[Closed] Help I'm keeling over here. House renovation/stress & MTFU

hardest thing I eved did when my eldest was a similiar age - it does get easier but only coz it cannot get harder ...chin up fella it will be worth it in the end
Can give you a hand this weekend if any use?

Thank you for the offer and kind words 🙂 I want to ride this weekend. I need to ride. I haven't ridden in 6 weeks. I honestly could cry at times. 🙁

Our house was not watertight and had very little insulation. roofers came, roofers left. House is now watertight and warm. Awful roofers though 👿 It'll be worth it, just not yet.

I feel for you, when there is so much to do it's easy to get swamped by it all. Break it down & think about one job at a time & it all looks a lot more manageable. Look forward to getting each room/job completed as once it's done it will look great and that will be one more off the list.

Its utterly ruined me (including my hands which are still raw).

Ah, you have a womans hands sir!

Stick with it, it won't go on forever. Good luck 🙂

Parenthood means giving more of yourself than you ever thought you could or would want to.

My epxerience with DIY and young children is if you don't push on and finish it you'll live with a half finished job for years.

Don't ride this weekend, work on the house get it right for your family and then get on the bike - you'll enjoy it far more.

I feel your pain 🙂

Did a similar thing earlier this year and I thought it'd be never ending. It did end, but then Jnr W2K MkII turned up and wreaked havoc. It'll get better, don't worry. Might take a few years, mind. 😉

Your ****ed if I'm doing this again. My next house is a Wimpey new build/shoebox.

We're doing it at the moment. 11:00pm finishes every night, no power tools (kids asleep), 200 years worth of paint, bodges and shite to tidy up, up at 6:00am, bleeding hands and dust everywhere.

Christmas however will be paintbrush free and my kids will have their own rooms at last. These thoughts are keeping me going.

So, MTFU and get on with it. 😉

HTH

Ah yes, the dust. I can smell it when the radiators are on. Even though I've humanly painted everywhere I can still smell it. I also need new skirting boards in two rooms as there are gaps 🙁

6-11? You've kinda cheered me up there 'Harry.

I feel your pain. Just moved into a house over the weekend, needs re decorating, plumbing and electrical work done, carpets and floorboards sanding, antique fireplace going in etc etc etc. son is just over 5 months and teething like a mutha!

Don't do things like sloppily paint stuff, its a waste of time and money, it will need doing again. pick a room, do it well, move on. if you look at the whole picture it will be too overwhelming. You want a nice house, hurriedly painting to cover up bare plaster isn't going to achieve that. I'm starting on juniors room tonight, should be finished to a high standard within a week or so (well as high as I can hope to achieve!)

warton the front living room is sealed off with plastic over the door and back to bare plaster and ready for a professional painter and decorator. So that is our 'posh in waiting' room.

When thats done we'll swap rooms and get the rear drawing room properly re-done. I did that. I really don't have any skill with a brush. I've even badly painted the bare floorboards dark brown.

*I don't know if I'm being too hard on myself but I'm picking faults with everything the workmen have done (dwelling on the small missed plastered bits I've noticed and small paint over-runs of mine etc).

We were going to open up the kitchen/back living room wall but thats on hold due to the delays with builders etc to a future date 🙁

Houses need maintenance, even newish ones, and it becomes a self perpetuating cycle. Do the best job you can afford to do from day 1 then you won't need to repeat the task in the near future.

Example we spent a few hundred quid 4 years ago or so replacing kitchen cupboard doors & worksurfaces to tart the room up, now need new carcasses so new kitchen basically.

Sympathy in terms of new born child etc, but even new houses progress into needing such jobs, our house is 16 years old & has had new bathroom and as I said above new kitchen is on the cards imminently.

I’d like to meet the man who invented Artex and use his bones to chip it off the walls. What sort of sick #### would Artex a wall FFS?

Worked out my “Buzz Lightyear and Friends” fresco layout at lunchtime though. Really looking forward to starting on that.

missingfrontallobe, elderly couple who owned the house before had a new kitchen put in at a cost of 7k. The fitters didnt bother with redoing the walls or replastering. Just plonked it in. That'll stay for a while but go when we knock through the kitchen wall to expand. ALL in the future -**** knows when!

