Could you live in a doer upper dream house and renovate gradually?

[Otter1986]

Has anyone bought a house that is a true state and just lived with it? How hellish was it?

Our dream home has come on the market. It is wildly overpriced - as is everything locally - but the house will be insanely amazing when it is done. Currently it is two flats and it is a total state.

After payng for the house - including fees - we could waterproof the house (roof, windows, pointing, render). Then we'd have a slosh fund that would cover plastering the third floor bedrooms so we and our kids had a decent room to sleep in. Then, we could redo the bathroom cheaply and could put in a really cheap / second-hand kitchen.

But that is it really. The heating, electrics, other rooms would have to wait. It is would be - at best - a 'boho chic' style of living. Think sagging ceilings, horrible old wallpaper that is in poor condition etc.

Everything else would have to just be done slowly or not at all. We'd have to do lots of stuff ourselves - skirtings etc... We've done it before but it was a much smaller house.

Would we regret it? Or would we say - in five years when it is done - wow, look at our awesome and enormous house on an absolutely ideal road!

We're in 2 minds - we can tighten our belt and totally do it. We could even borrow more in a couple of years when it came to remortgage if we were struggling. But is it really worth it?

Our two kids aren't old but aren't so young that it would be dangerous. And when they are teens it will give us lots of space.

Thoughts?

We did when we were younger. Not as bad as yours sounds but we had a baby and toddler.

Just did one room at a time.

We did exactly this with our toddler son, many years ago with very little money to spare and the house was in two flats with dry rot right across the front bay windows
The first thing we did was to remove the kitchen in the upper floor flat. It’s no good doing things piecemeal, it’s best to tackle things like the electrics, heating and plumbing, even if this means putting up with a grotty bathroom.
We bought the minimal very cheap DIY kitchen units (Wickes are good) for worktops we used cheap flush doors and sealed them with Yacht varnish. Use open shelves to keep the costs down.
We made one reception room cosy, ignoring the decor.
Good luck, we do it again ( did it 3 times ) but feel too old now☹️, but never say beaver!

"The heating, electrics..would have to wait".. but isn't that potentially dangerous to have old electrics and unreliable heating? No way I could do that, I'd be so miserable. We have done two doer uppers but we did the bulk of the work before moving in - much quicker and cheaper to rewire a whole house at once, for example.

We did something similar 20+ years ago with one young DS.

Ours was a Victorian house of 3500 sq ft that had been divided into five smallish flats. We camped out in the top one whilst stripping out the ground floor, removing walls, adding steels etc, fitting an ex-display kitchen. The staircase was a massive job which I tackled mostly alone - it had been reconfigured to allow for additional entrances and we wanted to return it to the original layout.

We DIYed majority of the work (except heating and electrics - the latter which was done in stages as/when we could afford it) so it took about eight years to complete. Then we sold it as it was too big for three 😆

I would deal with wiring/electrics/heating first.
the pointing and so on may not be desperate.

have you got current ball park quotes as prices are excessive just now.

I would personally feel like I'd missed out on that time with my kids to, as surely it'll take all your spare time to do the renovations yourselves.

I wouldn't right now. Firstly, it's always more expensive to do up a place than you think and it's easy to minimise the effort and disruption. Second, if you do a lot of the hard work but need to move before you finish, then the buyers will screw you down on price and all the money and effort will be lost. Thirdly, you'd be crossing your fingers that the great Labour giveaway while leadership hopefuls start the arms race of who can spend the most money in an effort to appeal to the party membership, doesn't ratchet up to cgt on primary residence - in which case, you'll be highly penalised for your efforts.

If its your long term home - yes of course and did exactly that with two babies (and two more after moving).

It was pretty much a building site for the first year, we spent the initial budget on replacing the window (falling out) and installing heating (there was none) plus a new consumer unit to bring the wiring up to code.

The kitchen was an ancient double unit with sink top and a tallboy, the bathrooms similar vintage - however they worked and we lived with them until we could replace them. For a prolonged period after moving in there was no reliable hot water

If you are planning to be there for any length of time then you will end up redecorating and even replacing kitchens & bathrooms over time. That changes the economics of the deal.

I swore for the first year or so that my next move would be in a box but have no regrets as the result was a great family house in a very popular area with large gardens. Even in the current market these houses sell in days (and agents have waitlists for some roads, including mine).

We were not unusual - this was how pretty much all our friends made the move to “family home” from “squeeze box”.

We've had/are doing this but it was a completely derelict property that we couldn't have lived in. No boiler, ancient electrics and pipes, no working kitchen etc. We lived in a static caravan on site for 2yrs whilst the structural works were done. It meant we had a clean, escape from the noise and dust. You'd be surprised how far dust can travel and even enter so called sealed rooms/containers.

