How difficult is it to do up a house?

pinkteapot

Sunflower43 said:

One of the houses would definitely need fully redecorating and a new bathroom and kitchen. The house is wallpapered and it clearly hasn’t been decorated in many years so it would make me worry about what was lurking under the paper. 

If it's decor, kitchen and bathroom then that to me is still just cosmetic work. What you'd want to check (get people in to look at it before you buy) is whether it needs rewiring. If not, you can just tackle one room at a time which is nowhere near as bad (you just live with the decor you don't like in the meantime). If you need a rewire, you're talking holes made in all your walls at once and a lot of mess. Similarly, if you need to install central heating, that's a big mess made throughout the house all in one go. 

Thrugelmir

Angela_D_3 said:

Sunflower43 said:

Angela_D_3 said:

For me personally i wouodnt buy more than repainted and flooring with a new kitchen and bathroom being on the things to do over the next 3-5 years after ive saved up a bit kinda thing.  

And if i bought a new build id start saving for a new kitchen,  bathroom and flooring immediately too.  We rented a new build,  the carpets were knackered after 3 years.  

Houses are money pits at the best of times.  
I have £6,000 saved for the one im hoping to buy and its a case of do the upstairs first,  save to do the downstairs and pray the boiler is ok.  

One of the houses would definitely need fully redecorating and a new bathroom and kitchen. The house is wallpapered and it clearly hasn’t been decorated in many years so it would make me worry about what was lurking under the paper. 

Need to price it all up,  £10,000 for a kitchen,  £5,000 bathroom.  £5,000 flooring.  £300 ish per room plastering,  that sort of thkng.  

Then work out if the house would sell for what you are going to offer for it plus all of the above 

Over time all houses require maintenance. Surprising how some people think that spending thousands of pounds will be reflected in added value. 

Angela_D_3

Thrugelmir said:

Angela_D_3 said:

Sunflower43 said:

Angela_D_3 said:

For me personally i wouodnt buy more than repainted and flooring with a new kitchen and bathroom being on the things to do over the next 3-5 years after ive saved up a bit kinda thing.  

And if i bought a new build id start saving for a new kitchen,  bathroom and flooring immediately too.  We rented a new build,  the carpets were knackered after 3 years.  

Houses are money pits at the best of times.  
I have £6,000 saved for the one im hoping to buy and its a case of do the upstairs first,  save to do the downstairs and pray the boiler is ok.  

One of the houses would definitely need fully redecorating and a new bathroom and kitchen. The house is wallpapered and it clearly hasn’t been decorated in many years so it would make me worry about what was lurking under the paper. 

Need to price it all up,  £10,000 for a kitchen,  £5,000 bathroom.  £5,000 flooring.  £300 ish per room plastering,  that sort of thkng.  

Then work out if the house would sell for what you are going to offer for it plus all of the above 

Over time all houses require maintenance. Surprising how some people think that spending thousands of pounds will be reflected in added value. 

No thats not what i meant.  Its a case of comparing a done house with a none done house.  

You dont want to buy one that needs everything doing and find it was cheaper to buy ine somebody else has already spent their weekends on.
And 9/10 of ten spending money does infact add value.  

Indigo_and_Violet

Assuming you are FTBs and have some spare cash, it can be pretty easy. If you can afford 4-5 weeks of overlap between where you currently are and getting the keys to the new place it is much easier to do up an empty house than a full one. Two weeks kitchen, two weeks bathroom, you redecorating the other rooms around them, providing everything goes to plan it should be pretty straightforward. However, that's a pretty big proviso!
Definitely worth going round with a trusted contractor post-survey to get an idea of any obvious problems. However, this means you'll probably have to give them at least some of the work. Personally I wouldn't attempt a new bathroom or new kitchen install myself (paint, shelving and soft furnishings are my limit!) but people do manage to fit their own units, do their own tiling etc. 
The other thing to think about is how much interest/enjoyment you do/don't get out of it. On the one hand there's the excitement of getting exactly what you want. On the other hand there's finishing a day at work and spending two hours online trying to find the basin tap you like for less than £200. If you love planning interiors and learning new DIY techniques it's the dream, but we found it pretty demanding on top of two full-time jobs, and its even more so if money is tight and so you've got to find the budget way of doing everything.
We're in London and found we paid more than Angela's figures - £12,000 for a pretty standard Magnet kitchen, £7,000 for a slightly more bespoke bathroom. That said, we sometimes erred more to the 'good and easy' side of the cheap, good, easy triangle. We were fortunate that we had a bit of flex on our deposit. We could keep some of the deposit back without it making a massive difference to our mortgage rate which meant we had spare cash on hand. If you're already maxing out your savings on your deposit then you've either got to live with it until you've banked some cash or start taking out loans and I think that's a different calculation. 

