more.

I'm leaning toward an austerity plan -- do the downstairs hardwoods only, sort the kitchen lighting and flooring, curtail slovenly spending for a few months and replace the garage with a proper one in September. Eat the fee to renew the 0% interest loan, then pay that off last. Crazy? Not crazy? I've been thinking about this so long I don't even know anymore.

Davesnave

We used to have a house in a similar position on the turning circle at the end of a cul-de-sac.

We demolished the garage and extended. In fact, one reason we bought the house was because it offered that possibility. No matter how great the garage was, it would have suffered the same fate.

Rosemary7391

Am I missing something? With your existing savings and disposable income, even paying off the £3k you'll be able to afford this all within 6 months or so anyway?

jupiteria

It's really a matter of not wanting to spend the money and not knowing how it should be spent (cheaper roof? New garage?), plus we need to save for four flights to the US next year. But yes, in theory, we could begrudgingly pay for it all over the course of several months.