Grotty house advise

[Funky-Melon]

My girlfriend and I have just had an offer accepted on our first house. It's a 4 bed (technically 5 but no full time stairs to loft bedroom, so can't be classed as one). Very good size in a great area etc but it's cheap for a reason.....It was owned by an elderly chap who hasn't really looked after it that well with age and he was an extremely heavy smoker. He went into hospital a few months back and sadly didn't come back out.

All (once white) walls throughout most the house are heavily stained in nicotine, house smells of fags etc, needs new kitchen, both bathrooms need gutting etc, it's a mess...

Does anyone have any suggestions on getting rid of the nicotine? Obviously we got it as a project and will be redecorating the whole house overtime but the nicotine smells are disgusting at the moment and will need dealing with quickly when we move in.

I assume ripping out all carpets and curtains is the first thing but is there anything good out there for the walls?

 

[Funky-Melon]

sugar soap for the walls will get the nicotine off

Thanks, never heard of this stuff before - Not too expensive either.

This would make a good project log to watch, if the OP wouldn't mind posting photos of what they started with and their progress.

Yep, I'll get lots of pictures once we're in and get a thread going when we start the work. Won't be for a while yet though since the property is still going through probate, could be another 3-6 months yet

Zinsser cover stain should do the job, although every surface will have to be tackled to get rid of the smell.
http://www.zinsseruk.com/howto/paint-nicotine-stains/

This looks good, thanks

Did you budget for cleaning or are you planning to do it all yourselves? I'd be tempted to get a professional in for a first round of cleaning.

We're planning on doing as much as we can ourselves, though having never done this before we may be (probably are) in over our heads

 

[Funky-Melon]

Any of these HUGE jobs you can do before you live in there will make your lives 100000% easier vs trying to do them while living there. 3 months extra wait time vs many years of happy living without disruption is well worth it.

As much as we'd love to do this prior to moving in (or even as soon as we're in) huge jobs tend to cost huge money, of which we won't have after moving

So far from what we've seen it needs...
- Bloody good clean all over
- New downstairs bathroom
- New upstairs bathroom
- New carpets/ laminate all round
- Potentially re-plastering, definitely painting
- New kitchen

First thing after the big clean is to move some of the doors further along the walls on some of the upstairs rooms to improve the layout so we can get on with redecorating. No point plastering/fitting new carpets then knocking walls down, making a mess again.

Then it's on to the things we'd like to do to it after, like redo the conservatory, en suite in master bedroom and sort the jungle of a garden - That won't be for a while yet though I expect.

 

[Funky-Melon]

We didn't do any wiring, minor plumbing, and we spent about £40-50k, not including the side return extension, on a 2 bed. We expected to spend about £20k.

£40-50k? Eek - What was that mostly spent on?

 

[Funky-Melon]

@Russinating Wow that looks fantastic - Good job!

We'll be doing most of it ourselves since the house was already top of our budget. My sister's partner owns a construction company and has offered his services so at least we'll have some help there.

Thanks for the advise!

@Entai we've not got the survey done yet but we're fairly sure it's around 1950's.

 

[Funky-Melon]

@Funky-Melon Is this house in Eastleigh?

Nope, Netley.

 

[Funky-Melon]

Aaah ok sounds exactly what my new neighbours are going though, knew the old chap before he died, heavy smoker went into hospital and didn't come back...... looks like they are totally gutting the place, carpets have all gone and looks like they are replastering all the walls.

Ahh fair enough. Yep, that'll be me when we're in

Where abouts in Southampton you from?

 

[Funky-Melon]

Need to update my sig not in Southampton anymore, used to rent a flat in Portswood, now in Eastleigh, but renovating this place at the moment with the view to sell in next 18 months and move to the New Forest

Good luck with this project!

Thanks!

I work not far from Portswood....You're far better off in Eastleigh

 

[Funky-Melon]

We finally got grant of probate, exchanged 2 weeks ago and complete/move in next Thursday.

Buying all our sugar soap/scrubbing brushes, paint etc now to start gradually making it more homely.

First thing after cleaning it is to rip out and replace one of the bathrooms, both were listed as 'unsanitary' in the survey

 

[Funky-Melon]

Thanks for the tips guys. Yeah we'll gut most of the house after the initial cleaning of walls etc. We're also going to remove a few walls downstairs too, it's currently got a shower and toilet room partitioned off from the kitchen

Plan is to gut that out, put it in the side extension and make a large kitchen in the space.

 

[Funky-Melon]

That side extension seems really....odd.

Is it. Makes it look like it's only around 2m wide and seems an odd thing to have done.