eddddy

FreeBear said:

For my sins, I started to strip artex off in the lounge...

Hopefully you had it tested first, to find out whether it contained asbestos. (And if it did, hopefully you took suitable precautions when you removed it and disposed of it!)

OldMusicGuy

Sunflower43 said:

We would definitely try and do what we could ourselves to cut costs.

So be very clear, what can you do yourselves? Painting? Wallpapering? Plastering? Sanding floorboards? Tiling? Fitting new loos/sinks/baths? Rewiring? Fitting a new kitchen? Plumbing?

You have to be very realistic because like everyone else said, with a doer upper you will run into unforseen problems. And the extent of those problems depends a lot on the age of the house.

The first house I bought was a Victorian terrace that had been flipped by a builder. On the surface, it looked fairly tidy. But there was damp under the floorboards in the basement which had been carefully hidden by use of tank paint on the walls and woodchip. I ended up having to rip out every joist and floorboard, clean out the underfloor area and then put in new joists and floorboards. I did it all myself with some advice and help from my dad (who was a surveyor), in the end it wasn't that difficult but it involved a lot of time and hard physical work. Could you do the same, or would you have to get someone to do it for you?

That's the kind of thing you need to think about. 

 

Sunflower43

We could do the clear out, painting and decorating and maybe more ourselves with help from relatives. We’d definitely see if there are other things we could do but that’s the limit of our skill set at present. 

I know we’d probably have to keep some of our deposit back to pay for certain things  

The one house is on the market for £325K and we have £105K as a deposit and 10K to pay stamp duty/fees. We were planning to keep the amount we borrow as low as we could but we could probably borrow a bit more if required. We’re FTBs and so I’m just quite nervous about really messing things up with whatever we do.

Mojisola

Also, don't underestimate the stress of living in a building site if the house needs any major work.

alex_163163

I’ve been in a very similar position deciding between new build vs older property (in fact we went for the new build but the leasehold aspects stops us proceeding in the end).

Instead we bought a 70s bungalow that hadn’t been touched since the 90s really. Luckily though there was a 2 year old boiler.

be aware of layers upon layers of wallpaper. I can’t count the number of hours I spent stripping it all off! Buy a steamer!!

Luckily we didn’t need a rewire but did get an electrical survey and had some remedial work done, nothing major though.

we took our time and spent 2 years doing up the inside. We started with our bedroom so we had somewhere nice to end the day that was clean and calming.

we then tackled the kitchen diner which did need some structural work (beam putting in to open up the room) and a new kitchen.
and then we moved through the lounge, new bathroom, bedrooms and hallway.
my advice would be to live in it for a while to see how you use the house and the space available before you do any major works eg kitchen, bathroom. 

We did the painting and decorating ourselves, but because of work and lack of skills we hired professionals for replastering (all the rooms), installing the kitchen and bathroom, flooring, replacing and installing radiators, new internal doors, etc. For us, we chose convenience and time saving vs spending less and doing more ourselves. We’ve spent somewhere between £40-50k doing up every room in a 3 bed, 1 bathroom bungalow. Yes we could have chosen a cheaper kitchen and bathroom, but I’m really happy with what we’ve ended up with. Unless you can do lots of work yourselves and have family in the trade willing to work for free, do not believe the TV programmes where someone has done up a house to a mid/high spec for £10k!!

I didn’t find it too stressful living among the work, worst part was having the bathroom replaced and having to go to the local swimming pool at 6am everyday to shower! 

AdrianC

This has to be the ultimate "If you have to ask..."