Even if you are in the trade, these type of renovations cost much more than you think and always take much longer. Has the house been lived in within the past 2 years? If not, I'll let you know about a government scheme to get homes liveable again which saves 'some' money for you.

We love the house, the street, neighbours, area etc but- it cost much more than originally planned for. Partially due to it being at the end of covid when we bought, COL, cost of supplies etc etc. Its our forever house, but we still have lots to do- garden, furniture, decorating etc.

We did it. People today think my generation (X) had it easy with houses, but my first house was an absolute dump, with damp, mould, and vermin.

I spent 18 months with a kitchen that was bare brick walls and just had a tap hanging out the wall with a bucket underneath it for washing up and an old gas cooker plumbed in. I used to balance a chopping board on the bits of the gas cooker I wasn't using to cut things up. No worktops, no cupboards, etc.

2 years sleeping in a damp bedroom on bare floorboards with no heating and a bed that someone gave me that had the most god awful mattress on it. I'd spent every penny I could borrow on buying a Victorian terraced house and it took several years for me to get it all done up to a reasonable standard, just doing bits at a time. It was never any kind of 'show home'.

It was a challenge. I don't know if I could have done it with children.

But this is a lot less work than taking flats and making a single home. Most people don't take on a project like that.

We’ve done it a few times. We are 5 years into our renovation and still don’t have a kitchen. The trouble for us is once it’s done we get bored and move and it starts all over again 🤪

Editing to add that we don’t have big pots of money. We literally buy a radiator a month and when it comes to the kitchen it will be a cupboard a week (probably why it takes us years)

Thanks all - interesting to hear opinions.

We've actually decided to just go for it. The house is a dream house - really exactly what we'd want.

We'd buy one done up if we could, in an ideal world, but they rarely come onto the market and when they do there is an absolute crazy scramble for them!

Most properties are two up type terraces locally so the bigger houses are a super premium.

As such, we know we'd sell this one even done to a just about good enough standard. But we would intend to stay in the house for a long time - at least 15 years.

But good to have thoughts from others on practical things to watch out for.

If its split into two flats you can live in one whilst working on the other as they should have completely separate supplies for eg electricity and gas.

We had no floors in some rooms and needed gates across them to ensure no stray child wandered in. We lived in one room and two bedrooms with all the children sharing. I didn’t have a recognisable kitchen until we had been there about three years or more. Split into two would have made that aspect much easier but with the need to unify supplies once work was done.

Both are hard, both give the end result of a house we could not have bought otherwise.
Effectively we paid for a better house by being willing to work on it and live with it. That is the choice here -iIf you want all the work done up front and to live elsewhere whilst its being done the economics are obviously different.

Has anyone bought a house that is a true state and just lived with it?

Yes

How hellish was it?

Awful. I'm never doing it again. We paid professionals to do the stuff we couldn't do and did the rest ourselves.

Yes, you're right, it'll be really helpful to have a spare kitchen and bathroom while renovating, trying to cobble together alternative provision is the worst bit. I was just thinking of the additional disruption of moving all the walls and doors but maybe it's six and two-threes.

Best of luck, anyway, op. It'll all be very exciting.

I couldn’t personally, but I know several people who have and have ended up with really lovely houses. And they’ve essentially lived in a building site for about three years. Marriages still intact, etc.

You mentioned putting in a cheap kitchen have a good look around as someone I know was able to get 150 K kitchen that had been unused and ripped out of a house in Chelsea when it changed hands, and got it for about 8K. There’s a good secondary market for very high-quality kitchens.

You're also going to have to notify council tax; notify Royal Mail (?); maybe get planning permission to convert back to one dwelling;arrange to disconnect second water supply and remove meter; arrange to disconnect second gas supply and remove meter; arrange to disconnect second electricity supply and remove meter (and deal with the billing departments too!).
I would do the technical aspects of the renovation before you do any decorative work. Rewiring may involve making holes in walls, if you have to replace (lead) pipes that can be disruptive, especially if you want them hidden and not surface mounted. If you want extra toilets etc that can involve digging up the ground floor.

Just keep an eye on the sequencing so you don't end up having to tear something out that you've already done or work round something. For example our Builders got annoyed we'd put the new bathrooms in above a room they were going to work in as, to be fair, it would have meant much easier access if they could have got into the joists but it's was all tiled over.

We lived in it as ours was done up for about 3 years - and that was long enough to be honest. So much dust! We did the heating and plumbing and electrics all at once and then lived with channels in the walls and pulled up carpets and not decorated rooms till the rest of it was done. It's a bit like living in a squat. We tried to always ensure we had somewhere relatively civilised to sit and to sleep....

