The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: plumseverywhere on March 14, 2011, 04:35:16 pm
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We bought this house in June 2009, its a rambling old victorian house that was in dire need of modernisation but we fell totally in love with it, its location, the views and the land. We are still totally head over hills with the place and everyday appreciate our surroundings...BUT...the renovation is starting to stress me a bit :)
Perhaps we shouldn't have bought in livestock, perhaps buying such a project with 4 very small children was daft, I don't know. So far we've managed to refit a kitchen and I do love my kitchen but the budget got blown a bit when we had the range put in and needed to have a new lintel (?sp) above within th echimney.
the 2 front bedrooms where the girls are are stripped down and have been for months! we are just aboutr painting them now
today we tried to remove a dripping shower (which i should never have turned on as I knew it was totally wrecked! but had to clean the bath) and we now have a flood downstairs all over the kitchen. aaaaaaagh! oh that's better ;D
anyone else renovated with small children/,livestock/jobs at the same time? any words of reassurance pleaaaaaaase?!
Lisa
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ours isnt a smallholding thats next
8 years ago we bought a house whilst baby no.2 was 6 days old (eldest was 18months) in the following years we have gutted and redone the whole place its not finished but its close enough that its time to sell it on and start again with a smallholding this time
in the 8 years we have added 2 more children, fostered a further 17, started and built up a successfulish business, the house wasn't always the first priority once we could live in it, now i have a to do list of essentials so i can sell it and move on.
has it been stressful at times YES, could we ever have owned a house anyother way NO!!!
good luck and enjoy the bits you can!!!
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I have been on the go now for almost 4 years! Its no longer called a croft its called "the Money Pit". However was warm for the first time this winter so getting there
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I bought this place relatively cheaply because the house, built in 1972-3 and lived in by the same couple til he died and she went into a nursing home age 90 odd, hadn't been updated or redecorated since the build. The carpets were damp and doggy, there were scratches on the internal doors, no heating, ageing kitchen, lemon yellow bathroom with a huge green water mark from the tap to plug, and 10 acres of march fenced but otherwise undivided and undeveloped land. Oh and the original static caravan they'd lived in during construction, in a rather dire state but with electric and water connections and drainage into the same septic tank as the house..
I've been here 9 years or thereabouts and now have oil heating but kept the open fire and back boiler to heat water so couldn't connect water to oil and the backup/summer supply is an old immersion heater I never use because of the cost.. I changed the bathroom to a quite nice one and separate shower, so that room is quite nice. All carpets were out first thing, all wallpapers from the 70s (!!) were redone in magnolia and new carpets put in, and sad to say the kitchen has never got to the top of the list, the doors are now cat scratched too, and the carpets have about had it again ::) The building isn't a work of architectural brilliance but has plenty space and I installed the thickest loft insulation and a jacket on the immersion amongst other bits and bobs. Outdoors there are now 4 paddocks, all kept sprayed, elec fence replacing barb on the 2 small paddock perimeters, new gates throughout, the dutch barn is where the caravan was (now scrapped tho that's a long story ::) ) and the extension into the middle paddock was built but the roof since collapsed in snow ::) There was a small orchard which has been tidied up and now produces prolifically, plus it has 4 new veg beds and a couple more trees/bushes about and some lovely compost heaps about the place ;D 2 new water troughs, and various other things outdoors but basically it will never be completed as I intended things like french doors out of the dining room, a conservatory from the living room and new kitchen, loft and/or side extension.. which I will never have money to do now ::)
I want to move and let others continue the development as they see fit, but realistically will be moving to another project in order to afford somewhere with land as ever ::) Or stuck here meantime and just getting on with what I have and leaving what I don't have ::)
I think if you want to complete a development project you have to do it before you move in - after that there are always other priorities ::) But it's great fun making plans and getting things changed for the better - the white bath even now is a pleasure to see when I can see the old yellow stained one in the paddock acting as spare water trough ;D
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We threw money at our croft house too, but thoroughly enjoyed doing it. The first year we were both working so money was available and workmen employed so little stress, the second John was made redundant so my salary went on keeping us afloat and starting him in a small project plus he spent time on the house too, and made a great job of restoring original features. We had to use money left to em by my Mum next, but we got it finished, apart from some cosmetic stuff, and the acre of garden When he died I couldn't carry on with what had been a joint project so I sold it and built a house - project managed it myself as I had retired by then. Thoroughly enjoyed doing that and stayed within budget by £1000!!! I've added bits and pieces to this house but it's young - 20 years or so, so no real incentive. If I ever get the chance I'll buy an old place and do it up again, or self build again. But we only had dogs all those years, no kids - apart from helping with cattle, sheep and horses in our fields of course. So really not a lot of stress, I admire anyone doing both. Our daughter and son-in-law have done that - three kids, youngest is almost 4, oldest 12 now, and did a revamp of a Victorian maisonette, splitting it into two flats. They were pretty stressed! Thanks goodness tehy ahve just sold tehm and bought a complete Victorian house that needs very little.
