House Renovations

Happy_Sloth

Hi not sure if this is the right place,  but as it was more about finances that actual DIY i thought i'd ask here.  

4 years ago,  me and my husband moved into a beautiful Victorian townhouse.  When we moved in it was badly in need of renovation,  walls there cracks, it was damp, the windows/doors where rotten etc it had no gas supply therefore no central heating and the electric's where from world war one...  ..

Perhaps we where a little niave but it was a house i'd seen/longed for for years and when it came onto the market i HAD to do a viewing and when i viewed it,  i HAD to have it. 

The house was in a pretty bad way,  but me and my husband had a good income and it was 'livable' ... not comfortable but it was we thought manageable.  We figured that it would be a labour of love and that we've get there with it, little by little.  

As i said we where niave..  

Over the first few years we squirrelled away money and took a couple of loans did quite a few of the critical jobs,  (Windows, front/back doors, central heating, electrics, kitchen, roof) 

When the pandemic hit,  we realised how fragile our finances where we went from good income to practically nothing, I fell though the cracks in the government support schemes and with alot of loans/credit cards etc we really struggled.    We've come out of the pandemic barely hanging on to our house and with alot of debt.  
Getting the house sorted now seems further away than ever,  the pandemic really taught us that we needed to get finances in order before doing the house .. but 3 years on we still live on a building site with only the kitchen and bathroom done.  

Recently my husbands father died (with covid) and he's left us some money,  we wanted to push it all into the house but we are trying to be sensible,  we are getting the rendering done so we can deal with the major damp  (that is all ready started to destroy the new kitchen )  because we think that's the last super expensive job and it's probably the only time in our life we will have the £30k that it's going to cost, we are also replacing the last few windows because the rotten Victorian frames make the house difficult/super expensive to keep warm.  

The rest of the money is enough to pay off all our high interest debt,  but still leaves us with 3 loans (£5k left on 0% interest kitchen, £6k left 2.5% interest electrics, £9k  3.5% interest pandemic consolidation and £4k 6% Car loan)  

I want to be super sensible moving forward and my brain tells me that i need to pay off those loans before doing any more work on the house,  but my heart is sick of living on a building site.. im tired of it, i'm tired of the dust and the dirt, i'm tired of the cold and not having reliable water.... and we don't have the left over money each month to pay the loans them off quickly.  If im realistic and we pumped every pen of spare money we have into the loans we might be able to get rid of them in another 3 years,  but thats 3 more years of living on a building site doing nothing to the house.  

If im really honest the house is simply a lot more expensive to run than we'd envisioned buying it,  the amount of cash we thought we would have to spend on it each month is significantly less than the reality.   Every time we try and do a job it's super sized.  Everything is big, everything is expensive and everything is more complicated because of the age and condition of the house so just costs more.  Simple things like having to get a custom front door because none of the regular door company's machines could make them big enough for my door frame.  

I'm considering re-mortgaging and dealing with the loans and using the leftovers just to get some of the essential rooms done.... Is this the stupidest plan ever?  Has anyone got any other sensible ideas?  

Aspiration

Hi Happy sloth,

Firstly very sorry to hear about your Father in law. 

In terms of the work you’ve described they feel like the big ticket items.

 What is it you have left to do and have you got firm costs to complete the work? 

This will help you decide the length of time you will have to wait and where now enough is enough and time to get it finished. That said, if once costed it’s another year then could be worth carrying on as you are.

fatbelly

The debts you have are all at low interest. if you consolidated on to your mortgage all you would do is pay even more back over a longer period. You also put the debt in a more dangerous place should your income reduce. So I wouldn't do that.

Continue to service the debts as they are. Post a statement of affairs if you like and we'll have a look at it

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

Happy_Sloth

Aspiration said:

Hi Happy sloth,

Firstly very sorry to hear about your Father in law. 

In terms of the work you’ve described they feel like the big ticket items.

 What is it you have left to do and have you got firm costs to complete the work? 

This will help you decide the length of time you will have to wait and where now enough is enough and time to get it finished. That said, if once costed it’s another year then could be worth carrying on as you are.

You right, i'm hoping once the rendering and last windows are done thats the last of the super big ticket items,
Other big ish items on the list... 

• Driveway (not costed) The reason why this needs doing is because the water supply pipe to our house is lead and degrading it's burst 3 times since we've lived here water board fixed it twice, we had to pay once. Waterboard said it's the reason we have terrible water pressure as it's continuously leaking and the pipe runs under the drive so no way of getting to it without digging it up.  
• Getting rid of the head water tank (Costed at £600) the reason this needs to go is because it actually holds all our hot/cold water.  This means we don't currently have 'safe'  drinking water in the house. 
• 2 wood burning fires (£2000 each with all the fitting, flues etc)  i know it seems like a luxury but the heritage guy said that log burners will pull the moisture out of the air which would help balance the damp. I a
• Plastering every room (bar kitchen, bathroom and 2 boys rooms) will need plastering, carpets, painting or wallpaper. I'm not so bothered about this  i would like the chase lines from the electric filling because the dust from them gets everywhere. there are a couple of walls in the halls where there is no plaster and that causes a lot of the dust issues. 

I know we've done the major big items.  When i look at it i think we've broken the back of it we've done so much!  once the rendering is done that really is the last of the massively expensive jobs.  but having realised how fragile our finances are how close to max we are each and every month,  i don't want to get caught again like we did last year. 