Glad you're keeping a downstairs toilet. They're a godsend!

Yeah it is a bit odd, it's got two front doors as well The one you see on the porch and another at the front of the extension, quick drawing on my phone on what we're planning to do to the downstairs, though will be further down the line and we're not 100% decided.

Yeah looks like a nice very large house, but that layout is very strange, and lots of wasted space too, i mean look at all that landing room!!

What would you change landing wise? We've not really planned too much for the upstairs except maybe moving the door to the master bedroom and putting an ensuite where the first double wardrobe is later down the line. The loft room (not in floor plan) I think has been bordered out, plastered and carpeted etc rather than fully converted but there is a decent space up there too, I can't see anyway we can get a staircase to it though.

You've mentioned not having a particularly large budget to make a start on the works - which isn't very wise when taking on a project like this, but needs must i guess.

Yeah, we're first time buyers and it was either this or a small 2 or 3 bed box house for the same money. We've got enough to make a start but we won't be knocking down walls anytime soon. Structurally it's sound, it's just pretty grotty. I'll get some pictures up of the inside when we're in next week.

We're both on good salaries and there are no kids involved (yet) so we plan on just doing bits as and when we can

 

[Funky-Melon]

that porch re-do looks a huge waste of money when you look at the work ahead of you.

Agree and its not high on the priority list by any means. The current front facing porch sticks into the drive which makes parking a second car harder, so moving it to the side would give us more drive space.

 

[Funky-Melon]

Well we're in and it's grottier than we recalled, in fact it's disgusting. One of the removal guys knew one of the sons of the guy who owned the house. He smoked 40 a day till he died (33 years he owned this house) - The walls in this house are an advert to stop smoking.

Things to sort that we weren't aware of and our homebuyer survey missed.

- Tile missing on roof of porch, looking on streetview this was missing in 2012 and still is today, puddle in porch as a result and entire front door, side door supports and floor/roof of porch are rotted
- Master bedroom window won't close, completely seized, looking on maps, it's another thing he's not bothered to fix for many years
- Both gas an electric meters are PAYG
- Several windows just push open when shut and locked, few of them blown

Sorted so far:
- Temp fix on the porch, got some felt and wood and screwed it down to sides of porch. It's water tight for now but only temporary
- Quotes for new front door - £1600 fitted
- Quotes for windows
- Swapped meters for 'normal' ones.
- Scrubbed most the kitchen with sugar soap, gradually priming it with BIN sealing primer
- Cleared out loads of left over ****, despite us saying we wanted it empty to our solicitor, the 3 sons didn't bother with much.

To do:

Everything else

 

[Funky-Melon]

Congratulations! You'll look back at all the hard work you've put in and be proud of how you've transformed your new home.

Given the time of year I'd prioritise getting the property watertight above anything else, including windows and properly sorting the porch out. In the meantime you can be sugarsoaping and painting everything. I'd personally wait on doing any alterations to the property until you're properly in and settled. We had quite a few plans for our house but have changed our minds since moving in and living in it.

Thanks.

Yeah getting it water tight is the priority, along with sorting the master bedroom (windows and carpet). We just need one room done to start so we can begin to start to unpack properly.

Noticed this morning after a shower that water is dripping down the dining room wall - Bathroom is above, so another fun surprise to look at - The first of many I'm sure!

 

[Funky-Melon]

Some pictures of the place for those interested and a few 'progress' shots.....

​

Spoiler: Warning: Picture heavy

Left side partly sugar soaped and primed - This was a tester to see how well it would work, seems good so far.

Top of all cabinets clean, left side shows how gross they were, right is how they come up.

Left side of ceiling done

Primed one of the cabinets after cleaning, think we're gonna end up priming everything - Right side has been sugar soaped twice, still looks crap!

This is the weird 'shower room' that's in the kitchen...

Next year we plan on ripping that shower room out, relocate the boiler, install an RSJ as one of the walls is load bearing and do something similar to this, with an island in the middle.

Oh and one of the 'jail' rotting door, just for laughs....

That will be replaced with a composite door and side panels in the next few weeks.

 

[Funky-Melon]

Been in 6 weeks now and progress is slow, things are happening now though which is nice.

First big thing to get sorted was getting the porch repaired and fit a new door since the old one was tacky, not air tight and looked like a jail door. It had also completely rotted since the guy had a leaking tile for 10 years and didn't fix it. If a kid had come and punched it, the whole thing would have just disintegrated. Fortunately the side extension has a door so we'd been using that till now.

So out with the old and in with the new.