I have two friends that have done this. One set of friends are serial do uppers and they know their stuff. They paid £750 K for the house and they have lived there for now 15 years. It took ten years to sort the roof, bathrooms, electrics, and put an amazing boot room, kitchen and they are now on to the rest including sitting room, fixing the lake (aka huge leaking pool in the centre of the garden) a tennis court etc they will market it in another 5 years for £1.5 million at least and look at getting close to that to buy a plot for the final house their bungalow on a plot of land. I visited them many times and yes it was freezing but they made do and are hardy Yorkshire folks in the SW and both children are an engineer and an architect.

The other friend spent £850 K a year ago on a do a upper round the corner from me they have thrown already £150 K on it / they need a new roof, new electrics, all bathrooms and kitchens ripped out. They haven’t even done the roof fully just patches it. Every problem found and has to 5 more. They have finally go the 4 upstairs bedroom to the point that the roof above them isn’t leaking and the wood chip floor and ceilings have been removed and replanted and now ready for painting. Other stuff hasn’t been so fixable they live with a public footpath down the side of the house and the garden needs loads of work. I doubt they have added anything to it and I think they will end up paying £500 K to finish the job but it won’t be worth £1.3 million they paid too much.

long term yes probably. I would say roof, heating and electrics are your must starting points and a decent kitchen and bathroom. House prices are high here (SW) and you wouldn’t lose long term but you won’t make a huge huge profit either!

I know several families who did this.

If I am brutally honest, they were doing it to have a dream family home, but in every case the children effectively grew up in a chaotic dump and it was only finally completed when they were all shunting on to uni anyway.

But they were all big houses so a big job.

Truthfully, I think once you move in, family life keeps you too busy to tackle anything meaningfully.

Do what you can while it is empty would be my advice - even if you go into debt. It is easier to work at paying down a debt with children than operating family life from a building site. These renovations dragged on for years - literally - and children aren't young all that long

We did twice pre children and we took things room by room.
In one house we were almost in the position where we were going to have to undo and done room to do an undone room after we discovered a problem with pipe work in the master bedroom. To fix it properly we would have had to take down the lounge ceiling and we had already decorated that room, our gas engineer came up with a different solution which rectified it by raising the floor in the bedroom by 8mm instead

When we were looking for our third house we put an offer on a house that would need the same doing when we had a 2 year old and we were out bid and we now count this as our lucky escape. That sale fell through and it went back on the market at £100k lower than our offer that got rejected about 2 months later. The only thing we can deduce was something significant came up on the survey.

3 years down the line, I've been made redundant and on a 2 year ( possibly longer career break) baby 2 has come along and I have some physical health stuff that is going on which is really limiting my functioning. It's hard enough at the moment juggling general house stuff never mind the complete renovation that the other house needed.
We were coming from a 3 bed semi to a 5 bed detached and our plan was to focus on getting 2 bedrooms and one reception room done so we have a house of similar size to the one we were leaving to live in and then slowly expand into the rest of the house room by room.

No, definitely not. I know someone who lived like that for 20yrs, one room done, awful non fitted kitchen, but lovely bathroom. She then bought a house in Bournemouth, and guess what, it needed extensive renovation. Then decided to buy a static whilst do up new place, but still didn’t sell old properly in Bristol. So now she has 2 houses needing extensive renovations, and she mainly lives in the caravan, she loves it there! Bonkers.

We did it with a toddler and a baby that came along two years later and honestly I regret that we spent every weekend, every evening, every rare childfree day, renovating, doing as much on a shoestring, living in a manky neglected house with a nasty bathroom and kitchen for years, the dust, the mess. Hard to invite friends and family round. Constant mental load of managing tradesmen.

It nearly broke us mentally and financially and after 5 years we sold up as we were still only half done, it was a money pit and we had fallen out of love with it. Barely broke even when we sold.

I regret the stress and constant moving things around from room to room as we tried to make improvements, never feeling settled or that we could buy furniture to fit the rooms as our layout might change in the next phase of renovations or because all our money went on sodding gravel or plaster.

We could have bought a lovely, albeit smaller, done up property and enjoyed those early years of our kids lives when they didn't worry about space or a fancy house, and we would have made more profit when it was time to upsize and lived a peaceful life.

If we'd been single it would have been ok but sorry it's a no from me as you also have young kids.

We did before children and even then I found it incredibly difficult. The worst point was the day we had a wall moved and my Dad had a wheelbarrow full of cement in our hall way and dining room, it nearly tipped me over the edge and I’d never do it again.

Guessing it depends on how you cope with mess though?