Buying A Project House

I've spoken a lot about our house renovation, what we're doing to it and our decor, but I've never spoken about why we're doing it. A project house is a lot of work to undertake, but I think it's 100% worth it so I thought I'd share the reasons that motivated us and why I think it's such a good idea. I don't know if I've mentioned it before (probably have, I do tend to babble on don't I), but we weren't originally looking for a project house. We found the more we looked the more we came round to the idea because of the following reasons (plus when you see a house you can afford on your dream street you've gotta buy it whatever state it's in haven't you?).

M O R E  F O R  Y O U R  M O N E Y  |  We were in a financial position where we could afford either a nice small house that we wouldn't need to do anything to, but would quickly outgrow or an almost uninhabitable house that would need completely renovating, but that once done would last us forever if we wanted. With these two options being the same price, we obviously wanted as much bang for our buck as possible and went for the bigger option. I know some people will argue that you then have to inject money into the house to bring it up to standard, but it's still so much cheaper than buying a nicely done house. To put that into perspective, there's a house on our street the same size and layout as ours currently up for sale for £80k more than we paid for ours. Isn't that just absolute madness?! So even taking into account the money we've spent/are spending on doing it up, it's a huge saving.

C O M P L E T E  C R E A T I V E  C O N T R O L  |  Buying a project house is essentially like buying a blank canvas (apart from that canvas is actually covered in fifty years worth of wallpaper and smells a bit funny), but because everything needs changing you can change it in any way you want. If we'd bought a house with a bathroom that was fine but not to my style, I couldn't have justified spending the money on changing it and would probably have just done little things to it like painting or replacing a few bits. In reality, we bought a house with a bathroom that had plaster crumbling off the wall, an empty water tank in the ceiling, old pipes sticking out, carpet tiles that were coming away and an avocado bath suite that had probably been in use for about sixty years (and once you've thought about how many different naked people have been in there over those years it's kind of off-putting). Because you basically get to start all over again, you get to decorate however you want without having to compromise with what's already there.

I  T ' S  R E W A R D I N G  |  I can't pretend that doing up a house is easy or that it's all painting rooms pretty colours and choosing lamps. It's filthy, smelly and makes you ache all over and a lot of the jobs that need doing are mind-numbingly boring. (Have I sold it to you yet?) But there are fun parts too like planning, shopping and seeing the results after a hard day's work (even if you are seeing them through a film because you didn't wear goggles for sanding the floor - always wear goggles for sanding kids). It is genuinely a very rewarding thing when you sit back and look at a room that's finished, knowing that you did absolutely everything.

Would you ever buy a project house?

Amy x