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Hi from Heathrow area


Bored Shopper

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Hi there, 

We are a professional couple, based in Greater London.

Currently reside in a very dated bungalow which we strongly dislike (was not a dream buy in a first place!). Now we are exploring the idea of knocking it down and rebuilding a proper two-storey house from scratch. Very new to all this, so mega-grateful to find this Forum with loads of advice and experience shared. Never done any self-build before, not great at DIY, so just orienteering at the moment trying to assess the scale of what we may be getting ourselves into (and looking for survival tips).

 

Thank you in advance for bearing with us :)

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Hi I used to live not far away in Ruislip. 

Getting straight to the point, is it worth it???

i used to do a lot of work for developers and knocking down a perfectly good house to build another doesn’t work, 

most on here who have done it either took a ramshackle house and knocked it down or the plot it was on was worth more than the house, yours look neither, to good to knock down and the plot doesn’t warrant spending £250000 plus on top of what you have. 

With the house prices by you would you not be better giving it a lick of paint and selling and looking for the crap bungalow on the nice plot a little bit further outside the m25. 

Sorry to be blunt. 

Russ. 

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Thank you everyone for the warm welcome and the straight questions!

Of course, we tried to sell. 18 months on, only a one offer (so low that we can't possibly consider it), and EVERYONE's feedback is that they love the location but hate the bungalow layout. No lick of paint can save this, and we don't think that investing 20k+ into a new kitchen and paint-licked 5 beds can work in this case - we'll have to hike the price up accordingly whilst we are pushed by everyone to keep reducing the price (already knocked off 50k :(). So - no buyers, and an offer which will leave us worse off (just the cost of land which is expensive and very sparse in this area). So technically we do own the plot now.

 

We need a "normal", regular two-storey house, compact but with two separate floors, nothing too fancy. Sound proofing is not a big issue since we are not exactly under fly paths and do not suffer from noise (unlike Hounslow / Richmond). The structure of the house itself is not great (blocks of poor quality), not much in terms of insulaton, etc etc. For the money it would cost to completely re-do it (and change layout, and convert the loft) we can just as well re-build it. 

 

So, I'm off to enjoy hours of forum readings :) all opinions welcome :)

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9 minutes ago, Bored Shopper said:

We need a "normal", regular two-storey house, compact but with two separate floors, nothing too fancy.

 

Ultimately you will need to decide whether spending what will end up being quite a lot on a brand new house will be worth the investment because what if you spend a considerable sum and subsequently want to move? You may find it impossible to recover what you have spent. Every plot and area will have a ceiling. As long as you go in with eyes wide open and do the maths you can do whatever you want ultimately, but I imagine that building near London may cost a pretty penny in terms of labour costs at least. 

 

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Trust me, it's a lot of work trying to do up an old, badly built place. I'm trying to do so now. 

 

Loads of time is spent making what's there "good" even if you're covering it up / adding. With hindsight I would have knocked down and rebuilt. 

 

If you need a push to self build then visit some of the Passive (or better than Passive) builds on here. I've only visited one and tbh you can't fault the logic behind it all.

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