Ugh, estate agents

I’d do an almost total rebuild, extending considerably.

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Nothing in the current layout would make a particularly good listening room from what I can see. And I can smell the carpets from the photos…

Oh, and energy rating G?

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Demolish and rebuild would likely be cheaper

That’s pretty much the opposite of what we have in mind :smile:

There’s just 2 of us and we don’t hanker after extra space and additional rooms for the sake of it.

Also we would try to do it very sympathetically and would not seek to make it look artificially modern or contemporary.

We want to live in it. So spending £250k extending it on top of £200k on refurb is a folly in the location as you’re never going to see that money back anyway.

But @htm_1968 s assessment of what might be initially needed is pretty much my view - it’ll probably take £200k.

And the grounds will need securing for an escapologist Foxhound and Hel can spend a small fortune making the grounds something else.

Can’t wait to have a look and then tell Hel how much of her fortune we need to spend on it :kissing_closed_eyes:

I forgot new windows, repointing, full insulation and a new central heating system. I’m on £250K now wearing my optimist’s hat. TBH, I bought our joint by looking at the price of similar homes in peak condition and then subtracting the ‘that’s a decent guess’ value of the renovation, a big contingency and the Stamp Duty.

We still overspent, but we did more than we originally planned.

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It cost us £25K to rebuild and repair just the brick structure of the Traphouse here (+ new gutters and weatherboards), and about £1K to rewire and modernise the limited electrics in there.

And that’s basically our garage/shed… and with me doing some of the work.

Nothing here was in such a ropy/neglected state as the place near Kiddy - and you have to remember that while your eye is caught by the 50YO carpets etc, it could be 80 years - if ever - since anyone did anything substantial to the infrastructure, and chances are they bodged the fuck out of it when they did.

I think your £250K is a minimum.

Just buy land with outline PP, and build what you want in whatever style you like - doesn’t have to be modern in architecture, just infrastructure.

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If its going to be a final location it looks great.

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:open_mouth:

feels

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Totally cool looking place! I can absolutely see why you’re interested. Gorgeous grounds. That could be amazing, post-restoration.

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I’ve thought the same, have to assume very little work done in the last 50-70 years.

When you bought your pad Paul to what extent did you know what you were letting yourself in for?

And how much shit did the survey happen not to mention? :sweat_smile:

Then spend whatever and enjoy it. Too much angst over values. It’s your home, not stocks and shares.

TBH, this place had a LOT of superficial “prettification” work done to it in the 40 years the previous owners had it, and they were not short of money. They were however short of clues, never paid their bills, always bodged or cheaped-out, and never undertook infrastructural work - which a large Georgian house that had an extra storey added to it 100 years later very clearly needed!

I knew it had some non-fatal structural issues (long-term subsidence related), knew it needed a complete outer-skin refurb, and mostly new windows, and couldn’t miss the fact the central heating unit was suitable for a small 3-bed semi, but not a 6 bed sieve… I also planned to be rid of the ugly Marley-tile roof at some point. It was also clear that most outbuilding were fucked, there were several points of damp ingress, and the near 1km of brick wall surrounding the garden was held in place only by inertia…

What I didn’t know was how incredibly hard it is to get good tradespeople around here, nor that they are such painfully workshy cunts that big jobs scare most of them away never to be heard of again. Some it’s possible to get to work, but impossible to pay… That is a new one on me! Our two viewings were on freakishly quiet traffic days too - so I also didn’t know we’d have 24/7/365 lorry movements thundering past at 60mph shaking the place to bits…

Survey? What survey? Waste of money, never once has one ever spotted issues with any of the dozen places I’ve bought, and never once have I successfully pursued a claim against one.

Truth is, I bit off more than I can chew - perhaps my biggest mistake was underestimating quite what a lazy, feckless, incompetent cunt I am.

Flipside is, Sam truly loves it here, but then she has a unique gift for treating her home as if it’s a hotel with an extensive staff which makes it easy for her to ignore problems, wheras I like to have a really good fucking worry about absolutely everything. TBH, I love it here too, and we have the best social life either of us has ever had, it’s a great area to live in, very affordable (the house and land cost exactly what a bedsit in Battersea cost back in 2015) - and mostly very quiet, plus godnose we’ve got enough space!

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Same as it ever was. People will happily pay £50k for a kitchen, but mend the knackered roof? No fucking way, how will that impress their mates? :woozy_face:

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Very first line of the description sums it up nicely:

CHEQUE BOOK ESSENTIAL

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Nailed-it :+1:

House’s should come with a service history.

House’s what?

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Lawyer’s’s’ apostrophe in action…:grimacing:

Just be glad they are using punctuation at all.

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As in possessions’ nine-tenths of the law?