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light at the end of the tunnel then :) don't normally feel this exasperated by it, I think today with several floods and looking at the grim woodchip wallpaper I felt a bit hacked off. having said that, I have a home - so many in Japan and NZ don't so perhaps I'm being a bit of a misery.
thanks for the positive replies - back onto wallpaper stripping again tomorrow x
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We have been doing up our place for over 12 years now. the cottage was built around 1890. Its small and I often wonder just how many people were born here. Last year we put in a new bathroom so just have the vestibule to do and we will be finished. We have changed all the inside to make it fit around us. Trouble has been we had to work on the buildings outside before the house, rebuilding the hay barn, a lot of work needed in the other large barn where the stables are. In the past 3000 pigs were on the place long before we bought it but buildings were left to fall down, slates sold off roofs which let the frost into walls and caused them to fall down. Our first job was to re fence the paddocks and put in new gates to make things safe for the horses. We have planted well over 100 trees. took up the lawn to give me a veg plot and room for my pollytunnel. In all we have just over 5 acres. Its always windy or seems to be even at the height of summer. I feel we never quite get on top of all the jobs. One day ;D
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You've just made me think of something else actually, Sabrina - I would love to know more about the people who once lived here, what kind of work they did, how the house used to look etc but apart from census, not sure how to find out more.
the lady next door did say there was a curse, if you moved in with your mother to this house they would die within 2 months. Of course I moved here with my 4 children, hubby and my mother (!) so far she's still alive and kicking lol. but the 2 families here before us used the 'annex' bit for their mums and both died almost immediately ;)
apart from that they haven't told us much more!
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We're renovating a house, creating a smallholding and have little 'uns aswell. Currently just have two toddlers, but number three is due in a couple of weeks so the renovations have had to be put on hold for a few months. Last job done inside the house was doing the sitting room so there's somewhere clean and tidy for my wife to hopefully give birth.
Its funny, we chat to friends now saying 'oh its mostly done' but then when you actually look closely and see the cracks and plaster hanging off in the kitchen and the state of the bathrooms, realise that after a while you just learn to live with it as it is. I think the main thing is keeping up momentum, its easy to do nothing on the house for a couple of weeks but it almost seems equally easy to do a couple of hours each night and finish off a new room in a couple of weeks. Having said that, new arrival means my momentum is shattered, although I did hang the sliding door on the downstairs loo today so still making small amounts of progress ::)
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the lady next door did say there was a curse, if you moved in with your mother to this house they would die within 2 months.
Just ignore that, it's just village gossip and coincidence.