I'm just dog-tired. Starting to resent the place rather than being excited. Maybe Thursday onwards I can relax (handing back our rented place) and moved forward/sit and action-plan.

I know how you feel, moved into a new place at the beginning of sept, just got to the point where the lounge and dining room are actually a lounge and dining room. I never knew you could hide so much rubble behind a bricked-up fireplace. Oh well onto the small bedroom now...

Luckily for us there are just two of us in a four bedroom house. We moved in to the main bedroom 6 months after we moved into the house. Lived without a bathroom for 3 weeks. Don't have curtains in most rooms (still) and several still need painting.

It's all starting to come together and where it is we love it. The rest we are just getting on with prioritising the main linving areas.

As above, break it down and prioritise it. No need to go overboard with planning but we had a basic idea what our critical path was and focused on those areas. Remember to have time off. Go out of the house to somewher eyou can forget about the chaos wvery now and again.

If it helps, go on holiday for 3 weeks. That's what my GF did and left me to live in the house with no windows 🙁

Not a chance I would do it with kids so respect and good luck!

Talking of rubble. The Plumber/bathroom guy hid a great deal of plaster/rubble in the open floorboards. I sifted loads out. The guy was an incompetent cowboy. I even had another gas safety guy come and recheck his work. If I found anything amiss I was going to report him.

JonB thank you, your helping me put my (betterish) situation in perspective 🙂

Come on now, man up. Don't anyone talk to me about dust until you have pulled down some old lath & plaster ceilings or cut a new internal door opening using a disc cutter. My personal low point was up on the (open) roof trying to secure a tarpaulin in the dark, peeing rain & howling gale.

I bet you thought it'd only take a few weeks to sort the whole lot out - I mean how hard can it be, how long can it really take to knock down a wall or two, get the wall paper off, paint and put some new floor down????

f'ing months of hard graft that's how long. nobody who has never done this type of thing ever realises how long it will take. They (you and me included) sit and scoff at the incompetent f'wits who disagree with bigtits-Beany. We know we could do it better and in half the time if we wanted to.

We wanted to and so did it.........you realise that these things do take time to get done and get done right. Its a learning experience, you're at the point of despair, it will get better once a few key things come together.

Some advice - it's hardwork, now you've stripped everything back try and focus on sorting out a couple of rooms well - probably your bedroom and the kids room. Then sort out the lounge, the most important thing is to get somewhere comfortable that you can relax in when you've been working. Also make sure you finish every last thing in a room before moving on - otherwise you will live for years with no skirting. Getting a new floor down it magically finishes a room and makes it lovely!

Don't do what I did, work hard for 6 months break the back of it and then break your knee meaning you can't walk for 3 months. That makes things hard!

Keep your chin up mate - I've just finished sorting out the top half of our garden after we've been in the house 3 years. Both my parents took ill just after we moved in; my dad died about 6 months later, then my mum the following year. Just when we thought we were getting sorted out from all the emotional and practical consequences of that, my wife's dad had a recurrence of his mental health problems and went awol. He was found 3 weeks later with frostbite and hypothermia, and he's only just out of hospital in the last few weeks.

I always reckon the hardest part of these situations is working out which bits you can give a quick tidy up and live with for a while, and which bits you want to get done properly. What you don't want to do is make extra work for yourself down the line. We've lived with a grotesque avocado bathroom suite for 3 years now, but it's next on the list of things to get ripped out and replaced.

British tradesmen are, generally speaking, a f*cking joke - I can't think of any job I've employed people to do that I couldn't have finished off better myself. Current thing bugging me is the wood burning stove we had installed last week - the internal pipe is off the vertical; not by much, but enought to catch the eye. It's something that could have been checked and adjusted in 2 minutes with a spirit level, but they didn't bother, and now it would be significant work to get it sorted.

Give DIY SOS a call,see if they want to feature you on the next series.

Agree with Warton, don't bother trying to slap paint on stuff, you'll regret it in six months time when you have to sand it all back to make a nice job of it. And painting floorboards? Just give everything a good clean.

