The Renovation Begins! week 1

We knew this would be a massive project, but now we are in the middle of it, it's a whole different story! I think we've looked at each other multiple times over the last week and thought... what the hell have we done?! But we have done it, and we are doing it. We are renovating our victorian terrace house, ready to move in at the end of this week. Eek!

The house was under our budget and a proper fixer-upper with the potential to make a really good amount of money from it in the future, once we've made a third bedroom in the loft! But we don't have a huge budget for renovating it, so we really are doing it all ourselves. It's bloody terrifying. There was a moment when we first walked in after picking up the keys, and we looked around at this insanely dirty, old fashioned, falling apart building and just didn't even know where to start!

So we got stuck in with ripping off the wallpaper. We called a plumber in to fix some pipes and he discovered one of the radiators not working upstairs and is coming back this week to fix that. Then we called in an electrician to move some random wire and the electrical sockets to where we want them to be. Once the wallpaper had all come off we realised we needed to get the hallway and back room plastered, so called in a plasterer who is also coming this week to sort that out. We sanded some of the floors ourselves, but it really does take a very long time, so we have called in a company to finish that for us at the end of the week.

I found a local company who come and take away all your heavily painted internal doors and strip the paint off and sand them back to their original glory. As our doors are all original victorian, I was really eager to keep them and at only £21 a door, this made sense. So they are coming back next week.

As we move into the second week of our renovation, we will be finishing with the painting upstairs, painting the front room, putting up blinds, reattaching the internal doors and cleaning up dust. Then at the weekend, once the floors have dried, it's time for us to move in. It wont be perfect, and theres still so much to do, but moving over early will mean we can get our rental property sorted out to ensure we get as much deposit back as we can (very much needed!).

Wish us luck. I've never been so stressed before in my life and I am desperate to get in there and start getting everything unpacked! xx