Head says pay off loans, heart just wants the house liveable!   

kimwp

Sorry to hear of your troubles.
Re the wood burning fires, not only are they expensive, but they are also bad for the environment both externally and internally, releasing lots of particulates into the air- bad for little developing lungs. Dehumidifiers are less pretty, but much cheaper and will draw the moisture out of the air.

Grumpelstiltskin

Log Burners are the latest ' destroying the planet ' buzz words.
Personally I wouldn't touch one with a barge pole, and yes I have burned wood in the past.
As Kim said dehumidifiers are the way forward.

Stenwold

As @fatbelly says, the interest on your loans isn't actually that high so just let them run their length (unless you can't afford the monthly repayments, of course).

Sounds like you need to put the wellbeing of you and your family first, and make your home livable.

fatbelly

I was also going to comment on the woodburner thing. I live in a damp 1850s house and if you have central heating then I'm not sure woodburners are worth the effort. I have 4 dehumidifiers in various places, on time switches to come on through the night. I'm on Economy 7 so they don't cost much, suck a load of water out and circulate and slightly warm the air. They do fail after a few years though I think one is still going after more than 20.

I use the water to water the plants in the conservatory!

sammyjammy

I feel your pain, 22 years after moving into a house similar to yours but probably a lot smaller, I'm only just getting to the stage where its "finished",  I think the longer you live with it the less difficult it is, you've got a new kitchen and bathroom, electrics and gas central heating there must be things you can do to make it more comfortable that don't cost lots of money just hard graft.

Sad to say I agree with the woodburner issue, you could find that regulations on these change pretty soon which would leave you with some very expensive white elephants!.  

sixtyfoothigh

As others have said consolidating the debt into a mortgage moves it from non-secure to secure and probably means you pay more long term. Also agree that you're better off with dehumidifiers than wood burners - from an environmental point of view, and cost point of view.
I think the decision on whether a job needs doing now, or can be left is down to whether leaving it might means it costs more in the future. The drive would be an obvious one. If that pipe fails again you could end up with a big bill at an unexpected time - so I'd want to get that done now. Also the water tank - because you'll be potentially saving money on not having to buy in water if your drinking water isn't safe.
If it was me I'd leave jobs that are just annoying but leaving them won't risk cost me more money later on. Or if my mental health was struggling living in a building site I'd maybe pick one room (living room, bedroom) and make that room nice (get it plastered and then decorate) - so I had a nice place to retreat from the building site.
Sixty x

ChasingtheWelshdream

Hello, I only browse this section but your post caught my eye. 

Although our debt/income issue is different, we are actually in a very similar situation with our house - similar age and also bought 4 years ago. So I can share your feelings of frustration of just wanting to get it finished, I really can.

Fast forward to 2020 and we decided we'd had enough, and just wanted to steam ahead to get a nice house, without peeling paper and crumbling walls and damp-free. We had big plans - en-suite, French doors, knocking down walls, (working bathroom!) So we borrowed enough to do everything and looked forward to a year of chaos but with the end in sight.

Unfortunately we then hit problems with the roof, and what was initially thought to be a few spot repairs turned out to be many rotten timbers and essentially a re-roof. So most of the budget went on that, scaffold, chimney repairs etc. It was gutting, but also reassuring that we are watertight for our lifetime now. Then the car died, so more of our budget disappeared. Needs must but less and less for renovations. 

So now we are back to square one - no funds to 'do' the rest of the house unless we borrow. So sort of similar to you, and we have been wondering whether to take out another loan. We have decided not to.

We've realised that now the house is watertight, the rest is what we want to make it. It is liveable, just not what we envisaged. We could spend a fortune, but we could also just roll up our sleeves, make-do-and-mend, and still get a nice house. What was holding us back is thinking there there is no point doing anything unless it is exactly what we want- eg installing French doors.  But actually, the room could easily be lovely without these, and we can just save up over the next few years.

Over the last months I have been through a DIY baptism of fire and am now tackling each room one-by-one myself. Plumbing, flooring, plastering etc. It's not professional standard to start with, I make many errors,  and it takes me 10 times as long, but my time is free and I can decide the finish level I am happy with and prepared to work to (I am quite particular though).  And the satisfaction of knowing that each room will be done spurs me on. Buying the materials bit-by-bit is doable within our monthly budget. Then we can save what is left of our loan on a couple of jobs that we can't do ourselves (really want the wall knocked through!)

I guess what I'm saying is, once you have the essential and urgent jobs sorted, maybe you could look at your house in a different way, and think of ways to move forward but spending less. Eg - filling walls and using lining paper, rather than budgeting for a replaster. Sanding floors rather than paying for new flooring. So you can get on and decorate - that kind of thing. That way you can concentrate on paying off your loans, rather than taking out new ones.

I'm not sure if any of that is any help, but I just wanted to show we have gone through a similar thought process, and have instead changed our perspective.

On a personal note, we had a woodburner installed to replace an open fire whilst we had scaffold up. We did this as we used the fire anyway to supplement the ancient and ineffective heating, and the stove is much, much more efficient.  I can't see it has made any difference to the moisture in the house, but has made the downstairs much warmer. Do we love it? Yes. Would we pay for one if the existing heating was effective? No, as it will take years to recoup the cost.  So although nice, I certainly wouldn't say it was essential.