I lived in chaos for 18 months whilst we sorted our house, 100 years of paint and wall paper to strip, crumbling plaster, damp, woodworm and new floor required, new kitchen, new bathroom, new external door knocked through, new rooflights in kitchen. I should've parked a caravan in the street and lived in that rather than eating and sleeping in a building site.

Hora, you've got somewhere to live and you love your wife and kid.

The rest is just frills mate.

I feel you pain, aalthough only in my wallet.
A builder neighbour a few doors down has done some sterling work for me.
A new front window fitted without the packing spacers so the frame (upvc) is bowed and the new window has leaked from more or less day 1.
New wall to front. Budget £1200, wanted a couple of lines of grey engineering bricks and cream cappings. £1600 later and no engineering bricks or cream cappings fitted.
New bathroom downstairs, underfloor heating mat fitted as its a tiled floor, control box wired in under basin!
Bog roll holder fell off as there were no plugs in the wall, just 2 screws and 2 matchsticks.

Being a remtard I asked him to fit a pair of French doors and side panels with shoe box size openers in the top. I got a sliding patio door that will leak as its in a very exposed sea front location. It gets better, the patio door he fitted to his own house has leaked from when he built it, and even after he sold it the new owners had to get a new one . still leaks. Its not even square in the hole in the wall, and the hilti foam used to fill the gaps has massive gaps in it. I could have done a better job , and believe me im the worst DIYer ever.

You should have posted a 'HELP' post on here, some bods might have rocked up for a few hours weilding paint brushed and leccy drills. A few hours hard graft before boredom / need to go to pub sets in can advance any project really quickly.

Have fun , and dont get too stressed .Sit down and write alist and prioritise what you have to do, rather than what you want to do . Starting with basic human needs, like bogs that flush and heating then go from there.

Hora - I have the number of a decent decorator in Manchester. Bike rider, too.

bet you thought it'd only take a few weeks to sort the whole lot out - I mean how hard can it be, how long can it really take to knock down a wall or two, get the wall paper off, paint and put some new floor down????

Isn't that 110% of the truth. 😆 😐

ourmaninthenorth, yes please.

Is it dry, warm, secure, heated and has a water supply? If one of those is a no, get it sorted, Anything else you can do as you go along a little bit at a time. One room at a time.
Your skirting board has gaps? How are you managing to cope? No wonder your youngster is up all night.
I'm trying to think of a phrase......oh yes, that's it;
Get A F****ing GRIP!

Thank you monksie and you are right. 🙂

From the start I told mrshora that it'll be step by step, take months. It wont be until after Christmas that we have the room extended, everything sorted etc. Which she understand and agrees with.

So full-circle.....I've now ignored my own plan and irrationally I feel I'm letting them both down. Not giving them the best.

The last time we lived in a 'ropey' place was at Uni and yesterday I realised I was starting to slip abit mentally.

Thanks for the man up and abit of reality-check* compared

*singletrackmind - 😯

spooky_b329- nice 😀

You'll drive yourself to distraction (sounds like you have already) if you don't relax.
Your youngster doesn't give a flying stuff that the place is a tip but will be unsettled if his/her parents are stressed.
The little guy needs you at your best when (s)he's hurting. Don't forget, you're tired, the little one is tired and in pain.
Prioritise each project, set a [b]reasonable[/b] time scale and cost for it to be done, accept that it's going to take as long as it's going to take, add a bit longer to each room and if you don't need the extra time, spend it with the family or on your own.
You and your wife might even start to enjoy seeing the place slowly getting better if you slow down and relax a bit.

You are right. One workman told me that when he was younger his Dad (a plumber) bought a project house and tried to do his day job and renovate their new house and ended up having a nervous breakdown. I'm not quite there but I was on the outskirts/on the lead up.

Thank you.

Find a good builder/handy man, with personal recommendations from people you trust.

We've had stuff done like loft boarding, messing around with kitchen cabinets etc. by our local handy man, and it takes him less time (probably a quarter of the time at most), and when you look at the cost, often we don't end up badly off, as he gets materials cheaper, and doesn't waste much. Plus he has all the tools already.

