House renovation costs getting out of control - RANT

phil_b_2 · 19 September 2018 at 6:30PM

I can't be the only one around here having had this issue at some point in their lives!

A nice old victorian house pops up in the perfect sought-after area. It's on the market way below what you'd expect in that area so you can actually afford to live there, but it's a wreck. You take the challenge on knowing it'll be worth it. I'm sure it will but hell, the journey there is like a roller coaster!

I'm finding myself going from excitement when major progress happens and something pretty is installed (nice bifold doors out to rear garden etc), to complete despair when things like all door casings need replacing and a few grands worth of joinery work throughout is needed that I hadn't budgeted for at all.
Things like having to dig up a concrete floor and excavate to lay new foundations here and there don't help.

Some extra costs are for luxuries I could have done without, and others are self-inflicted due to changing my mind on layouts (re-route pipes, wires etc). This makes it somewhat more stressful.

I'm finding myself having to knock suppliers down and haggle/plead with honest tradesmen to claw some costs back, which I really hate doing.

Anyhow, just having a bit of a rant. Does anyone have any positive anecdotes and success stories to perk me up with?? Perhaps some tips.

Beans on toast for tea for a good while a think

Soph1988 · 19 September 2018 at 6:50PM

Hi, didn’t want to read and run. We are in a similar position although partly due to this being our first house and our naivety around the cost of what seems such basic things, we are as down in the dumps as you. We brought a 1950’s house and nothing seems simple. You change a door, a wall comes down, you have a leak, it’s a whole set of flooring that needs to come up. We’ve even had to rip out the relatively decent fitted kitchen because of a burst water pipe behind all of the tiling. It’s so disheartening.

It’s got to a point now where we are just going to have to stop works and renovation and live with what it’s like for 5-8 months just to prop up the bank balance a bit, we had 15k between us and it’s been chewed through by various disasters and a little bit of new furniture we needed due to various disaster ruining our old stuff. It was not what we expected at all and the guy we brought it off was clearly a bodge it all sort of guy. I would confidently say we are pretty scared to touch anything anymore. We were going to have new windows in but feel that we just can’t risk the damage and cost of fixing the mess that will be left.

I hate to say it, but I genuinely wish we had just brought a new build at this point. We’ve been here since March this year and we have just had enough of the constant drain on our finances fixing things. It feels such a waste trying to improve anything at the moment as something just goes wrong and ruins any work we have done.

Everyone keeps saying it’ll all work out eventually, but isn’t it just so massively depressing

phil_b_2 · 19 September 2018 at 7:24PM

Sorry to hear that, it sounds very stressful. This isn't my first house and I've renovated before, so do have a fairly realistic idea of what things cost and budgets, but even then, unexpected things crop up and reality kicks in.

I'm 99% sure it will work out and be worth it though, you've just got to not let the set backs get on top.

Have you considered contacting your home insurer for things like the burst water pipe? In my last house we had a water pipe leak over a few years. The floor joists and boards got rotten and all needed to come up. The kitchen needed to be ripped out. Home insurance covered it all though due to the leaky pipe. They even put a new hallway floor in as it was classified as the same 'zone'.

Soph1988 · 19 September 2018 at 8:41PM

It didn’t even occur to us that home insurance would cover that to be honest! Something we would definitely go to in the future!

I’m sure eventually we’ll be happy with it, but it has just been 100x more stressful than we had ever imagined.

Robby1988 · 19 September 2018 at 10:25PM

Similar experience with our victorian house to be honest. Didn't take me long to get a feel for it when we started doing work & we called off a lot of the 'rip out' jobs we had planned because I knew they would open up a can of worms and we'd end up spending hundreds fixing a load of other stuff. We just ended up doing a decorating job and putting new carpets down etc. & even though there are still the dated/ugly/defective features we want to sort out, we've calmed down a bit and are living with them just fine. Turns out a lot of the things you thought "needed" doing, don't really.

Glad we saved the money because crucial exterior problems have cropped up that have been expensive to sort plus a few boiler issues.

No point aiming for a perfect house when you buy 100 year old buildings. You'll never get there, certainly not on a tight budget. We really like living in our house despite the flaws.

trailingspouse · 19 September 2018 at 11:13PM

Been there, seen it, got the T-shirt...
We're now on year 5 of our grand plan. Like you say - large Victorian (well, 1908 in our case) house, but needed everything doing to it. At least that meant there were no surprises (apart from the asbestos in the garage ceiling... And even that wasn't too hard to sort out really).
Anyway - 3 years to sort out the inside of the house, and two years to sort the outside - full re-wire, new kitchen, 2 new bathrooms, plastering painting and flooring thoughout, replaced the decking outside with a proper patio, got rid of the huge hedge that was damaging the retaining wall and replaced with railings (which it would have had originally), repainting of guttering, downpipes etc (not a small task on a 4-storey house), new garage door.

All that's left is to re-do the driveway which is currently crumbling, and re-lay the front path and replace the front door (a hideous uPVC thing which really doesn't suit the house).

By the time we do all that, the bits we did first will need refreshing...

Ozzuk · 20 September 2018 at 7:46AM

If you are buying an old house to do up then you really need the best survey you can get as it should identify a lot of the jobs that need doing and help you to forecast a budget. Which as we've seen from Grand Designs is never enough, and you'll get pregnant.

onomatopoeia99 · 20 September 2018 at 8:36AM

Bought a small 1951 bungalow 8 years ago that was owned by a couple in their 70s. I knew it would need gutting and everything doing, because it was all woodchip wallpaper, artex ceilings (or woodchip wallpaper again), horrible carpet, kitchen (literally) falling apart etc etc

I reckon I've still got another five years to go before I'm done. Key is not to try to do everything in the first couple of years, just take it a room at a time and don't barrel through it spending money like water.

Jackmydad · 20 September 2018 at 11:01AM

I've heard things said about complete refurbs on old houses like,
"Think of a number, double it, put a nought on the end, and you still won't have enough to get the kitchen you actually wanted"
While it's not actually that bad, there's more than a grain of truth in it. The actual amount of work that's there is never obvious until you start stripping out.

-taff · 20 September 2018 at 11:25AM

Almost every job that has been done in this house was bodged.
Radiators, water tank, shower tray, removal of bath, installation CH pump, lean-to extension, ceilings, wiring, floorboard replacement, RSJ in between two rooms...You name it, it was bodged.
To rectify all of it is going to take us quite a while, so there's no rush to get it done [ and there is definitely not now due to my current health] so it's just going to have to be done as and when.

We're fully aware that nothing we do is going to be a simple thing. If you're going to be there for a while, don't rush it, take your time, live in for a bit before you make drastic decisions

onomatopoeia99 · 20 September 2018 at 11:54AM

Jackmydad wrote: »

The actual amount of work that's there is never obvious until you start stripping out.

So very true. So many times I've come into work on a Monday morning and told my colleague something like, "I was removing (thing) and behind I found (incredible bodge that's going to need masses of work to fix properly)" :rotfl:

House renovation costs getting out of control - RANT

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