Best way to fund home improvements

Hi all

We have accepted an offer on our property and have made an offer on another property - a 3 bed. This requires some work - initially about £10-12k of jobs that have been noted by my builder.

We are in the fortunate position that we are not reliant on a mortgage as the property we are selling is owned outright.

My question is how we should approach the non-urgent but desirable cosmetic work that we want to do on the property we're buying. I have made my offer according to the urgent work needed which would leave us with enough cash to pay upfront (plus a small buffer for unexpected costs). Of course, this relies on our current offer being accepted. Once this buffer is used up, we'd not have any spare cash to fund bits like replacing a bathroom, kitchen and so on. These are jobs that could probably wait 1-3 years if needed but the house has not had much done for about 10 years. I have estimated the cost of non-urgent work at £20k although I'm aware there will be unforseen costs also as it is an old house.

From my initial searches, I can see our main options to fund these non-urgent works are:
- Mortgage
- Loan
- Credit card
- Savings over a longer period

I have access to about £5k interest free on a credit card and have been advised I could get a mortgage of about 60k. Our monthly income is low but we are fairly good at saving and budgeting (see signature) and could probably save about £300-400 a month once we are no longer paying rent. Even so, we would ideally like to get the work done up front due to the stress of it and other distractions in our lives already.

I should add that I am generally risk averse and am very careful with money.

Any words of wisdom about the benefits of each approach? Much appreciated