He did the painting for the previous owner too, lovely job, way better than I'd do, and the bill for his time wasn't massive compared to the cost of paint.

Joe

Nobody else can see the faults you 'made'. You did the work so you see the faults that nobody else does. Learn to live with them.
Break it down into work areas, prioritise, then actively DON'T do the ones lower down the list and concentrate on the priorities. You're trying to do all of it together. Get together with Mrs hora and make that list.
Don't fret about the floorboards. Rugs are cool.
I know where you are - did 2 houses in my past and know the self-imposed stress it brings. You do need to ride your bike as well - even if just for an hour.

It WILL be worth it and you can always redo bits in the future if you really aren't happy with them.

Slightly OT, be i've recently moved with family from one rented house to another.
The old house had virtually nothing done to it in the 10 yrs we were there, bar a bit of decorating.
The new house is pretty much mint, god does it feel good to be there! Really helps you psycologically.
I suppose what im saying is once its sorted you can really feel at home (something our old place never really did)
I know i've skipped the bit where the house is a bombsite, but im trying to give you some hope!

Yup, been there. Done the whole spending every holiday fixing or changing something - bathroom, kitchen, rotten joists etc etc. Just moved out from an older house to a new build. It'll still need things doing, but its good to have a short break from the DIY

Mrshora before I unplumb the washing machine do you need to use this sink anymore? No (sure as the waste pipe will be exposed underneath)....guess who emptied a cartoon of tomato juice down the sink 30mins later? 🙄

Mr hora?

No it'd still be mrs hora as I'd be the one 'in charge' 😉

It'll be worth it in the end! We moved to a new house 3 years ago and still working on it now. My little boy (3 years) loves helping now with his plastic hammer and fisher price tool box! The first year was hell though, moved in when the other half was 6 months pregnant and decided to return the playroom back into a garage as it was a freezing cold, low ceilinged cave with damp and warped timber flooring. On the first day of the job some c**t came in the house, took my car keys and then stole both my cars, one of which had a hired jack hammer in the boot. Anyway got the cars sorted and carried on with breaking out what I thought was going to be 6 inches of concrete but in fact was 18inches and filled a large builders skip. We then got flooded by raw sewage when the main sewer backed up on the street... FFS. Anyhoo got everthing sorted (and my bikes have a new home!) but at the time I was close to going under. A few months later we went away camping and another c**t tried to break into my new up and over door (glad I opted for the 4 point steel framed version). I swear if I had caught these peole they would have been going through my friends woodchipper into the woods... Oh and the pr**k who nicked my cars was 13. Cricifixion's too good for 'em...

[i]Break it down into work areas, prioritise, then actively DON'T do the ones lower down the list and concentrate on the priorities. You're trying to do all of it together.[/i]

Agree with this too, one room at a time. You can then close the door and the rest of the house is relatively normal. I always try and get the messy jobs done in the first few days then have a really good clean so the dust is minimised throughout the rest of the house.

And try to enjoy what you're doing, I love plumbing, wiring, joinery but put a paint brush in my hand and I feel like I'm looking at starting painting the Forth road bridge on my own.

Looking forward to my own version of this hell..

Builder starts on my loft conversion in 2 weeks, he's doing the structural stuff and I'm finishing it off. Then got to decorate my boy's room, before starting on the downstairs (opening up kitchen and extension out the back) in new year.....

Hoping to get the nasty jobs out the way before MrsSS goes back to work, so she can go to her mum's with the wee fella and get him away from the building site....(leaving me to get on with it)

One day I might be able to afford a new house.

My friend bought a new house whilst at university, a builder let him down with 1 month before everyone was meant to move in.

In one month we managed to build 2 new Walls paint all 9 rooms furnish the entire place fit new carpets and sand the floorboards in the 3 rooms that had them. I was just helping, but my friend was going mental, so I can see what you must be feeling.

We just knuckled down and got on with it one job at a time, bit by bit and got professional help to finish it off. We did all the shonkey building work, there are still two ackrow (sp) jacks in the wall supporting a steel beam that needed supporting, but a bit of plaster over the top and know one knows. It looks smart because we had a good plasterer and a good painter.