I found a website with old maps of our hamlet - I think it's oldmaps.co.uk, and then I asked the oldest local farmer I could find for information on his old neighbours, then went back into the past finding all about their descendants. Discovered that there was once a thriving village of 20 homes, a schoolhouse, a vet/GP and smithy - and apart from the smithy and a couple of the houses we owned all the land that these homes sat on. There was only one ruined cottage left other than a pile of rubble and the corner stones of the schoolhouse. wefound more infromation at teh library, got names of people who lived in the various cottages, and used censuses, births, marriages etc to build a picture. Scotland's People is agood source of information here as it is all collated into one resource, whereas England and Wales records are all with their local parishes. It takes over your life but it's addictive once you start. One time we were stopped by a couple in Tesco asking if we lived at Gowanbrae, turned out that the man's grandparents owned the ruined cottage - which I eventaully demolished to build my house and faced it with the granite from the cottage.
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we live on a constant building site. We just bought a range cooker and have done the stonework, heating system xtension is still to do. Ellie, you can link up the 2 systems. We have stove and oil running on the same system but now have to link up a third heat source - now it gets complicated!
The last 15 years, don't ask. Leaking roof is all I say... :&>
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yes see my post in introduce yourself (baptism of fire) when we moved in the house couldn't house us all! when i went off to have no 5 we had no heating no running water no kichen and the walls didn't have plaster on - stick with it Luca is now almost 9 months old and look at my kitchen now
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forgot to show you what it looked like as i went off to the hospital!!!
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I think the main thing is keeping up momentum, its easy to do nothing on the house for a couple of weeks but it almost seems equally easy to do a couple of hours each night and finish off a new room in a couple of weeks. Having said that, new arrival means my momentum is shattered, although I did hang the sliding door on the downstairs loo today so still making small amounts of progress ::)
Oh so true!
We're frantically renovating our house to put on the (dead) housing market. Working evenings and weekends due to work commitments. We've encountered a leaky bath, giving whoever is in the kitchen a shower; blown, textured wallpaper on all walls and ceilings, when once removed, leaving lots of flaky paint; collapsed garden wall, rotten fascia boards and broken guttering, With an extremely tight budget, all the work has to be done ourselves.
Slowly but surely :D never give up :D
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I think the slowly but surely method is the key then :) we prioritised the kitchen as when we moved in it was not only filthy (seriously, thick fat and dog hair in oven, faecal matter under the lino from a toilet in the utility room ?!) so that was gutted, lino (all 3 layers of it) ripped up to expose natural stone tiles. new range etc so at least we could cook without being poisoned. kitchen toilet ripped out. so I suppose looking at what we have done, we have made headway.
just nice to hear from others in similar boat.
Annie, I'll look up some older farmers and see what they can tell me - brilliant idea x
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THat looks lovely and I wish we had the skills and the money. This house is over 300 years old but has been well looked after all be it dateted in places as we cannot afford major decorating/carpet changes. I would love to spend some money on it but all the money we get goes back onto repairs never mind alterations. We had plans passed for a annex but we cannot get £45,000 at least so stale mate, especialy as hubby is out of work again. In some ways I would like to sell and downsize but cannot see that happening in this climate, whats the saying, buy the worst house in the best area, well we have the best house in the worst area (almost) so we cannot add value!! We love it here but also would love a bit more cash!!!! Keep them photos going, I know a lot of us like before and after ones!!!!
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that was one room! I am a real bargain hunter the kitchen is reclaimed, the worktops and wall tiles were seconds the aga came off ebay! and I bought the limestone floor tiles off the boat from egypt without even seeing them but took a chance at £6.50 per sm good job they turned out ok as I bought 60 metres which we put in the hallway cloakroom and dining room. The whole kitchen cost me less than the aga would have cost!!! But looks great. I drove 600 miles heavily pregnant to get a reclaimed bamboo floor for the sitting room and office for £400 a couple of picks of the sitting room - excuse the mess the kids always leave behind.
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Very nice, I think a lot of us are bargain hunters, most of my house is pre owned and either free or cheap!!!!
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I feel your pain with getting renovations done.
Life is chaos here and its still not over, the house is messy enough as a farm but with the added building work its just completely impossible to have order (as if I ever has any!! ;) )
Good luck - although Ive been told it never ends!! arggg
Baz