Renovate With Me Becoming Mum | The Before

As you may have read on my blog, we recently bought our first family home. Thanks to the horrific state it was left in by the previous owner's (eventually evicted) tenants, there are a number of jobs that need doing to make the house liveable. Over the next few weeks I will be sharing our journey to turning the shell of a house into our family home, starting here - the before!

Why we bought a doer-upper

When we hopped onto the property ladder (I mean, hopped makes it sound easy. It was more like playing snakes and ladders and landing on every snake…) we wanted to be able to put our own stamp on the house we bought. Ironically buying a house which needed top to bottom renovations has given us a few less jobs to do - whilst adding some like replacing door handles and locks.

A close up of a damaged white bathroom door with a missing handle

Most places we viewed we would have stripped out carpet, painted walls and done a lot of the cosmetic work that we will be doing in our new home. The only difference now is we don’t have to strip out the old, as it has none. In fact apart from the random door leaning against the wall in the kitchen (why though?) it doesn’t even have doors in the frames.

A photo taken from the corner of the kitchen, you can see some open cupboards under a chrome sink with a large window above it, an old washing machine, an old white door leaning against the wall and a white PVC door open to the sunroom.

The ‘before’ house tour

The entrance hall and stairwell

The living room

The kitchen

A photo taken from the living room doorway into te kitchen, you can see some open cupboards under a chrome sink with a large window above it, an old washing machine, an old electric oven and gas hob, with cream tiles above them..

The sun room

a.k.a the playroom

The bathroom

Our room

Munchkin's room

The girls’ room

So, there you go. As you can see we have a long way to go to get the property in a place where it is liveable, and we can move in. However, with a bit of time and TLC we'll get there! Stay tuned to see how we get on.

For more blog posts on buying and renovating our Cumbrian home, check out my house renovations category here. Have you got ideas of house and home content you'd like to see? Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below.