The most satisfying bit was finishing it. We never thought we would. Good luck to you, break it down into small chunks, if you ever want a hand give us a shout I don't mind sparing my time for a weekend.

[i] there are still two ackrow (sp) jacks in the wall supporting a steel beam that needed supporting, but a bit of plaster over the top and know one knows.[/i]

Nice...wouldn't want to be under that lot when it comes down. I've seen acrow props that have rusted right through, new ones alongside taking the load, the old ones actually hanging like stalagtites!

guess who emptied a carton of tomato juice down the sink 30mins later

Classic 🙂 You'd be surprised how many people will take the waste trap off a sink then reach up & empty it in the same sink.

Chin up.

Been there and some. Had no external wall to the bedroom and living room for the whole winter apart from some chip board (no heating either), rats coming in and out, pets coming in for a peek (not ours), a cupboard for a kitchen etc.......

Its a state of mind. I saw it as a time we had to go through to get what we wanted and something we would look back on with amazement we got through it. The SO hated every waking second in the house, restented the builder for all his faults, stressed over every little problem, and now has sworn never to do it again.

Relax, stand back, get some persperctive and hope the other half doesnt comit murder or freak out in the process.

[i]there are still two ackrow (sp) jacks in the wall supporting a steel beam that needed supporting, but a bit of plaster over the top and know one knows.

Nice...wouldn't want to be under that lot when it comes down. I've seen acrow props that have rusted right through, new ones alongside taking the load, the old ones actually hanging like stalagtites!
[/i]

there is now a stud wall too so won't be a problem (fingers crossed)

I remember this saying when the decorating gets me a bit down. Whoever invented decorating needs fu##### and whoever invented fu##### needs decorating. Makes me smile anyway.

Hora - you won't want to hear this, but last night we finally finished our house after 3.5 years, Monksie will remember as he helped us move in.

We have lived in every room of the house as each one got done up.
Always start at the top and work down. As others have said this will not go on for ever and when its finished you won't remember the dark days.

We didn't have a baby to cope with, but we did run out of money and everything got put on hold. We also ended up doing a lot of the work ourselves which wasn't ideal. I remember working from home in the freezing cold with no kitchen, running water or loo. There were many trips to the nearby doctor's sugery to use their facilities.

Yes, builders are a pain in the back side. Many of them often don't turn up and mess you around, its the nature of their job.

Our house is now how I want it and I love the location and neighbours, but wouldn't want to go through it all again.

Luckily you're young and can afford to get the builders in.

It'll all turn out right in the end. Also with Lisa's designer skills its going to look fantastic.

Forgot to mention, take photos. We have lots of 'before and after' shots whhich always make us smile. It also reminds you of which walls got knocked down and which got put up etc.

Some great advice you are getting hora...Good ol stw!

I know what you mean about the blackness - me and my then long term partner (ex) decided to buy a wreck of a place and we lived in it whilst I did the majority of the work in between my normal shifts. No shower or heating in the winter was tough! The toughest part was realising after the first year that my partner wanted different things out of life and was keen to focus upon her career rather than our life together...which resulted in me having to finish a house (took 2 years) that I knew that I would never actually be able to afford to live in.

I could have walked away there and then but my pride and my bank account wouldn't allow me to leave an unfinished and devalued house.

The day the final room was painted...I walked down the driveway with a rucksack on my back not really knowing where I was going, where I was going to live.It took me 5 years to get back on to the property ladder a year of which was spent living out of the back of my VW panel van, yep what an irony...a homeless Paramedic...- but I got there ( only for the market to crash 2 months later :@)))cest la vie

What I'm trying to say is that you need to take it easy, try to rise above the turps and the unsalvageable paintbrushes, and enjoy the thought of your efforts one day becoming your home. A place where you and your family can grow and have fun.

Take it easy hora, and keep us posted.

You'd be surprised how many people will take the waste trap off a sink then reach up & empty it in the same sink

....I did this at the new house. I'll tell her this one day....not yet though! 😆 8)