Inside

Given the timbers were rotted and tiles broken we ripped them all out and got the porch rebuilt. New timbers, insulation, tiles, plasterboard, wiring, guttering fascias etc

Porch was finished today - Much happier with how it looks now - Rendering and soffits need sorting on the front but it looks much tidier

Our living room was 10 degrees over the last few cold nights as half the rads are blocked and that porch was letting all the cold air in - Had a comfy 15 degrees last night

The best bit - We were about to order the exact same door, frame, style etc new for £1100 + fitting but found one on Facebook Marketplace......6 month old composite door with frame and side window but too big for the house is was on and they wanted to fit something smaller, it was 6cm too small for our dimensions but our builder said he'd make it work.

Had our builder go round to look at it and it was immaculate - £160 later for the lot and it's ours - Absolute bargain!

We also ripped up the master bedroom to get one room done before Christmas, as we're still sleeping on the floor in the fourth bedroom which is the cleanest room.

Old window was stuck open and looking at Google maps, had been for 10 years, most the glass was blown too so old window out

New one in

I won't even attempt plastering so plasterer is booked, as is new carpet but we could hear quite a bit from the neighbour, so I decided last minute to whip up a stud wall with some acoustic insulation. It's a big room so don't mind losing a bit of space for some noise reduction.

Electrics, studs, plasterboard all done ready for the plasterer on Monday, was bit of a rush getting all this done in the evenings but finally finished last night - I can hear them if I listen very carefully with my ear up against the wall......so big improvement, glad I did it

To be continued.....

 

[Funky-Melon]

What did you use for the acoustic insulation?

I used 15mm GTEC Db board with Isover acoustic slab for insulation

 

[Funky-Melon]

No pictures but a few updates, work was stupidly busy before xmas so struggled to find the time and motivation to do the house in what little of the evenings I had left when I got home.

- Master bedroom is done now apart from painting and fitting blinds
- Got a quote to knock out the bathroom downstairs fit a large RSJ and relocate the boiler ready for new kitchen
- Liked @Semple idea of making bedroom 3 bigger so are getting a quote in a few days to knock the walls down/rebuild while we're away for a week in July. Will reduce the master slightly but worth it for a bigger 3rd room.
- Started ripping out upstairs bathroom, will be ordering that in the next week or so

Still not regretting our purchase......yet

 

[Funky-Melon]

Hi funky melon. We are literally following in your footsteps. About to put an offer in on a house extremely similar to yours. Just wondering if you had a blog if your progress and how everything turned out? How long did it take you? Approx costs? Are we stupid to even do this? Reading some of these comments we certainly do t have £60,000 to do this house up. Any tips, info, experience, photos would be massively helpful. Thanks

Wow, it's been a while since I've updated this thread. I'll get some updates written soon

Regarding your question, you have 2 options IMO...

1: Buy it and get traders in to tackle the worst of it before you move in. This is ideal but requires a lot of money up front which in my case I didn't have.

2: Move in with a 'can do' approach and tackle most of the work yourself, this is what I've done so far and at times it's not easy as you're essentially living in a gross house - Just have to remind yourself that Rome wasn't built in a day!

I quite often get deflated by the sheer amount of time and money needed, especially when friends my age are getting married and starting families etc and we can't realistically do that yet because of what we need to spend on this place but it will be worth it in the long run.

Make sure you look at ceiling value as well, you may not be buying it to do it up and flip but I doubt you'll want to spend thousands more over the years than it's ever going to be worth when you come to sell it.

Our neighbour sold their house last year for around £30k more than we paid for ours and it's quite literally half the size so I'm hoping we'll make a decent amount on this when it comes to selling.

 

[Funky-Melon]

How do you do that copy and post original comment?

Hit the 'Quote' button at the bottom right

Thanks dirty chinchilla. Unfortunately we’d need to do it all before we moved in as I’ll have a newborn baby with me. The dangers of third hand smoke from leaching toxins and cot death has a high correlation and I don’t want to take any chances. We’ll need to get rid of as much of the THC we can get out before we move in. I suppose I could plastic off the kitchen and never take baby in there until we can do it later.

If you can't re-plaster right away then use sugar soap mixed with water. It's cheap as chips and will get the worst of the nicotine out. Our kitchen was terrible and smelt disgusting. We spent probably around a week sugar soaping all the walls, ceilings, cupboards etc getting it as clean as possible, then primed everything with this stuff...

Zinsser B-I-N White Multi-surface Matt Primer, 2.5 | DIY at B&Q

It's not cheap but it's bloody good! Smell is now completely gone and we haven't even painted over the top of it yet, make sure you wear a proper mask when applying it though as it's quite nasty. Also rip out carpets, there's little you can do with those.